Exhibits,

Lauren Burrow Lose the Language

Opening: Wednesday 2 September, 6-8pm Dates: 2 – 19 September 2015

‘Lose the Language’, which comes from a beautiful sign I once saw at a child friendly pub that said: Keep the Passion, Lose the Language. A cheap A4 laminated print, this so perfectly exemplified the laconic attitude. Such an attitude – an excision of reservation in “speech” – can be political (when it has to do with gendered anxiety around asserting any kind of authority).

‘Lose the language’, and Wtf Do We Talk About When We Talk About Sculpture?

A series of ceramic shelves are formed from strips of clay that are slept on top of, made in excess of the body’s basal energy. The “shelves” are refigured as “selves” by a string of individual titles cumulatively recounting written exchanges mined from personal messages.

At the opening will be an ice sculpture. Emblematic of extravagant self-exhaustion and celebrated loss, the form will melt across the evening. The ice, made with water siphoned from the bowels of public male toilets, encapsulates shards of shattered car windows collected from public carparks; appropriating the transgressive ontological labour of anonymous bodies. The affect of stealing is stolen.

The common thread between the disparate/desperate works in this exhibition lies in their figuration of “going to pieces” as a recourse to action. Each sculpture proposes distanced and ambivalent bodies, while remaining nevertheless very close.

Lauren Burrow is an artist based in Melbourne. She recently did a residency at the Physics Room in Christchurch, contributed to Un Magazine 9.1 and 9.2, and established Pansy (http://p-a-n-s-y.org), a small gallery operating from the backyard of her home.