Plomacy
2025

Brittany Walker Smith
&
Freya Burnett

Enjoyable, stimulating, like a vibrator on its lowest setting

2025
acrilic, glitter on velvet

Plomacy is pleased to present Creature Comforts, a duo exhibition from Brittany Walker Smith and Freya Burnett. Each of the Tāmaki Makaurau-based artists weaves a seductive trap of absurdity and allure, where the line between armour and adornment blurs into something much more instinctual and almost animalistic.

I don’t understand why they have pools on cruise ships?

2025
acrilic, glitter, pleather on velvet

Brittany Walker Smith’s new paintings channel the intersection of femininity and animalism, exploring how leopard print, taxidermy, orchids, and metallic glamour become tools of both rebellion and self-preservation. Inspired by everything from Jocelyn Wildenstein to Pilates cat-stretches, they play with the idea of women’s desire to cocoon themselves in luxury—danger disguised as decoration. Orchids become clits, leopard print becomes armor, and chandeliers become trophies in a domestic jungle. The paintings luxuriate in the absurdity of aesthetic excess, embracing patterns, poisons, and poses with the sincerity of a woman who’s absolutely exhausted and still surviving. Somewhere between a big cat stalking through a mirrored lounge and a too-sweet cake you regret halfway through—it’s inviting, ridiculous, and a little bit dangerous.

Freya Burnett uses moving-image and still photographs to lace together an enchanting world of decadence and danger concealed behind a sensuous mask of adornment. Tangled patterns of fantastical beings pose as innocent. A hypnotic pull, summoning one to dip a perfectly pedicured toenail into; A cave, a nest, a secret oasis that seeps a honeyed poison. A porcelain vanity boasts an array of ambrosial perfumes, as one bathes in a silky bubble bath, coddled by a balmy liquid, lulled into a menacing entrancement. A world where the gorgeous camouflages the gruesome, an act of protection and deception.

Everything is Already Here

2025
acrilic, glitter, pleather on fabric

Together, Smith and Burnett toy with opulence as not only a domain for consumption and currency but as a ritualistic state of being; an unapologetic reverence for creature comforts.