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Design & Democracy

Karla Black

  • Source: The List (Issue 621)
  • Date: 22 January 2009
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Karla Black

The work of the Glasgow-based artist, who has several international solo shows and a place in last year’s Art Now exhibition at Tate Britain under her belt, is generating justifiable buzz at present. Her solo exhibition at Mary Mary features sculptures created from found household ingredients such as body moisturising cream, chalk dust, cotton wool, Sellotape, paint, eggshells and broken glass.

Mary Mary, Glasgow, until Sat 14 Feb.

More: Visual art, Previews (Visual art), Karla Black, Sculpture

Comments

1. parkguy61, Glasgow – 22 January 2009, 3:27pmReport

Much hype has surrounded Karla Black over the past few years and she has had critical acclaim both in Britain and Europe.

The installation at Mary Mary inhabits both the gallery spaces. The work has been all the more challenging as Karla has exhibited there before. The scent of hand cream assails your nostrils on entry and the surface of the floor has been retextured using coloured petroleum jelly spattered with papaya and mango hand cream, adding vivid orange to the glacial white of the jelly. A comment on her own femininity, feminism, feminine?

In the other room the audiences space is restricted by filaments of sticky tape, more a mental barrier as a real one. Here a delicacy of chalk dust has fallen on the floor like snow, with piles of yellow contrasted against the white like sunbeams fallen to earth.

Delicate, delightful, and ephemeral.

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