Hannah Barry Gallery at Ballon Rouge
Of All the Things I’ve Lost
PROUDICK (Lindsey Mendick & Paloma Proudfoot)
5 September - 21 October 2019
The art of losing isn’t hard to master; so
many things seem filled with the intent to be
lost that their loss is no disaster.
Lose something every day. Accept the fluster of
lost door keys, the hour badly spent. The art of
losing isn’t hard to master.
Then practice losing farther, losing faster: places,
and names, and where it was you meant to travel.
None of these will bring disaster.
- Elizabeth Bishop, One Art
Of All the Things I’ve Lost is an exploration into the complexity and rumination of loss, its analogies and its inevitability. PROUDICK (Lindsey Mendick and Paloma Proudfoot) here examine the multifaceted and enveloping nature of loss - physical and metaphorical - manifesting a world where object and phantom coalesce into a single, ghostly mise-en-scène: a bygone world of misplaced coats and mercurial loves; of highstreet hubris and putrefied woes.
Through the exhibition we are asked to question why it is that misplacing items such as a coat or phone can hurt us so deeply? The loss and shame of a partner leaving, of being left: what we have failed to hold onto by not being or not having given enough. Loss of inhibitions: a hungover sense of doom magnified by an accompanying loss of possessions - admitting to the insurance company the when and where of how you lost your phone last night... Loss, in a more profound sense: the loss of friends, partners and family; the heirlooms that stay with us as legacies... Loss in the form of the apple-shaped tumour or the lemon-sized foetus... The synaesthesia of these similes; the taste of olives and lemons are never alone.
Of All the Things I’ve Lost presents us mourning beyond melancholy: “If I did not agree to lose mother,” notes psychoanalyst Julia Kristeva, “I could neither imagine nor name her.” To lose a loved one, an idea or an object is to identify it. To identify with it. Whether in bereavement, ideology or keepsake, to lose something is to be able to represent it, and in doing so, create its fantasy. The work of PROUDICK makes monument to the tragedy of their own losses, freezing and casting its gifts into their own fantasy world. Pearls of sorrow are encased inside weeping gold jewellery. Opals of grief and woe are enshrined in stained-glass effigies. Putrefying busts ooze and squirm with forlorn memories. Loss as a chorus of inevitability, symbiotic with change, the painful process of growing older; of shedding skin, possessions, love, all in order to rebuild once again, and over and over again.
PROUDICK is the name of the single artist identity assumed through the collaborative work of artists and friends Lindsey Mendick and Paloma Proudfoot. Operating under this moniker, PROUDICK collaborate in the creation of individual artworks as well as the practice of exhibition-making itself, creating evocative installations and scenarios that blend their collective autobiography with an exultant and unforgiving feminism.A central medium to their practice is ceramics, siphoning in their artworks between disciplines of art and craft, ornamentation and functionalism; the banal and everyday with baroque and honest expressions of the body, sex and sensuality. Their collusion to operate under a single artist identity further explores social tensions that exist within female competition, collaboration and friendship.
Lindsey Mendick (b. 1987, London, UK) received an MA in Sculpture at the Royal College of Art, London (2017). Recent solo and two-person exhibitions include: The Ex Files, Castor Projects, London (2019); Fancy Pants, The Portico Library, Manchester (2019); The Turnpike Pottery, The Turnpike Leigh (2018); Perfectly Ripe, Zabludowicz Collection, London (2018); Jamie Fitzpatrick and Lindsey Mendick, Vitrine, Basel (2018); She’s Really Nice When You Get To Know Her, Visual Arts Center, Austin, Texas (2016); Girls (with Rebecca Gould) as part of Periclo, Oriel Wrexham, Wales (2015); Hot Flush, STCFTHOTS, Leeds (2015); Lindsey Mendick and Lynn Fulton, One Thoresby Street, Nottingham (2015). Selected group exhibitions include: Something Else, Triumph Galley, Moscow (2018); Rhapsodies, Ping Pong, Brussels (2018); If You Can’t Stand the Heat, Roaming Projects, London (2018) Flipside, Fold Gallery, London (2018); You See Me Like a UFO, Marcelle Joseph Projects, Ascot (2017); Herland, Bosse & Baum, London (2017); In Dark Times, Castlefield Gallery, Manchester (2017); You Were High When I Was Doomed, IMT Gallery, London (2017); Sell Yourself, Patrick Studios, Leeds (2017). Medick undertook the Alexandra Reinhardt Memorial Award Artist Commission at The Turnpike, Leigh (2018).
Paloma Proudfoot (b.1992, London, UK) received an MA in Sculpture at the Royal College of Art, London (2017). Recent solo exhibitions include: A History of Scissors, Soy Capitán, Berlin (2019); Metropolitanwares, The Gibberd Gallery (2018); Solo booth with Soy Capitan Gallery, Art Berlin (2018); The Detachable Head Serves As A Cup, The Cob Gallery, London (2018); There Is One Missing From Your Bunch, May Projects, London (2016); and The Jockey, TANK Gallery, Edinburgh Sculpture Workshop (2015). Selected group exhibitions include: Salon 63, various locations, London, UK, Leopoldiné, Sans Titre, Paris (2018); Becoming Plant, Tenderpixel, London (2018); SM, Sans Titre and Margaux Bathelemy, Marseille (2018); Towards a Theory of Powerful Things, Rod Barton, London (2018); Chambre 10, Sans Titre at La Louisiane, Paris (2018); Adventitious Encounters, Whiteley’s, London (2018); The Engagement Party, A Labour of Love (with Piasecka), The Scottish Arts Club, Edinburgh (2018); Form, Cob Gallery, London (2018); Terra, Lamb Arts, London (2018); If You Can’t Stand The Heat, Roaming Projects, London (2018). As well as her solo sculptural practice, Proudfoot works in collaboration with artist and choreographer Aniela Piasecka, with whom she is co-director of performance group Stasis. In 2018, Proudfoot completed the Thun Ceramic Residency, Bolzano, Italy, and in 2019, Proudfoot will undertake residencies at the Irish Museum of Modern Art (with Stasis) and Moly Sabata Residency, France.