Laura Aldridge

This exhibition is the culmination of Laura Aldridgeʼs ten-month studio residency at Glasgow Sculpture Studios as the recipient of the Graduate Scholarship. For this, her first solo show since graduating from the MFA course at Glasgow School of Art, Aldridge will create a sculptural scenario that explores conflicting representations of art as a transformative and hopeful enterprise.

For ʻthe workshop has survived because we love each otherʼ the gallery will be transformed into a staged environment reminiscent of semi-external public areas; sculpture courts or landscaped communal gardens. Central to this will be three brutish, rock-like sculptures housing a variety of semi exotic overgrown plants. Holders of youthful exuberance and literally full of life these inhabitors of the gallery space will stand in direct conversation with a series of wall works featuring posters of the erstwhile boy band ʻBlazin Squadʼ. Appearing like the epitome of “troubled youf” they sit unimpressed on the top of a high rise block, the sky forming a panorama behind them.

A mass of knotted rope and wire obscures the view of the posters – seemingly a sculptural drawing, confused and matted, lost along the way or outgrowing itself. Hanging over this sculptural scene will be a five metre square wall hanging, an ambiguous and dominating presence suggesting the blank voice of a pervasive narrator or acting as a receding backdrop to the drama unfolding in front of it.

Aldridgeʼs practice is based upon the presentation of sculptural props and modular elements in the building of a scene or setting. Works typically engage the viewer with a brash and deliberate physicality embodying the artistʼs interest in directness and its possibilities for undermining and revealing the implicit rhetoric in the presentation of a work of art.

As an accompaniment to the exhibition the artist has commissioned a text by Glasgow based artist Fiona Jardine. Jardine has previously explored the development of fictional narratives and combined literary styles to create contexts for thinking about and understanding art works. The text will explore an alternative interpretation of the exhibition, embodying a shared interest of both artists in the delivery and functional style of art work and how it is received by its viewer.