Efface: Trace
17 May – 2 July 2023
Artists’ statement
Efface: Trace is a response to the ever-changing nature of Gallery DODO’s architectural qualities by Laura Porter and Sharon Wylde. Each of the artists incorporates their own interests in materiality, un-making and re-making, and the disruption of formal structures, while challenging the stable, and not so stable, structures around us.
Sharon’s work is the result of a submersion in the narrative of place and a submission to the impact of architectural form on the body; she taps into instances of change and traces of function, pinpointing moments that might go unnoticed. Using a combination of rigid and malleable materials, she creates objects that act as casual extensions and props that fold into the space and interact with its material nature.
Laura’s practice systematically breaks down old items of clothing, which she re-forms into solid structures, using grids as a way to reference the warp and the weft of the weave that underpins the construction of these garments. Using clothing as a material from which to build with -a material that carries with it cyclical histories of land, labour, consumer and waste- her practice is grounded in the traditions of craft and textiles, pushing back against an automated, digitised world and the hierarchies of labour and material. Instead, value is placed in slower, low-tech processes performed by the body.
Gallery DODO 