GLOAM Presents: to rest amongst the blades,
with Abi Charlesworth
Curated by Thomas Griffiths
A two-part solo exhibition for which we are delighted to be in partnership with Haarlem Artspace where the second iteration will be taking place in May.
Responding to a body of ongoing text, poetically exploring notions of depression via traces in the body through landscape and archaeology. A realisation of a journey emerges out of a crevasse where planes of memories, objects and emotions are passed through.
Sedimentary layers unfold a personal narrative, encoded with fossils and absent figures. Ceramic and cast fragments hold the petrified remains of object encounters. Artificial fossils show a preoccupation with a dystopian future, concerned with a debris ridden landscape where items hold no value.
Charlesworth is asking what physical traces will we leave behind and what traces we leave on each other. Abstracted archaeological aids are used to hold excavated sculptures, pulled from her inner depths. Held in place, they are carefully displayed as an open wound in the dissection of grief.
The installation draws from a body of research that is constantly changing and responding to the environment it finds itself within, the exhibition will evolve across the two spaces. Acting as echoes - similar yet distinct - they are formed by the landscape that shapes them. In moments of stillness where the echo can settle and resound. An outlet to a constant pulse within the work.
GLOAM's industrial past will evoke a darker element from research that is reflected in the install. Ambient light casts shadows as the dust settles.
Bio:
Abi Charlesworth’s work surrounds the ideas of object debris and mutation. In transforming the object through materials she alters the functionality and displaces the object into a new landscape. As fictionalised objects, they reference the original form before deteriorating and shedding the old objects skin. Anew and functionless they roam between reality and fiction searching for shelter.
Charlesworth’s sculptural language is deeply rooted in peripheral object encounters where she is drawn to out of place and partial objects. As a dialogue between herself and the object she converses with the form, material and scale to unfold the objects narrative. Her more recent work explores the boundaries of traces, archaeology and resonance. In researching these subjects she is interested in the tension that can be held between objects and landscape.
www.abicharlesworth.co.uk / @abi.charlesworth
Supported by:
Haarlem Artspace
Kristian Day
Playing Fields
The Visual Artist and Craft Maker Awards (VACMA)
Henry Moore Grants
Sheffield City Council
