The Grimsbys have gathered a few things worth watching.
A dense assembly of vintage televisions fills the room, their mismatched cabinets stacked into an irregular wall of glass, wood, and circuitry. At the center, a large screen carries flickering black-and-white medical imagery, with a smaller monitor perched above it. Pale mannequin faces emerge between the sets. Detached hands rest along the edges of the central cabinet, giving the arrangement the appearance of a gathering whose participants have become entangled with their entertainment.
The room holds the accumulated character of a private collection. Screens of different shapes and sizes glow with static, pale light, or fragments of moving images. Cables, branches, greenery, and scattered objects interrupt the geometry of the electronics. Every available space seems occupied by something kept for its usefulness, its appearance, or the simple pleasure of having found it.
Within this crowded interior, the mannequin figures offer an uncertain kind of company. One face peers from behind the central television; another appears near its lower edge. Their expressions remain still while the broadcasts change around them. The hands draped over the cabinet suggest familiarity and possession, as though the television has become a piece of furniture around which the household naturally assembles.
The medical transmissions bring a different view of the body into this collection of artificial human forms. On the screens, anatomy becomes a subject of investigation. Outside them, faces and limbs exist as separate objects, arranged among appliances and domestic debris. Their proximity invites us to consider how we recognize a body through fragments—and how readily a face or a hand can suggest a presence, even without a complete figure.
For the Grimsbys, science and oddities provide both entertainment and a way of furnishing their world. The scene feels absorbed in its own interests. A specimen, a mannequin, an obsolete television, or an unfamiliar procedure might each reward another look. Curiosity gives these disparate things a shared home.
Filmed by Karen Jerzyk, the work gives close attention to the physical surfaces of this environment: curved screens, worn cabinets, pale sculpted features, and the crowded spaces between them. The arrangement remains steady enough for us to inspect while its transmissions continually redirect our attention. Gradually, the room begins to resemble a portrait of its collectors, assembled from everything they find too interesting to discard.
Part of *The Grimsbys*, a moving-image series by Karen Jerzyk exploring a peculiar household’s fondness for science, oddities, and the company of curious things.
