Laura Aldridge
09 Mar - 03 Apr 2010
LAURA ALDRIDGE
Cats Are Not Important
09 March - 03 April 2010
Open Tuesday-Saturday 11am-5pm
Aldridge's current body of work is an attempt to draw out relationships of the form of thought and feeling as she recognises them in external sources and processes of making. Loosely composed hanging fabric works, repeated arrangements of tied knot sculptures and a collection of images and objects sit in a field of layers, parts and fragments.
A shift in feeling, attitude and approach to thought may be experienced through a softness, a precarious faith in allowing oneself. The production of this experience attests to a double bind between self and thought, instances of which may be seen in the relations of objects produced. Small bits of dried fruit and pot pouri form a figure against a ground of hanging fabric, or are held inbetween semi transparent sheets of organza. Lengths of string become reminiscent of simple clear gesture, repeated. The fabric ground is sewn in a loop so it may be pulled around its metal hanging bracket, like hand towels in a bathroom dispenser, seen anew, both sides payed attention to. Quickly and calmly tying knots with tubes of fabric filled with plaster, letting them take their own casual form, as an activity to do again and again. When grouped on a wall they become like phrases or tenses.
In an arrangement of images on a low plinth the round opening of a cave is seen from above looking down into it and from within looking out of it. Where previous works have presented a hole cut into large curtains the size of gallery walls presenting a tension between perceptual and bodily penetration, the hole is here re-addressed in a perceptual plane of images looked down on to. Another image shows a woman placing her fingers in her mouth, feeling the point between inside and out, the image also figuring the scene of a thing (finger) put in a hole or place for it (mouth). Slightly above the plane of the table round fruits placed in round jars of water float just at hand's reach, a thing fitted into a container.
Engraved metal cutouts of cats being cradled and petted hung on the gallery walls, show a similar moment of an object other to oneself being touched. Only the arms are shown, the bit part of the body doing the touching, seen as fragment. But also the cat as fragment, literally cut out, as figure with no ground. As moment of apprehension the cat becomes thing which is the object of affection but also thing as extension of the hand. A thing reached out to, needed but not important, the viewing of a surrogate activity.
Aldridge's installation created in Transmission Gallery re-presents the scene of this relationship to making, opens it out in its differing moments and re-approaches.
Laura Aldridge lives and works in Glasgow
Cats Are Not Important
09 March - 03 April 2010
Open Tuesday-Saturday 11am-5pm
Aldridge's current body of work is an attempt to draw out relationships of the form of thought and feeling as she recognises them in external sources and processes of making. Loosely composed hanging fabric works, repeated arrangements of tied knot sculptures and a collection of images and objects sit in a field of layers, parts and fragments.
A shift in feeling, attitude and approach to thought may be experienced through a softness, a precarious faith in allowing oneself. The production of this experience attests to a double bind between self and thought, instances of which may be seen in the relations of objects produced. Small bits of dried fruit and pot pouri form a figure against a ground of hanging fabric, or are held inbetween semi transparent sheets of organza. Lengths of string become reminiscent of simple clear gesture, repeated. The fabric ground is sewn in a loop so it may be pulled around its metal hanging bracket, like hand towels in a bathroom dispenser, seen anew, both sides payed attention to. Quickly and calmly tying knots with tubes of fabric filled with plaster, letting them take their own casual form, as an activity to do again and again. When grouped on a wall they become like phrases or tenses.
In an arrangement of images on a low plinth the round opening of a cave is seen from above looking down into it and from within looking out of it. Where previous works have presented a hole cut into large curtains the size of gallery walls presenting a tension between perceptual and bodily penetration, the hole is here re-addressed in a perceptual plane of images looked down on to. Another image shows a woman placing her fingers in her mouth, feeling the point between inside and out, the image also figuring the scene of a thing (finger) put in a hole or place for it (mouth). Slightly above the plane of the table round fruits placed in round jars of water float just at hand's reach, a thing fitted into a container.
Engraved metal cutouts of cats being cradled and petted hung on the gallery walls, show a similar moment of an object other to oneself being touched. Only the arms are shown, the bit part of the body doing the touching, seen as fragment. But also the cat as fragment, literally cut out, as figure with no ground. As moment of apprehension the cat becomes thing which is the object of affection but also thing as extension of the hand. A thing reached out to, needed but not important, the viewing of a surrogate activity.
Aldridge's installation created in Transmission Gallery re-presents the scene of this relationship to making, opens it out in its differing moments and re-approaches.
Laura Aldridge lives and works in Glasgow