Head-to-head

Head-to-head is a two-person gym bench that doubles as a love seat, inspired partly by Victorian Gossip Chairs, designed for my homegymbasementstudio.

My practice imagines how desire, belonging and ‘A Language of the Body’ can inspire and force new ways of being; balancing work, art, care, dysphoria and grief. Specifically investigating the places we go to work out, make out and make work; gyms, the trans body and the artist's studio; sites of desire, shame and growth through decay. The rise of sterile commercial gyms, home gyms and fitness influencers reflects a growing individualistic culture that values personal development over community, care, desire and lust and eros.

Ruby Stewart (b.2001) is an interdisciplinary artist living and working in Glasgow, Scotland. He graduated from GSA in 2024 and works independently and collaboratively from an Outer Spaces studio in the City Centre in Expanded Sculpture, Metalwork and Video. Selected for the Hospitalfield Graduate Residency on The Christopher Scholarship, 2026.