Abi Charlesworth - ‘to rest amongst the blades’.

About

Sedimentary layers unfold a personal narrative, encoded with fossils and absent figures. Ceramic and cast fragments hold the petrified remains of object encounters. Artificial fossils show a preoccupation with a dystopian future, concerned with a debris ridden landscape where items hold no value. Charlesworth is asking what physical traces will we leave behind and what traces we leave on each other. Abstracted archaeological aids are used to hold excavated sculptures, pulled from her inner depths. Held in place, they are carefully displayed as an open wound in the dissection of grief.

The exhibition will evolve between GLOAM and Haarlem Artspace, as the installation draws from a body of research that is constantly changing and responding to the environment it finds itself within. Acting as echoes— similar yet distinct they are formed by the landscape that shapes them. In moments of stillness where the echo can settle and resound. An outlet to a constant pulse within the work. GLOAM’s industrial past will evoke a darker element from research that is reflected in the install. Ambient light casts shadows as the dust settles. The second part at Haarlem Artspace negotiates the work through a lighter lens, emphasising the preoccupation with landscape, sedimentary layers, and fossils.

Abi Charlesworth’s work surrounds the ideas of object debris and mutation. In transforming the object through materials she alters the functionality and displaces the object into a new landscape. As fictionalised objects, they reference the original form before deteriorating and shedding the old objects skin. Anew and functionless they roam between reality and fiction searching for shelter.

Charlesworth’s sculptural language is deeply rooted in peripheral object encounters where she is drawn to out of place and partial objects. As a dialogue between herself and the object she converses with the form, material and scale to unfold the objects narrative. Her more recent work explores the boundaries of traces, archaeology and resonance. In researching these subjects she is interested in the tension that can be held between objects and landscape.

Responding to a body of ongoing text, poetically exploring notions of depression via traces in the body through landscape and archaeology. A realisation of a journey emerges out of a crevasse where planes of memories, objects and emotions are passed through.