commentary and symbolic totem. Her taxidermied sculptures appeal to the literary genre of magic realism, in which ‘reality’ is punctured with fantastical events, revealing meanings more profound that naturalism could hope to do. Sokhanvari points to the use of the form as a method by which artists have been able to “create an open-ended narrative to promote or resist a totalitarian political system”.
"Visual metaphors abound in her work that deals implicitly with the Iranian state. The title Moje Sabz speaks to the ‘Green Movement’ uprising of 2009, in which violent protesters’ demonstrations lead to the annulment of a fraudulent "election result.
Saatchi Gallery
© Natasha Hoare, 2015
Maha Malluh | Food for Though
Maha Malluh | Food for though
"Living and working in Saudi Arabia, artist Maha Malluh’s work centres upon the impact of globalisation and consumer culture within her nation. “My inspiration for art comes from my country, a land of contrasting images and ideas. Good art… forces you to pause, to contemplate and think harder about
your surroundings.” Her sculptures are assemblages of objects found in junk shops and flea markets, their decrepit state speaking volumes of the culture
that once valued but has now discarded them. Food for Thought – Al-Muallaqat is composed of aluminium cooking pots used traditionally throughout the Arab world. The title Al- Muallaqat links the installation to pre-Islamic 6th century Suspended Odes or Hanging Poems traditionally hung in Mecca. What poetry then do these pots contain? And of what lives and stories could they sing? "
your surroundings.” Her sculptures are assemblages of objects found in junk shops and flea markets, their decrepit state speaking volumes of the culture
that once valued but has now discarded them. Food for Thought – Al-Muallaqat is composed of aluminium cooking pots used traditionally throughout the Arab world. The title Al- Muallaqat links the installation to pre-Islamic 6th century Suspended Odes or Hanging Poems traditionally hung in Mecca. What poetry then do these pots contain? And of what lives and stories could they sing? "
Alice Anderson
Alice Anderson
Alice Anderson
"How do we remember? What is the shifting relevance of the physical world in a society increasingly part of a digital one? Alice Anderson meditates upon the loss of the tangible, weaving items in copper threads to create ‘recorded objects’, ossifying the formal qualities of the things that lie disregarded around us through a ritualistic process. The material of copper speaks to the computational world that it has enabled through its transference of energy and information, Anderson also relates it to the neural transmission of information across our own organism, a gesture of connection and communication that is borne out in the very process of her artwork’s process which is sometimes undertaken by teams of volunteers."
Mia Feuer | Jerusalem Donkey
"Jerusalem Donkey is the result of a series of workshops with Palestinian children. Feuer observed that at various roadblocks in the region it was forbidden for Palestinians to drive motor vehicles. To get around these draconian rules locals used donkeys. The sculpture is an homage to these creatures. Incredibly in 2006 a sinkhole opened up beneath the artist’s storage, swallowing over 60 of the sculptures, the one on display here is a re-creation."
Jelena Bulajic | Alise Lange
"She herself is unable to pinpoint the criteria for her selection: It may be that I am attracted to the human ‘map’ contained within a face, and the layers of its skin – a bodily margin that bridges the distance between the inner and the outer."
mortified at the hands of both smugglers and destination states."
© Natasha Hoare, 2015
Julia Wachtel
Julia Wachtel
Julia Wachtel | Champagne Life
"Champagne Life, the eponymous title of the exhibition itself, inverts an image of Kanye West and Kim Kardashian, with the poorly copied plastic sculpture of Minnie Mouse. The pathos of the latter’s pathetic construction provides what the artist terms “a place of interiority” which is both “intimate and vulnerable” in stark contrast to the pure “exteriority” of Kim Kardashian, a figure who manipulates the public eye and spectre of fame so dexterously as to have “broken the Internet.” The title itself is drawn from a song by R&B artist Ne-Yo, who sings of a life “where dreams and reality are one in the same”. This paradoxical attempt to converge the fantastical with the real is the epitome of a culture driven by the lust for celebrity, and the figure of champagne as a relatively affordable signification of luxury life, the highest aspiration and emptiest cipher."
Seung Ah Paik | Autolandscape
"Large raw canvases drape from floor to ceiling upon which monumental expanses of flesh are rendered. With this ensemble of cracked heels, bud nipples, broad hands, and mess of limbs, artist Seung Ah Paik offers a poignant and uniquely truthful depiction of her relationship to her own flesh."
Stephanie Quayle | Two Cows
Stephanie Quayle | Two Cows
"Primitivistic, essential and elemental; the sculptures of Stephanie Quayle link man to nature, animal to human, through the organic material of clay itself.
Working on a farm, the relationship that lies between beast, both domestic and wild, and human is of central concern; “I’m interested in how much we align or distance ourselves from them – how they reflect, question and return our gaze. How they see into our souls and connect us to the natural world and force of nature inherent within.”
Working on a farm, the relationship that lies between beast, both domestic and wild, and human is of central concern; “I’m interested in how much we align or distance ourselves from them – how they reflect, question and return our gaze. How they see into our souls and connect us to the natural world and force of nature inherent within.”
Stephanie Quayle | Lion Man
"The process of sculpting each creature takes on a quasi-spiritual aspect in Quayle’s practice, resulting from a long process of sketching in front of her animal subject, and formed through layering up clay in a rapid process. “I want the fastest most direct, most subconscious way to work, vigorous and direct, the clay becomes inhabited. As old as mankind and coming directly from the ground, the clay seems to retain its primitive sense of earth, soil, mud and connection to the land.” Rendered at life scale, their presence in the gallery space is muscular and impressive, reanimating a sense of shared connection between living matter, an extra lingual sensation that has been lost in the progressive severing of the link between ourselves and nature rendered through technological process and the prevalence of the urban environment. "
Saatchi Gallery
© Natasha Hoare, 2015
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