Phantasmal Gallery
Phantasmal Gallery
Astrid Butt
A Horse With No Eyes
A Horse With No Eyes is a 32-minute short film, conceived as a part of my residency at Yorkshire Sculpture Park for the Yorkshire Graduate Award. The film reimagines the site of Yorkshire Sculpture Park as a cursed land, in which the women who come upon it find they now possess the ability to transform into animals. Our protagonist, a girl who dreams of turning into a bird, soon discovers that the animals that inhabit the land are women who have lost their humanity and forgotten how to return to their original bodies. The film is an exploration of the female body, and the shame and search for agency that come with it. The body is presented as a site rife with violence, inhabited by an all-consuming desire for pleasure and carnage that is almost parasitical. The land itself is also treated as bodily, constantly warping and morphing, using a dreamlike, candy-coloured atmosphere to disguise its hostility and cruelty.
A Little Bit About The Artist
A Statement From The Artist
Astrid Butt is a feminist film and performance artist, living and working in Leeds. Butt is the most recent recipient of the Yorkshire Graduate Award, as well as the winner of the FUAM Graduate Art Prize in 2022.
Inspired by the works of David Lynch, Cecelia Condit, and discourse surrounding the feminine grotesque, Butt considers herself an experimental horror filmmaker, using her artistic practice to unspool the grotesqueness and surreality of her own femininity. Butt’s work provides an unflinching perspective into the cruelty of womanhood, discussing harrowing topics, such as domestic abuse, motherhood and sexual assault.
Her stories are often centred around hybridised animal-human characters, all of whom are shaped by their relation to sexuality, shame and violence. Using a combination of child-like whimsy, god-fearing declaration, and crude bodily imagery, Astrid Butt conjures a voice that is equally filled with immense power and immense grief.
Tell us about a dream you've had.​
Once I dreamt I had killed my brother (when the dream began he was already dead). His body was caked in dark brown blood, so I wrapped him in a white bed sheet and crudely stuffed him into the washing machine. Afterwards, he came out clean and alive.
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What's your favourite movie or tv show?
The Substance.
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​​​​What is your biggest influence on your practice?
The filmography of David Lynch, especially the films Mulholland Drive and Inland Empire. Any kind of surreal video work, that is can be comical as well as nightmarish and unsettling in its uncanniness. I have also drawn a lot of inspiration from the video works of Cecelia Condit, whose videos use monologues and archival footage to create their unique atmosphere.
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