‘Penetralia’ literally means the innermost parts of a building or structure; a secret or hidden place ripe for exploration. And in modern usage ‘penetration’ has become increasingly sexualised. In this collection of gea* artwork, it suggests anything she or we want to explore or understand as we descend into these secret, hidden places where few artists are brave enough to go.

In his introduction to Penetralia, Australian musician James George (J.G.) Thirlwell writes, ‘If you think that by looking at gea*’s art that she must have a wicked psyche then you’d be right. Like her work she can be charming, seductive, but with an underscore of menace, an angel in devil’s boots. To write about her work, you may as well be talking about her – gorgeous and brittle, disturbed and sensuous. Incredibly, she is a self-taught artist and synthesises a lot of her influences into her own vision. Her many obsessions always peek through, and like all good obsessives and her meticulous attention to detail serve her well. I first saw her artworks in ink and was impressed by the confidence of her lines. That’s not easy to do. They were simple, small and whimsical, with the emphasis on sick, and were sometimes computer-coloured. Cuteness and erotica stood side by side with the morbid and grotesque, although she managed to imbue even the darkest subject matter with a coy allure.’

And film director Guy Maddin adds a very personal response to gea*’s work, titled ‘A Retinal Mischevous Confessional’:

I remember the exact moment I stumbled upon gea*’s drawings. It was one of those rare internet conflagration clicks, when carpal tunnel ennui suddenly ignites into a blaze of retinal pleasures whooshing up in fiery dominion over the whole body! Such sweet waves of depravity. I perceived myself to be in the company of a frightening mute, a voiceless loner girl who nonetheless couldn’t stop etching her every feeling out loud – very loud. I was also scared I was going to be arrested for staring so hard at the Bosch-like density of aberration in her posted oeuvre. In the hubbub of my confused senses I was convinced this just-discovered gea* had always been with me, always been in the world, in that secret ‘perv world’ that throbs inside the regular one, and that gea*’s self-defiling visions represented exquisite excitements that vibrated and foamed within all of us, just waiting for an artist to limn them in the air so we might all recognise ourselves sliced open. So even though her work felt as new as tomorrow morning’s  boner, she also seemed to somehow pre-date Laotse, Colette, Kraft-Ebbing, Sappho – an entire Olympus of hilarious horndog titans! O, gea*! So exultantly unashamed is your work! It could only be honest! So illicit, mischievous, sadistic and confessional; so exquisitely surrendered to the honeyed enervation of humiliation, to the teen-girl flavour bursts of lip-glossed iniquity, to the dozy drone of fuzzy bees, to the young cutters’ most blissful incisions, to the pee-puddle’s Platonic ideal! So celebratory you are of all the body fluids -- plashets, drips and loops of juices -- rendered by your hand in such nectary palettes! Sublime saps! So obsessive and surprising are your graphic compulsions – I feel at last I know the simple democracy of lust! The universal suffrage of the downy female lap! I know! Only now do I know! Such loiny freefalls you produce with your pencils! Bless you! And bless this book, this wondrous adolescent thigh of a book!

Penetralia was published by Timeless Edition in a limited edition of 300 copies.