Amba Sayal-Bennett: The Box

1 Dec 2017-20 Jan 2018

Overview

Pippy Houldsworth Gallery is pleased to present a new work in The Box by young British artist Amba Sayal-Bennett.

The work’s title, Yutu, refers to an unmanned lunar rover that formed part of the Chinese mission to reach the moon’s surface in 2013. Retro-futuristic in style, the sculpture is characterised by a kitsch, sci-fi quality that is redolent of the defunct utopia depicted in Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey.

Sayal-Bennett’s sculptures and assemblages destabilise common conventions of communication. Salvaging symbols and signs embedded into the fabric of everyday life, the artist reformulates them as lexical units within her work. Sayal-Bennett unpicks the make-up of the urban landscape, taking inspiration from road markings, discarded objects and architectural structures. She then captures the essence of these visual stimuli by reducing them to their most rudimentary form, using the resultant shapes and colours to inform the construction of her work.