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_______________________________________________________________________________________________________ PROJECT SPACE With Rhona Campbell. E3 ECA November 2010 |
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The Sugar Room Projects
With Rachael Thomas.
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For‘a’ as part of Three Exhibitions at Craigcrook Castle: The Richard Demarco Archive.
Sugar Room 2 and 3 are a continuation of work made for 'a' at the WOT and previous collaborative projects (Sugar Room 1 and Soap Room) employing sugar to respond to the specifics of a given space.
These new works draw upon the grandeur and hypothetical narratives of Craigcrook Castle and the exceptional, ongoing and often unseen collections of the Demarco Archive. As fragile, easily weathered structures they are temporary and fleeting, but when installed in relation to the Castle and Archive their simple materiality connects with histories both past and present, allowing for a lingering presence after structural deterioration, and revealing the site anew.
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Sugar, my musings on the matter. These experimental works were a way of revealing, while simultaneously concealing, various characteristics of the given space, and a way of testing how our perception of such a space and its environment can be altered. Why sugar you ask, ultimately its materiality. As a substance sugar can be both heavy and light, as you are very easily able to dramatically vary the quantity you use, it can be both dense and invisible; it can be solid and liquid. It can be easily moved, layered up, piled high, laid out, scattered, poured, contained in a vast variety of vessels, and easily attached and removed from many surfaces. A very versatile material, demanding no high technology to be so, thus sugar becomes a very inviting material to use. Specifically speaking I use white granulated sugar, or so called ‘normal sugar’. The ‘normal’ has a particular allure: plain, unassuming, humble, widely recognisable and associated. Salt is very similar by nature and value, but it is not at all the same, sugar granules are glassier, more cubular in structure and more irregular, enabling a more varied surface texture. White, and all kinds of off-whites, as a colour, or non-colour if you prefer, has a quality that I resonate with, for reasons that I haven’t yet successfully pinned down, but I am aware of being slightly sceptical, or suspicious of other colours being the work, white being more neutral a tone, leaves the installation perhaps appearing more ambiguous (especially in the White Cube spaces we have become so familiar with) a feature I strive towards. Nearly in all these sugar works, the sugar is not immediately recognised as such, the temporary puzzlement that this evokes in the viewer is crucial in leading them to enquire further. Sugar is associated with a number of social and cultural understandings. As a commodity it is associated with both the luxury and the basic, it is an essential part of our diet, providing energy for the body, yet when over eaten can be the course of bad heath and is very much associated with the current state of obesity. Sweetness and taste, cravings and desires, cursed contemned and controlled, these things all aid my attraction towards sugar as the material for such installation works, but once the materials is found, handled, in the studio, in the making process these associations and uses warrant little further ado. In the final stages of reflection on a work, they reappear somewhat, as such wonderings and associations bemuse me and my audience. The surface quality and resonance with the space is still where my chief interests will reside. _______________________________________________________________________ Sugar Room 1. |
Window On Talent (WOT) Exhibitions.
With Rachael Thomas.
Curated by Becky Campbell.
a’ November 2011
Rachael Thomas and Rachel Charter have been collaborating together for over a year, sharing an interest in mundane materials, lo-fi processes and site responsive installations. 13.11.10, shown at The WOT, takes the form of a large, high hung drapery, composed of oil paint, flour and sugar applied directly onto sheets of tin foil. The work rests on the window ledge with an assortment of soap sediments and sugar coated objects.
The simple materials and plain form combine to create a work that not only takes into consideration the window’s architectural characteristics, but also draws upon the window as a space to promote commodities. Although non-functional and fragile, the everyday domestic materials offer connotations of desirable fabrics and cosmetics, with the title referencing a specific time of happening or an important appointment.
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Poised and Strangely Contorted
An exhibition by six artists whose work questions the relevance of the everyday materials and objects they transform through repetition, re-arrangement, re-working or the creation of tensions.
Becky Campbell. Rachel Charter. Grazyna Dobrzelecka. Lara MacLeod.
Emma O'Sullivan. Laura Sutherland
The WOT, Central Lending Library, George IV Bridge/Victoria Street, Edinburgh
24th May - 20th June
http://ecawot.blogspot.com
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Soap Sediment. (Exhibition card) It’s easy to become lost in the mundane motions of the every day and hard to see the beauty in some simple details of life. The motivation for this work lies in the ability that we all have to move, jolt or sway one another into seeing something out of the ordinary, however small it may be. |
