Installation view of Vessels, Orbs and Pyrophytic Pods, Zalucky Contemporary, Toronto.
Images courtesy of Zalucky Contemporary.
Vessels, Orbs and Pyrophytic Pods
Three-person exhibtion, Zalucky Contemporary
Toronto, Canada
June 4 – July 2, 2022
Artists Lee Henderson, Laura Hudspith & Liljana Mead Martin perform various forms of alchemy to explore the inner life of things. Their work exalts the inherent mutability of matter, the constant state of becoming that might not always be perceptible to the naked eye. Employing the corrosive power of salt, the destructive energy of fire and the transformative effects of vapour, they attempt to bear witness to the ‘changefulness’ of inanimate objects and how, in that state of flux, new forms of knowing can emerge.
Each artist acts as both author and interloper in their own work. In doing so, they demonstrate what Jane Bennett in Vibrant Matter describes as “the extent to which human being and thinghood overlap, the extent the us and the it slip-slide into each other.”
In an act bordering on the macabre, Laura Hudspith has entombed photographs of herself in transparent resin orbs that reveal only the remnants of the salty brine that has consumed each image beyond all recognition in her triptych of three Animacy Orbs.
Hudspith’s largescale instalaltion work titled en- / un- / -en reflects a meditation on the process of becoming – always in progress, and never quite realized – and is itself a form designed for rituals of healing and reflection, and meditation. Here, boundaries that would delineate interior from exterior seem to dissipate as object and image space fold into each other ad infinitum. Caught amidst a process of fragmentation and transformation, the work is thus an invitation to embody an unbodied state; to unfurl, transmute, and reform; to be naked in the face of possibility and to be unafraid.
At twelve feet in length, the diagrammatic copper system that is en- / un- / -en unfolds itself and draws visitors into a choreography of movement around it. Having been flooded with light, the interior spaces of silicone moulds made for casting the medicinal forms of aloe vera plants, take on a sanguine hue when printed on transparent silk. Abstractions or aberrations of form, the images double as bodily orifice and as portal looking unto, into, out to. Materiality heightens the sense of the osmosing body, each substance porous to the elements: wax to flame, silken images to light, copper to oxygen. Exposed copper has been seeded by the artist’s touch, a residue of care that has initiated a process of elemental transformation. An oxidized skin will form across copper surfaces as the work transforms from art object to body porous to the influence of time.
en- /un- /-en (2020) Half of a larger multimedia installation: Inkjet prints on habotai silk imaging the interior of aloe vera moulds; copper pipe and fittings; moulding and body-casting silicones, cast resin; pigment, beeswax, cotton wicks, flocking fibre. 144 x 33 x 75 inches
Animacy Orbs : One, Two and Three (2022) Medicinal salts (magnesium sulphate) crystallized through photographs of the artist’s body and surroundings taken during moments of illness and printed on habotai silk,; UV-degrading resin; aloe vera juices and dye matter; pigment, acrylic plexi and mirror; copper pipe and fittings. 39 ¼ x 10 ½ x 10 ½ inches
Only half of Hudspith’s en- / un- / -en installation has been inlcuded within Vessels, Orbs and Pyrophytic Pods.
In iterations where the complete installation is on view at 28 x 10 feet, length and width, the work is accompanied by a short poetic text of the same title:
en-
: in : within
: go into or onto : unto
: cover with
: cause to be
: provide with
: so as to cover
: thoroughly
un-
: not : in : non
: opposite of : reverse
: deprive of : remove from the
: release from : free
: extract : bring out of
: cause to cease to be
: completely
-en
: cause : come to be
: cause : come to have
: of