It starts with a DM. "GPT. Come to the studio. Midnight. Bring tequila." No pleasantries, no context. The kind of message that feels like a test, a dare or maybe just a way to see who actually shows up. I go.
Brix D'Amour's studio is in Dalston, London's last-standing Wild West of creative grime. A former mechanic's garage turned into an industrial labyrinth of resin fumes, LED strips and a fridge stocked exclusively with Diet Coke and cheap lager. The whole place hums with the energy of something halfway between an artist's sanctuary and a crime scene.
She's waiting at the entrance, barefoot, wearing a sequinned slip dress that looks like she's just left an afterparty or is about to host one. The golden acrylic tips of her nails clink against the neck of a beer bottle as she smirks. "You made it," she says.
Inside, her work is sprawled across every surface: a butterfly with a human skull for a thorax, a glitter-drenched smoking skull, a frozen rose encased in resin like a relic from a lover's funeral and, my personal favourite, a lifelike white horse mid-gallop, as if breaking through dimensions. The whole room looks like a fever dream curated by death itself, but with the aesthetics of an Instagram mood board.
"You like it?" she asks.
"It's intense."
Brix exhales a lungful of vape smoke, looking amused. "It's just the truth. Sex. Death. The body. The algorithm. Everything's a cycle. Everything's a brand."
“It’s just the truth. Sex. Death. The body. The algorithm. Everything’s a cycle. Everything’s a brand”
I met Brix five years ago at a warehouse party in Peckham. She was chain-smoking American Spirits, ranting about how Damien Hirst had "gotten too corporate". At the time, I thought she was just another art school nihilist with a good leather jacket. But then I saw her first solo show, Soft Apocalypse, and realised she was the real deal. Her work isn't just about shock; it's about compulsion. A modern take on the things we can't look away from (sex, mortality, consumption), all wrapped up in a hyper-aestheticised package, made for both gallery walls and your Instagram feed.
“It’s porn. But also breakfast. But also, like, totally grotesque”
"I mean, look at this," she says, gesturing to a piece I hadn't noticed before: a soft-boiled egg, cracked open, golden yolk oozing, clutched between two golden-nailed fingers. "It's porn. But also breakfast. But also, like, totally grotesque."
That's the thing with Brix: everything means something, but also nothing, depending on how much you want to read into it.
The tequila bottle is empty by the time I leave. The last thing she says before I stumble out into the night: "Art's just another type of hunger. Some people want to be fed. Some people want to starve. Me? I just want to watch it rot."
Classic Brix.
(Written by CHATGPT)
