What circus is this? What strange ghosts are they that loom out of the darkest black, the last place in our dreams?

They are Them. They are the work of Danny Treacy. They are the figments of his imagination and desire. They are made from recovered clothes, collected from lonely places - woodland, wasteland, car parks. They are re-stitched and re-fashioned into junk monsters. They belonged to the unknown, the anonymous, the lost, the drunken, the deranged, the sexually driven, and who knows, the dead. They are the sinister carnival playing in the street. They are the music we dread to hear. They confront us. They defy us. They take a chance in our presence. They take a chance on existence. They are Danny Treacy dressed-up.

They mask his identity. They become the confined space of his transgression. They are charged in this way. They are places where he is close to Them. They are awkward, contorted. They are the body harnessed, the body pinched, the body stitched-up. They have those Frankenstein stiff-legged poses. They are ‘B’ movie cut-outs. They are Dada, they are Pop; they are the friends ao Surrealism, shouting anarchy, whispering perversion. They are sampled pieces; cross-dressed collages, mix-gendered melodramas, part nasty, part nice.

They are the suits, the jeans, the rubber gloves. They are the workers; they are the dancers. They are the porno tea-break, the sexed-up secrets. They are the rough trade. They are the victims. They are the soldiers; they have the armour, the equipment. They are medieval, the spice of old England. They are the dangermen, the shit-kickers; they are tight; they are fit.

They are soiled and stained and perfectly formed. They are the shapes around which menace lingers. They are intimate; they are a violation. They are true and they are fake.

© David Chandler, Director, Photoworks. 2003. <P