skin is an ongoing series presenting biomorphic forms intruding upon their environment. The series addresses feelings of human and ecological dread, considering how we relate to our bodies while constantly consuming violence.
The series began after Dunn experienced sexual assault in 2022, leading to an investigation around skin and touch. The early skins depicted a caustic touch, attempting to materialise the sensory dynamics Dunn met in her body.
PTSD and dissociation created alienation. The early skins asked how to relate to a body when you fear violence from within - when you’ve lost control of your senses. Using abrasive tools, Dunn would excavate the surface of her paintings - destroying the brush’s caress and revealing a clawing from inside.
skin eighteen (ascending beauty upstream), 2026
oil paint, acrylic paint, paper, fabric on car wrap, leather, wood
This work uses collage through the use of fabric, plastic, paper and paint. The images and writing in the work are taken from a 2006 cruise booklet from China’s Three Gorges Dam, a 2009 Bartlett Designs book and adverts from a 1984 Architectural Digest. The work takes its name from a page header in the cruise booklet titled Ascending Beauty Upstream. The work’s frame is taken from the structure of DIY scraping racks traditionally used for animal hides.
Exhibited in PELT (2026), a group exhibition by OHSH Projects at The Old Waiting Room in Peckham, UK, supported by Maverick Projects.
skin sixteen (nomeus), 2025
oil paint, acrylic paint, pigment, paper, bubble wrap on car wrap, leather, nails
skin sixteen (nomeus) takes its name from the Nomeus fish, a driftfish that lives between the toxic tentacles of the man o’ war jellyfish. The Nomeus is resistant to the jellyfish’s toxin, surviving by feeding on the man o’ war’s organs and tentacles.
Exhibited in Table Manners (2026), a group exhibition by Pia Sophie Ottes at Barbati Gallery, Venice, Italy.
skin seventeen (hands), 2025
oil paint, acrylic paint, bitumen, paper on on car wrap, leather, nails
Exhibited in The Problem With People (2025), a group exhibition at Oceans Apart Gallery, Salford, UK.
skin eleven, 2025
oil paint, bitumen and wax on car wrap, leather, nails, slag
Exhibited in The Lamb of Tartary (2025), a group exhibition curated by myself at 2 Beauclerc Road, London, UK.
skin thirteen, 2025
oil paint on car wrap, leather, nails
Exhibited in The Lamb of Tartary (2025), a group exhibition curated by myself at 2 Beauclerc Road, London, UK.
The skin works then developed to question a larger narrative around our bodies. Whether physically or not, most of us are in daily contact with violence through the content we consume. This contact has an abject and melancholic quality, creating a detachment from the horror and destruction we’re fed on a daily basis.
Within the skin works Dunn presents synthetic bodies, matter bred from violence and hung to dry. The skins appear from a post-human world, taking from gothic and eco-gothic genres to use disaster as a site of destructive creation and unlearning.
YLEM, 2025
oil paint, bitumen on car wrap, leather, nails
YLEM is a word coined by physicists in the 1940s to describe primordial high-energy matter. The etymological roots of the word lie in the medieval hylem, which also translates to ‘matter’, ‘wood’ and ‘stuff’.
Exhibited in LAS INVITES (2025), a group exhibition at LAS Deptford, London, UK.