Ruth Barker and Hannah Leighton-Boyce, 2019. (Exhibition)
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This two person exhibition I presented newly commissioned work alongside Ruth Barker. During 2017 I spent time in the archives of Glasgow Women’s library and reflecting on my personal experiences there within the library and collective body of the archive, its traces and residues led me to developing four new works connected through the mineral, salt. The work draws on its inherent properties of attraction, division, healing and energy to explore how it can sympathise with the body in its ability to form and reform being able to shed itself in tears, secreted in sweat, suspended in water, being strong and crystalline, yet simultaneously fragile and vulnerable to environmental conditions.
List of works: More energy than object, more force than form ~ a series of saltwater batteries congregate in circles reminiscent of a gathering or ancient monument, drawing upon the energy of people coming together. The multiple bodies of cells makes specific use of the particularities of salt, the energy of difference, separation and attraction that occur when salt is suspended in water. Materials: Saltwater batteries (glass jars, salt, copper and zinc), electrical wire/alligator clips, wire hooks and pulley, flexible LED lights. Consequences of progress, remnants for the future ~ Six Giclée prints on Hahnemüle Photorag (edition of 3) document a series of works in salt, ceramic, clay and steel. Persistent bodies ~ ten cylindrical forms of cast salt in Persistent bodies lie like broken fragments of a column or a broken length of spinal bone. Each piece is solid in its crystalline form, whilst remaining sensitive and vulnerable to environmental changes. The work references the story of Lot’s (unnamed) wife who was turned to a pillar of salt when she defied the authority of God’s angels and turned to look back on the burning cities of Sodom and Gomorrah (Genesis 19:26). In opposition to the intention of this biblical story, the piece infers in it the subversive potential of bearing witness, the importance of looking back, and of the archives of somewhere like Glasgow Women’s Library. Materials: Salt, with ceramic or steel core. Affinity ~ The energy of difference, charge and attraction is echoed in Affinity, through the copper and zinc, between atoms in the bond between sodium and chloride, and the energy that draws and binds people together. Collection: Private Reviews: MAP review by Jazmine Linklater: Issues / #43 a gray stone wall damming my stream. Photo credits: Simon Liddiard |
