A Cloth Over a Birdcage
Annalaura Palma, Elin Karlsson
14 May – 26 June 2022
‘A Cloth Over a Birdcage’ is a series of collages by Annalaura Palma that generously lends its name to this exhibition. We met one evening in a busy café. ‘I have trouble with happiness’ she said then looked down at the table. I can’t remember if she then brushed her fringe to the side or took a sip of tea. But I completely recognised the trouble she was speaking of, so I scribbled it down without taking my eyes from the collages.
Annalaura looks for textures in the rhythm of shape and colour when making these works. Not to communicate an idea, but to speak about feeling. In the work she imagines emotions felt, only visually. Using scalpel, glue and paper, she works in the soft glow of her room, the window loosely draped with a cloth.
Working with her arrested sculptures it is precisely trouble that Elin Karlsson remembers. She says: ‘I need to see it from all angles’ Elin continues: ‘you can’t get in and around stuff in a photograph.’ Yet, she wants to create something which seems like a stilled moment. In these works, humour, sadness and sometimes messiness are suspended, all together, transforming the lingering memories in a process that starts to look like a way to work with, but also through, the trouble. Jakob Kroon Gallery
A Cloth Over a Birdcage is the second exhibition in Gallery DODO’s current programme which invites artists, who have previously set-up and run temporary exhibition spaces in Brighton or the surrounding area, to each curate/co-curate a show. The artists Elin Karlsson and Andy Venner established the Jakob Kroon Gallery, hosting numerous shows in their flat from 2016-20.
Although it sounds like an exotic globe-trotting commercial gallery, the Jakob Kroon Gallery received its name from the doorbell label left by the previous occupant of Elin and Andy’s one-bedroom sublet flat in Stockholm. The name stuck and travelled with them to Worthing, where, in their new flat, the gallery continued intermittently before closing.
The commitment needed to convert a domestic space into a gallery, especially one based on the white cube model, is extraordinary. On opening their gallery to the public each weekend, furniture had to be removed and stored, personal space given up, and in the case of their flat in Worthing, an internal door removed. Behind the calm and ordered veneer of each exhibition at the Jakob Kroon Gallery was a domestic upheaval.
Gallery DODO would like to express its gratitude to the artists, Annalaura and Elin, and the Jakob Kroon Gallery, for their generosity and dedication in making this exhibition possible. Gallery DODO
Gallery DODO 