WhatmorePager is a manifestation of the creative alter egos of Poppy Whatmore and Sarah Pager. Applying a pataphysical approach to shared interests adjacent to their practice their strategy is to push each other to wilder even more absurd extremes. Extending the roles of Flaubert’s collaborative characters, Bouvard and Pecuchet, whose aim was to discover valuable meaning, both scientific and cultural, in a quest to give purpose to their existence – Whatmore and Pager work together to realize audacious and spontaneous conversational notions, which culminate in scripted compositions and sculptural shrapnel.
Their core concepts hinge on the relationship between the subjective and objective experience of the world, subverting both territories and blurring the boundaries within each realm. Their explorations investigate the fragmented fabrication of the body in a feminine language applying humour and cultural archetypes as a mediated assemblage of interests.
Both artists employ characterisations and anthropomorphic tropes manipulated through objective personas. Through discourse their methods encompass idiosyncratic means and arrangements for selected machines and technologies deployed to distort perspectives of the role of the human condition within familiar surroundings.
Through the editing process, the collaboration sources the vocabulary of objects and forms into a reconstructed narrative – building on filmic structures and animated performances that unfold in real time and place.
The WhatmorePager collaboration was initiated at the AcademyNow 2012 exhibitions in London and Italy. Selected subsequent exhibitions and residencies include Artlicks 2013, APT Continuum of Ceaseless Change 2014, and Grymsdyke Farm Residency 2015.
Bread And Jam 