THINGS HELD INSIDE // THE NEW SEA

THINGS HELD INSIDE // THE NEW SEA
Kendall Koppe, Glasgow
28/09 – 09/11/2012 *solo

Kendall Koppe is delighted to open its 2012/13 programme with THINGS HELD INSIDE//THE NEW SEA by Laura Aldridge. The exhibition marks the culmination of the gallery’s yearly residency where Aldridge was invited to convert the exhibition space into her working studio between the months of June – September 2012. It is Aldridge’s first solo show with the gallery.

THINGS HELD INSIDE//THE NEW SEA marks a period of intense production for Aldridge as she has developed a new body of sculptures addressing her continual concerns with production and the double bind between self and thought. Consuming her own practice by re-addressing and re-using fragments from older never fully realised pieces, Aldridge positions these fragments within the body of new works that tower over the gallery space. Using the structural forms of procession and protest placards as a reference point, Aldridge creates four new sculptures that float throughout the gallery, anchored by cast concrete pigmented forms. The new series confronts the viewer with a collage and re-stitch of dyed fabrics, older fragmented works, and painted panels, brought together in a landscape of ideas from the artist’s own internal dialogue. How do you stop a bleeding finger, sees Aldridge replicate the cover of Raymond Roussel’s, Impressions of Africa with watercolour on cotton. By experimenting with systems of politicization Aldridge highlights a skepticism in attempting to claim an artwork’s political intention. With ease and humour Aldridge’s delicately painted word ‘Africa’ becomes symbolic yet poetic and decorative.

Similar to Roussel’s diverging and non- linear narratives, which open up within themselves many times over, How do you stop a bleeding finger and its floating companions function as the artist’s own narrative on production and thought. Pinch, ply, poke, press uses Aldridge’s own reproduction of the iconic Squid Dress, 1968 by Yayoi Kusama as the central and only form to this placard structure. Laser-cut and lusciously orange, the form teeters uncomfortably yet freely between painting and sculpture, bringing to question the artist’s own position within the history of feminist making and its relationship to the body.

The continual reference to a corporeal experience throughout Aldridge’s practice is heightened by the presence of the soft sculpture, The Box It Came In. The Box It Came In occupies a large portion of the gallery and replicates the form of a human teardrop while also making reference to the materiality of a domestic beanbag. The fleeting ephemeral nature of a teardrop is juxtaposed by its monumental construction, material and form constantly rubbing against each other amidst the sea of newly collaged placard works. The Box It Came In not only bears witness to a procession and protest of the artist’s oeuvre but it actively participates in the constant struggle between clarity, realization and material.