Beth Collar : SERIOUSLY

21 Apr-27 May 2017

Overview

Seriously is an exhibition of new work by Beth Collar for the Mark Tanner Sculpture Award 2016/17 at Standpoint Gallery. Drawn from an ongoing exploration of the furrowed brow as a gendered representation of authoritative thought, this show takes the form of an otherworldly landscape of objects, placed as if either rising from or sinking into the gallery floor. Taking the forehead as their origin these bodily manifestations of thinking are formed through a process of making in which intuition, incoherence and non-knowledge resist the structures of authority in art production. Sitting on a dimly lit floor, the objects occupy multiple dimensions: are they slowly emerging from a swamp, crowning, like the forehead of Martin Sheen in Apocalypse Now? Or are they half-excavated armour, helmets, fleshed out relics? Or organic lumps; beetles, slugs, octopuses? They illustrate an archaeological sequence that traces the evolution and material culture of an alternative, parallel humanoid from an imagined past into a possible future.