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august 20 - september 6, 2008

Bent Narratives

Chris Wootton

A traditional craft, basket weaving is symbolic of another: storytelling. Wootton brings both into the realm of contemporary art through her woven wire sculptures. In this modern era the wire conjures the mesh of the world wide web and electronic media- tools of storytelling in the 21^st century.

Wootton’s sculptures seek to function as a conduit between the stories in the mind of the artist and those of the viewer:

“There is the narrative going on in my head as I make the work, the narrative of the construction itself and the narrative created in the viewer’s mind. When looking at the pieces, the eye is drawn from one end through to the other, akin to current passing through the wires. A tale may be a self-contained segment of a longer story; so too the wires protruding from each end of the sculptures may suggest links to a larger entity.”

Each work gives the impression of frozen movement, a brief snap of a wider gesture. Viewers are invited to imagine their own narrative, is it an animal,

a futuristic structure or even a swirl of air or water?

belt | flog | hit | punch | whip | tickle

ashlee laing

“These marks are made by the use of hybrid instruments that I have created based upon what people hit each other with.”

 The impetus for Ashlee Laing’s new work is derived from an interest relating to mark making on the body.  These works are experimental in the way in which they are created with reference to gestural abstraction. The psychology behind the works is that of re-enacting the act, and visual outcome, of violence and punishment.

“The works are belted, flogged, hit, punched, whipped, kicked and tickled using aestheticized objects that I have created and have exhibited with the work. It was intended that each work be created using only one of the objects I had made, but whilst working with them the process has developed and hence presented alternative possible outcomes. When working on a painting I use a variety of similar techniques- velocity, puissance- that one may use to mark the body.”

Laing has exhibited in group and solo shows nationally and held a solo exhibition

in Korea.