Blush
A few days ago I made my way to SE17 for a group show based in one of the Aylesbury Estate’s 1970s council towers, and to describe those as brutalist with a capital B would be an undeserved compliment. Luckily you can’t see them from the inside, but that’s not the only reason my day dramatically improved once I’d walked into the gallery.
I say walked in, but I didn’t get far. My stride was immediately interrupted by some fleshy pink blobs. I couldn’t figure out what they were, but they made me feel safe because they blocked the path of the squishy spaghetti balls that looked like they might be able to meander, amoeba-like, around the gallery. As I was about to lean in for a closer look I got distracted by a plastic creature inflating and deflating in the corner.
What are all these things? Are they alive? Possibly. Almost everything has a fleshy, organic appearance, including the metal works. There’s only occasionally something remotely recognisable, like pills. Or shoes — and those have actual tongues! Soft pastels, primarily pink, are everywhere.
I’ve no idea what any of it means, nor do I want to. This isn’t the kind of work I’d want on my walls. In fact, I’m not sure I’d have given any individual item a second look if I had seen them on their own. But all together, its alchemy. Everything looks like it’s in dialogue with everything else. While not obviously pieces of a puzzle, it’s easy enough to imagine all these things rolling around each other, cautiously engaging before an embrace. The combination of colours, shapes and the softness of it all made me feel all warm and fuzzy inside.
I wandered round the room quite a few times, then decided it was best to just step back and take it all in. I couldn’t stop looking and I didn’t want to leave. There’s so much weirdness, yet it all just works. It’s one of those shows that justifies the cliche about something being greater than the sum of it’s parts. Which turned out to be quite apt once I’d finally read the brochure: “Blush celebrates the connections between love and lungs, anguish and intestines, with sculptures on what it feels like to inhabit a body”.
‘Blush’ is at ASC Gallery (@ascgallery) until 02 Sept and includes work from the following artists:
Johanna Bolton — @johanna.bolton
Sandra Lane — @artysandralane
Natasha MacVoy — @natashamacvoy
Giota Papakyriakou — @giotapapakyriakou
Gloria Sulli — @gloria.sulli