Stephen Bishop

Suspended shapes hang from ceiling rafters, projections shine out of the walls and excited viewers mechanically step over and around the almost organic sculptural forms which seem to have blossomed up through the floor – Svein Moxvold’s quarter of a man most disturbingly lies as if chopped and paralysed there. His sides appear raw and as if Svein may return any day to smooth out his moulded shape. Fingers and equipment show themselves in his silhouette, as if ice-cream-scooped out of the clay.

Meanwhile Ralph Dorey’s great shed-like erection towers over the humanesque sleeping shape, wooden scaffolding to the white expanse. His other works include, as my hurried notes inform me: “thing on the floor, like a minotaur”. There’s glue everywhere, as if a wedding cake specialist has created the inedible mountainous layers, or squatters have taken over, brandishing glue guns and miniature toys as their branding marks.

Grafitti artists splattering artificially-flavoured neon foods onto the wooden form, itself a raw and haphazard sculpture. Wannabe iced gems sparkle out of the spatula-ed stratum. Whatever persona has created these iced shapes, they stand formulaic and proud, defying ownership by an auteur. They are purely an expression and experimentation of wood, form, colour and texture.

Bruce Ingram’s experimentations, however, are of a more material and found-object style-ee. Pine cone candles, what appears again to be icing, shattered wax smothering towers of rugs and a giant religious symbol are all lit from beneath to create an eerie, tacky ambience. Alike to wandering through an intricately-stacked maze, these tribal towers mirror a scene of tall fish tanks. Are the all-at-once ancient and fancy-dress-shop-bought faces mocking the modern? The “civilised”?

                                                                  Oliver Macdonald

The collection of found objects mixed with the old statuesque animals and paper masks depicting closed eyes, crying eyes, the eyes of a creepy lurking statue from an old crumbling building, could hint at the commodification of the ancient and beautiful as it slowly erodes and is exploited.

One black hand holds a black candle in an ominous implication of everything we may read into “black”. Pot puree fills the nostrils of viewers. Shells and birds everywhere. His other corner of work juxtaposes these tribal towers and ornamental comments, or mockeries. Instead, old fish tanks, neon sweets, neon lights and bark create a sense of tacky old Cuban cocktail bars run by an old couple in Muenich, or perhaps the local pet shop gone wrong.

Rubbish beach towels adorn the walls as if we should be worshipping them; perhaps in context with the corner, should we be wondering if the worship of an ancient tribal or religious figure is as arbitrary as that of 80’s dolphin beach towel?

Sam Plagerson’s work stands delicately atop three white plinths: Three heads of Jennifer Lopez, from Elle magazine, 2007. The arms are missing but both hands are on her head in a kind of casual publicity shoot pose. It also insinuates she's pulling her hair out. Funnily enough, the three profiles have a lot to do with self-destruction and diminution. The heads represent the original and the two following photocopies respectively of the magazine page of Lopez’s face.

The photocopiers disintegrating colours is portrayed magnificently subtlely in the celebrity’s sculpted and polished skin, something that distegrated through the series. The quality of the image decreases so much with photocopies, it's as if the artist is hinting the decrease in quality one finds through the magnification and reproduction of oneself: Deterioration.

Not all works inspire such inner-debate and thought as these three. However, there's enough wealth of sculptural methods and forms at this exhibition to provoke reaction from the harshest critic to Joe Blogs himself.

Thoughts race through the video installation by Svein Moxvold or the conglomerate of Ocean Mims’ grand furniture dissected. Even the golden alienesque cones by Lisa Payne strike aesthetic and formal judgements and appreciations. Like geometric disco strobes? Prefer aesthetic adventure with textures? This show will please all. And the taxi ride over the river isn’t half bad either.

Words: Katie Rose
Photography: RCA