GALLERIES I AND II
22 April - 3 June 2006

I thought I was the audience then I looked at you
Populating Gallery II is an array of kitsch household figurines supported by metal armatures and seductively coloured reflective surfaces. On a closer inspection however, the sugary prettiness of the installation is undermined by the realisation that each of the ornaments has been carefully altered, 'cosseted in isolating balls of suffocating prettiness' with decorative materials such as bells and pomanders, and small materials often found in craft shops. Mostly these additions occur on the head or eyes of the figurines, making it impossible for the figures to return our gaze. This becomes more unsettling when we realise that our own gaze is returned via the reflective surfaces that the figurines sit on, we are confronted with ourselves.
I thought I was the audience then I looked at you is an ongoing installation that Ruth Claxton has embarked on. She finds an enduring interest in the relationship that we have with a world that has become less physical and geographic due to developments like the internet where 'the real world, as a place, is becoming superceeded by a space of information, a virtual, global, digital space, bookmarked not land-marked'. As life in the first world becomes more mediated and dis-located through the connections we use, Claxton questions that mediation, by returning our gaze in a fashion that is both alluring and disturbing to the viewer.

supported by arts council of england

Amy Marletta uses photographs of personal experiences as a starting point for her installation titled Hearts Break All the Rules she has used images taken during time spent in Memphis and New York. This biographical material undergoes a process of selection and reworking through drawings, which are then cut up and reconstructed. Some of these collages continue being developed into sculptural models with the potential to become life size. In Gallery I sections of collage are scaled up creating set-like structures, which allow the viewer to manoeuvre around the stage of work. The imagery is embellished and rewritten, as figurative elements are coupled with pattern and saturated with colour.
This process may appear haphazard, however its basis in our interpretations of people and things and the memory of these has an unerring precision. People change at every moment, our relationships change at every moment and our recollections of these are continually shifting as we ourselves change. Rather than grasp a moment and fix this moment frozen, crystallized, Marletta accepts the mutability of experience and builds this into the process of her work. Outcomes are not the be all and end all of her practice but arise as a result of the process, there is almost a negotiation between her lived experiences, the relationships that inhabit them and the materials that are used in the construction of the work.