In 'The Party', a 1968 comedy starring Peter Sellers as a well-meaning , but hapless Indian actor who is accidentally invited to a lavish Hollywood party, the minimal plot revolves around Sellers' character's social ineptitude and cultural otherness, the effect of which sets in motion a sequence of events leading to the party degenerating into total chaos. The climax of this chaos is a scene in which a foam of soap bubbles grows and grows until all guests are absorbed into its nebulous mess.

I always think about that scene when I see a certain style of amorphous painting or sculpture, and I try to work out the politics behind casting Sellers (in deep brown make-up) as an outsider who somehow breaches the castle walls and brings with him degeneracy, disorder and mess. What is particular about this juxtaposition in the film is that it takes place in the domestic interior: the threat of the other has been brought intentionally into the home.

The desire to experience exoticism, strangeness and foreignness through encountering objects within a conventional framework is at the root of how we have come, through the Kunstkammer and then through the museum, to experience works of art. In my work I try to tease out that desire, to evoke the balance between order and disorder as well as the frameworks of display and decoration that go hand in hand to civilize unknowable objects.

^ Robin Footitt
The Wire
2008
Oil on wood

The objects I make or use within my practice are best described not as ‘found’ objects but rather ‘selected’ objects. Things like frisbees, hot air balloons, lolly sticks, paper clips, spinning tops or football cones are not discoveries stumbled across whilst engaging in an activity ‘outside’ of the creative process. I hunt them down and select them from within a system of objects, chosen with an instinct for formal detail and visual presence. The act of sandwiching frisbees between walnut wood, or twisting coloured paperclips around a stick ask questions such as, what is the most subtle way of transforming something? The objects I carefully select are not only transformed but also celebrated appearing optimistic and sometimes futuristic, strange or unknown. The work titled ‘Fab Landing’ becomes a bollard in an Imagined city, perhaps indicating the colour of different train lines within the transport system. Objects speak to us, if we speak to them.

Rose Gibbs' work is a satirical take on the patriarchal tradition of art making. In her work the phallic symbol stands in for itself, the women are propped up against what would be tree trunks but in this instance are phalluses, the landscape in which they find themselves is male, albeit a little limp. It is a humorous look at gender relations.

Ghazvin, Iran, 1969

Ogni volta che la mia anima è immersa nella contemplazione, ogni frammento di essa si trasforma in una sorgente di misteri. Ogni goccia presa dall'oceano della mia anima si manifesta in un altro oceano. I dipinti di Alireza Jodey sono opere che non possono essere osservate superficialmente senza soffermarsi con attenzione. Ogni angolo del dipinto è pieno di complessi simboli e allegorie. La concentrazione di Jodey sul reale e sui confini immaginari, e la loro inclusione nel lavoro, permettono allo spettatore di avere la propria interpretazione personale e la propria descrizione specifica. I misteri dell'opera immergono lo spettatore in una ricerca senza fine a volte aspra. Tuttavia nel mezzo dell'oscurità e dell'amarezza,
la luce, emessa da fessure nella forma di superfici o linee colorate, rende possibile un viaggio mitologico (simile a quello di Ardaviraaf-Nameh descritto nell'antico libro di Pahlavi) nel purgatorio o all'inferno di un mondo ristretto, confinato all'interno della cornice. Jodey ha bisogno di molto tempo per creare il labirinto dei suoi lavori. Può lavorare ore e ore, su uno dei suoi dipinti per svelarne i misteri o, per aggiungere un nuovo mistero in un altro lavoro; oppure, libero da queste complessità allegoriche, può occuparsi di questioni contemplative e pratiche, bilanciando e coordinando gli elementi che compongono le sue opere d'arte di grandi e piccole dimensioni. La mitologia, i simboli religiosi, gli antichi dipinti iraniani (le stampe del periodo Qajar), la calligrafia, i testi classici, così come la satira nerasullo stato del mondo d'oggi, da piccole goccediventano uno tsunami artistico nella mentefantasiosa di Jodey. Quando Jodey espone i suoi quadri allontana dai lavori la sua interpretazione personale. Anche i suoi dipinti, come creature indipendenti sotto lo sguardo dello spettatore che vede l'arte a suo modo, diventano vivi ed entrano in una nuova fase della loro vita

