We all know what a real sculpture is: a sleek, three-dimensional form consisting of clean lines and pure shapes. A real sculpture is monumental, made from large, hard industrial materials. It certainly doesn’t make you think about soft things, like memories of your own life, or ways of feeling less alone in the world.
So what the hell is going on in this exhibition?
Heather Rule gets this all wrong by using combinations of ceramic and paper materials to create embodied forms that appear ephemeral and changeable. With the impermanent and familiar materiality of brown paper, the heads of these sculptures—including depictions of dentures, a rudimentary house form, and a pack of Du Maurier Lights, among others—evoke the fragmentary precision of certain persistent memories, equally vulnerable to change over time. Arms extend from their more corporeal ceramic pedestals, sometimes reaching out or gesturing to one another as if they are communicating, or at least keeping each other company. Together they form a collection of images in conversation, drawing out connections between seemingly disparate parts. There is a sort of tenderness and care to these objects. Now I am thinking, feeling, reflecting. No, this is not how this is supposed to go.
Then there are Jessica Campbell’s decorative objects on various shelves and plinths all made from collaged carpet. The first glaring issue with these sculptures is, of course, that they are missing a dimension. This missing axis is disguised by a sort of fool’s trompe l’oeil effect, where often incongruent, skewed views are rendered two-dimensionally, setting up different perspectives to support Man Cave decorations, statues for the Rec Room, and other pieces of decor that might be well suited to “a room of one’s own.” The titles of Campbell’s works (like Alcyoneus (Fighting my Dad about Climate Change)) allude to anecdotal histories that provide entry points to talk about bigger concerns and questions, working in tandem with the similarly relatable carpeting. Many of them are quite funny. Now I am laughing. What the hell is going on?
If you’re looking for an exhibition that subscribes to a hierarchy of material (so that you can easily tell what is important), you should look elsewhere. Here you will unfortunately be limited to the captivating idiosyncratic characteristics of handcrafted objects that use both natural and man-made, household materials, each assembling around their own systems of language. In the case of Rule’s sculptures, this comprises a highly personal vocabulary of resonant images that tell stories that, while recognizable, are not entirely legible to outsiders. In the case of Campbell’s wall works, the language is iconographic and pictorial, and equally rich with personal and historical detail.
For real sculpture fans, this is one you’ll have to see to believe.
– Bridget Moser