Sara MacKillop | Various Dimensions
15 Jan - 20 Feb 2010
12 exercise books (with table), 2009
String pieces, 2009
String pieces, 2009
Some compositions from stationary catalogues, 2009
Reels, 2009
Tags, 2009
Picture Frame, 2009
Little interventions – this is the method Sara MacKillop applies to everyday objects. With the most minimal of means, she draws our attention to overlooked forms and functions. Her materials are industrially manufactured commodities: packing materials, papers, office supplies. In a staged scenario that often only manifests itself in the details, the unexpected qualities of things are revealed.
Sheets of differently-ruled pieces of paper are recombined, stapled together and grouped on a table. The subtle intervention makes the inconsistency of the ruling seem significant - patterns take on a dynamic of their own, remerge in slightly offset rhythms. Packing tape-bound rolls of paper are draped on the ground in various states of unrolled; the once uniform nature of the spools now varied by the different volumes. This only faintly manipulated Objets Trouvés is placed across from a series of four pictures showing scanned excerpts from a technical catalogue. The items are photographed in carefully selected arrangements, are meant to show the delaminated packing materials in the best possible light. For her part, MacKillop manipulates the presentation by isolating certain parts and allowing the backsides of the pages to show through.
MacKillop’s experiments with form are neither ironic nor meant in a depreciative way with regard to her chosen materials. Instead, they stem rather from a sincere interest in the details of our surrounding world. Focus is pulled to often overlooked objects seen under a new set of preconditions. At once serious and playful, her work uses a language that draws on the minimalist and conceptual art traditions without burdening itself with an all too heavy vocabulary.
Sara MacKillop was born in Bromley, Great Britain in 1973 and studied at the Royal College of Art in London and at Leeds University. In recent years her work has been shown in solo and group exhibitions in Great Britain, Ireland and Canada, including projects at the Leicester City Art Gallery and the International Project Space in Birmingham (both in 2008), as well as a solo exhibition at the Wilkinson Gallery in London. Clages gallery presents MacKillop’s second solo exhibition in Germany.
Friederike Gratz
Sheets of differently-ruled pieces of paper are recombined, stapled together and grouped on a table. The subtle intervention makes the inconsistency of the ruling seem significant - patterns take on a dynamic of their own, remerge in slightly offset rhythms. Packing tape-bound rolls of paper are draped on the ground in various states of unrolled; the once uniform nature of the spools now varied by the different volumes. This only faintly manipulated Objets Trouvés is placed across from a series of four pictures showing scanned excerpts from a technical catalogue. The items are photographed in carefully selected arrangements, are meant to show the delaminated packing materials in the best possible light. For her part, MacKillop manipulates the presentation by isolating certain parts and allowing the backsides of the pages to show through.
MacKillop’s experiments with form are neither ironic nor meant in a depreciative way with regard to her chosen materials. Instead, they stem rather from a sincere interest in the details of our surrounding world. Focus is pulled to often overlooked objects seen under a new set of preconditions. At once serious and playful, her work uses a language that draws on the minimalist and conceptual art traditions without burdening itself with an all too heavy vocabulary.
Sara MacKillop was born in Bromley, Great Britain in 1973 and studied at the Royal College of Art in London and at Leeds University. In recent years her work has been shown in solo and group exhibitions in Great Britain, Ireland and Canada, including projects at the Leicester City Art Gallery and the International Project Space in Birmingham (both in 2008), as well as a solo exhibition at the Wilkinson Gallery in London. Clages gallery presents MacKillop’s second solo exhibition in Germany.
Friederike Gratz