Alison Lowry's "Captive," a series on the brain as construct and constraint, just opened at S12, the artist-run workshop and gallery space in Bergen, Norway. Lowry's work is an ever-developing exploration of memory, and her series follows up on "A place for Everything/Everything in its place," her solo show at the Ebeltoft Museum in January. The artist's previous series will also be on display with her new works, as she continues a conversation about what the past does for us, how it carries us and vice-versa. The focus in her sculptures and installations is the body's varying ways of remembering, including the emotional and physical, the personal and collective.
Having researched Freud's Repetition Compulsion theory during her April 2014 residency at Corning Museum of Glass, her current series addresses being imprisoned by the past, where the brain compels the mind to repeatedly re-live a traumatic event.
Everything's Rosie (2014) and Home Sweet Home (2014) (see below), are two works from her earlier series, pate de verre pieces that emphasize delicate folds of the brain, in varying molds that liken the organ as other objects that house, a nourishing pot from which flowers grow, an enveloping bird's nest. This lead to her next particular interest in traumatic memories.
Paralleling some of the questions in the former works, Lowry moved toward the direction of the brain as a concrete environment where one is "contained," having
explored memory almost as a tangible subject, from a scientific point of view. She is currently collaborating with Tony Gee, a Professor of PET Chemistry at the
Kings College London, to push her ideas into new territory.
IF YOU GO:
"Contained"
Alison Lowry
Through September 20th, 2015
S12 Glass Gallery
Sparebanksgaten 4A, 5017
Bergen, Norway
Website: http://www.s12.no/
E-Mail: bj@s12.no
Tel.: +47 911 75 303