Tom Coates work draws from sculpture, live art and installation.

The hope of prompting an unorthodox relationship between viewer and artwork has been a driving force in Coates’ practice and has led them to experiment with public installations, interactive works and live work that takes the form of moving/operated sculptures as opposed to performances.

Coates favours bright colours and visceral textures to give the works a sense of urgency or even restlessness to combat the idea of the static decorative art object. The form presented is often a conglomeration of invented shapes and recognisable forms, this mixture springs from the tension between the desire to subvert pre-existing heteronormative structures and the dream of creating a new language of gender expression.

A guiding light of Coates’s work is the idea of camp, its dazzling refusal to be categorized within the normally accepted boundaries of taste, the energy it infuses in the audience and its capacity for the monstrous and the unruly.