Mary Mary

Mary Mary

Press Release

Sara Barker & Lotte Gertz

Preview : Friday March 19th 2004 7 - 9pm
March 20th - 21st 2004 12 - 5pm

The first show to be held at Mary Mary is a presentation of new work by Glasgow based artists, Lotte Gertz and Sara Barker. Both artists use narrative and a suggested action as the focal point of their practice. By using abstracted and non-pictorial forms, elements of violence, collapse and movement are evident.

“A panel, suspended with a cable nooses, slices through the air, shattered parts are thrown across the room. Spilt flour, the result of some domestic dispute, is swept into the corner, taking with it fragments of the surrounding broken furniture.”
Sara Barker’s work takes the form of evidence after the event. Objects hang forlorn, still swinging from a crash into the wall; others are restrained with knots that threaten to come undone. A space is set up where culture clashes effect the convention of the domestic and a darker narrative emerges, where power struggles and psychological games physically disrupt the space. Our expectations of the space are unsettled, and our experience of the prosaic environment is intensified, where everyday objects mark territories contained by the history of their making and their destruction.

Using paper, watercolour, mark making, collage and cut and paste methods to edit and continuously alter an image, Lotte Gertz work aims to stretch the material and obtain a visual heaviness with inherently light materials. “Despite applying non-pictorial shapes I don’t really consider my work as purely abstract I see it as hinting at a narrative, ultimately concerned with suggesting notions of collapse and movement at the core of the image making.” Mogens Rukow, a Danish scriptwriter has talked about the flaw that constitutes the natural story: A man goes to the toilet and washes his hands. No story yet then. Then he goes out and washes his hands again and then he does it again. From here we are starting to be told something about this man. The simple repetition starts telling a story.

Lotte graduated from Glasgow School of Art painting department in 2002 and has recently shown in ‘A world of possibilities’ at the Chateau at Electrowerkz, London and in Copenhagen. She is currently a committee member at Transmission Gallery and has a forthcoming solo show at Glasgow Project Rooms.

Sara also studied painting at Glasgow School of Art and graduated in 2003. Her most recent show was at ‘Cells out’ at Bridgeton Jail.