Genderqueer deity by Rachael House

Rachael House's genderqueer deities are wall-hanging apotropaic sculptures. They are stoneware ceramics, and some are embellished with beads woven from queer newspapers, bottle tops and stamped ceramic charms.

All the stamps used to decorate the deities are handmade, and highly charged with meaning. They include goddess symbols, trans and feminist symbols and stamps of the objects used to protect the maker from harm in witches bottles- pins, sharp things, hair, salt and herbs.

Rachael House’s work is informed by her research into witch bottles, often made from Bellarmine jugs in the sixteenth and seventeenth century. Rather than warding against witches spells, her genderqueer deities protect us from gender conformity and those who would attack the rights of women, womxn and all of those with less power than the ruling elites.

Approximately: W21cm x H27cm

Rachael House is a UK artist who makes events, objects, performance, drawings and zines. Events have been curtailed over the past years, and drawing has taken centre stage, with her first book, Resistance Sustenance Protection, published in May 2021.

Rachael House’s work focuses on feminist and queer politics and resistant histories/herstories, aiming to reach as many like-minded people as possible, inside and outside of the art world. She uses humor, personal engagement and events to draw in those who may not be like-minded too - she recruits.

Alongside and as part of her fine art practice she makes zines. In the 1990s she was part of the international queerzine scene. Today, her zines are in museum and university archives and feature in academic and art books.