Snake Hold

Natalie Woodlock’s work celebrates a queer subculture that has its roots in punk, radical social movements, and the hedonism of gay party culture. Each portrait is a commemorative object, celebrating both the individual and the broader community they are a part of. Through the use of banners, Woodlock evokes histories and futures of queer dissent and protest. Banners are also linked to vernacular, working-class modes of commemoration. In this body of work, Woodlock references both of these traditions, linking them to the social practice of queer world-making. Mining subcultural graphic aesthetics (i.e. tattoos) and queer self-actualization with the body, Woodlock’s work points to how small acts build sites of temporary queer utopias, even in the economic margins. 

For Snake Hold, Natalie Woodblock’s installation at SPACE, two new banners make their debut, developed through residencies and support from the Ellis-Beauregard Foundation in Rockland and the Fabric Workshop Museum in Philadelphia. 

Natalie Woodlock is an artist currently based in Philadelphia. She is an Apprentice at The Fabric Workshop and Museum and is also a keyholder at Second State Press. In 2018 she completed an MFA in Printmaking at the University of New Orleans. In her work she is currently exploring queer temporality and subculture. She lived in New Orleans from 2009 – 2020, and many of her queer portraits are drawn from friends there. In 2021 Woodlock was the Print Fellow at The Wassaic Project in upstate NY. In December 2021, Woodlock was an artist in residence at The Ellis Beauregard Foundation in Rockland, Maine, where she created some of the work in her show at SPACE Snake Hold. Woodlock is drawn to the medium of printmaking in part for its collective and connective possibilities. She has been involved in many community and artist-run printshops and print collectives in both Australia and the US.