These three new sculptural works by Lucy May are part of a recent series, collectively titled by the artist as False Paradise and Suburban Baroque. The works merge the obscene luxuriance of the Baroque with the cheap ostentation of contemporary mass-produced accessories. They are a celebration of cheapness, the sickly sweet, and the synthetic, while being firmly rooted in the realm of the commemorative and the historical.   Anatomical references are evident in the use of wax; metamorphic and visceral forms twist, coil and stretch around the body of the works. Gaudy false flowers and fruit and shredded plastic burst forth from these distended outcrops of wax, reminscent of a sumptuous still life.   The typically English method of pebble-dashing, commonly used to protect the outside of buildings, is brought into May's sculptural language as a purely decorative device. Shimmering layers of pearlescent paint transform this domestic finish, elevating it from it's everyday origins.   With these works May creates a fantastical world of low-grade decadence, defying good taste and revelling in the deceptive seductiveness of the bargain bin. Deeply influenced by cross-cultural hybridity and personal memory, the works function as makeshift sites of emotional reverie.

Scultrice Ricerca l’immagine e il contenuto di una nuova scultura attraverso l’uso di materiali eterogenei Quali: tela, cemento, parole, ritratti in posa o no, legno, movimenti, rumori o atteggiamenti… Espone a Bergamo, Parigi, Bologna, Berlino, Milano, Bilbao, Brescia, Padova, Los Angeles, Roma. Nel 1978 collabora al quotidiano “Il Giorno” con strisce di satira politica. Nel 1981 segnalazione catalogo Bolaffi n.4 della scultura. Nel 1983 cin il gruppo “Macchina o/scaena” e con M Fabbri realizza lo spettacolo “CONTENUTI”: teatro della pittura di cui è l’autore. Nel 1984 con M. Fabbri fonda il gruppo “Società di Fatto” e mette in scena il suo spettacolo “Argomenti”. Nel 1993 espone “sognava sempre il soffitto bianco” presso l’Auditorium di Piazza delle Libertà Bergamo Nel 1994 presenta i Santi presso il Chiostro minore di Sant. Agostino di Bergamo . Nel 1995 “95 Storie come fosse ora” all’Università di Bergamo Facoltà di lingue e alla galleria Casati. Ancora in quegl’ anni prepara una personale “tutti usati” presso Futura galleria a cura di Elio Grazioli, Bergamo Nel 1996 “Storie “ galleria Loft , Valdagno

The objects that made up the collections of the first museums were part of an artistic production that was a ‘daily art’, a production of artefacts for ceremony, ritual where art and life co-dependent. These objects which are now described and exotic or other rather than just art and the histories and environments that surround and perpetuate this mode of viewing are replicated within the fictions of my practice so that it contains an conversation about the proximity of pure and applied art. The idea of function and use, to what end is the production of art once it has been separated from its root in ‘daily art’. What are we participating in when we continue to create objects under the autonomous heading of sculpture.

I am obsessively involved in sculpture because it allows me to understand the world while touching it. It expands ideas and questions and allows me to see into spaces, which normally remain closed when they are only made in words. I could make this statement a hundred times better for you in the workshop than on paper. However my engagement with the physical does not alienate me from a more conceptual and critical framework of thinking. I also enjoy the rigour and research of theoretical application

My work is tugged between sculptural object and performative action. I want the work to be both emotionally and intellectually powerful and therefore I test it by experimenting in sound, video and workshop materials. Not all the sensibilities in my work are yet consciously understood for example I recognise some depth of image that seems associated with my Swedish ancestry.