Caroline Rothwell, Transmutation

I am going to speak about two things:

one, the materiality and construction of this figure

and two, Rothwell’s visual inspiration for the form.

—  Alice Clanachan

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Speculations on the subject of Caroline Rothwell’s Transmutation

• Protocol droid C3-P0, partially dismembered by ugnaughts in Cloud City, Bespin (Irvin Kershner (director), The Empire Strikes Back, 1980)
• Marvin being shot in the face by Vincent Vega after Jules Winnfield’s car may or may not have gone over a bump (Quentin Tarantino (director), Pulp Fiction, 1994)
• The naiad Daphne undergoing transformation into a laurel tree (Ovid (author), Metamorphoses, 8 CE)
• Cartoon character being erased after a dispute with his animator (Chuck Jones (director), Duck Amuck, 1953)
• Nyarlathotep, the Crawling Chaos, manifesting as the God of the Bloody Tongue (H.P. Lovecraft (creator), Nyarlathotep, 1920)
• A prince in the process of turning into a raven upon the utterance of the chill curse, “the shirt will hurt, the wings will sting, the beak will shriek, the eyes will cry” (Jim Henson (creator), The Storyteller: The Three Ravens, 1987)
• Captain James T. Kirk being beamed from the Starship Enterprise to another location (Gene Roddenberry (creator), Star Trek, 1966 to present)
• Frank Cotton tasting the pleasures of the Cenobites on the other side of the Schism (Clive Barker (author), The Hellbound Heart, 1986)
• One of the first five Adams upon hearing the awesome power of God’s true voice (Kevin Smith (director), Dogma, 1999)
• Morpheus of the Endless, King of Dreams and Prince of Stories with his raven Matthew (Neil Gaiman (creator), The Sandman, 1989 to present)
• Exham of Farloft (tenth level ranger/ second level fighter) under the effects of an Enlarge Person spell, pictured with his avian companion Skaras (Roy Ananda and Foti Pitrakkos (authors), on-going Dungeons and Dragons campaign, 2014 to present)

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