No. 13 — The Skeletons Are Singing Again
New paintings by Frances Cocksedge
January 20 – February 17, 2024

Opening reception:
January 20, 2024
3–6 PM
737 Maltman Avenue
Los Angeles, CA 90026

+ By appointment

Mascot is pleased to present: The Skeletons Are Singing Again, with new work by Frances Cocksedge (b.1993, Los Angeles). Frances received her Bachelor’s of Fine Art and Art History in 2016 and completed her Master’s of Science in Psychology in 2022. A marriage between the tactility of painting and the academic study of the brain, Frances—working primarily with young adults—weaves together early experiences, family histories, and childhood associations to consider the possibilities for the visual arts to be used as therapeutic tools. Each work is treated with the same precision and delicacy required for her patients and reads like a fragment within the larger confines of memory—favorite pages from story books, found textiles cut into familiar shapes, pop culture references from her own childhood, and displaced family images.

Her first solo show includes four new paintings, drawings, sculptures, and a video installation featuring the 1992 children’s program, Shelley Duvall’s Bedtime Stories. Exhibited in a 1940s second floor apartment in Los Angeles, California, Frances centers the work around the domestic space to explore the metaphorical “skeletons” lurking behind closed doors. The work is narrated by an unknown family in a series of photos purchased on eBay. Generic in content, the images portray a seemingly ordinary family—birthday cakes, Christmas trees, annual sibling photos—through the eyes of a proud grandmother, who aptly signed the back of her own portrait, “me.” A collaborative artist book accompanies the show, incorporating a selection of the photos in a bound accordion photo book not dissimilar to one you might find on your mother’s coffee table. Through the images, Frances makes her directorial debut, casting each member of the family into her own script, staged within a universally recognizable but never fully understood setting: the home.

The Skeletons Are Singing Again is on view through February 17, 2024. Open by appointment.

Exhibition images courtesy of Evan Walsh.