October Gallery is delighted to present the second solo exhibition of LR Vandy, following last year’s display of her large-scale installation, Dancing in Time: The Ties That Bind Us, a five-meter-high rope sculpture commissioned for the International Slavery Museum’s Martin Luther King celebrations at Liverpool’s Canning Dock waterfront. Twist features a new series of sculptures created from a variety of ropes and other materials; one large-scale rope work, several smaller rope sculptures, a collection of photographic prints and further new works from the artist’s signature Hull series.
In 2022, Vandy relocated her studio to a site adjacent to the Ropery at Chatham Historic Dock Yard – an establishment which has preserved traditional rope-making, still using original machinery from the 19th century, of which the oldest dates back to 1811. This led the artist to explore the matter and properties of rope, as she began to delve into the material’s historical importance and symbolic implications. Used, from ancient times, in constructions of all kinds, rope became essential to the burgeoning maritime industry, thereby becoming inextricably involved in the building of empires and the colonial history of slavery. By binding, sewing and manipulating her materials, Vandy celebrates rope’s versatility while still alluding to and playfully subverting its many historical associations.
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