Charlotte Edey: All Words Are Written In Water

About

Anat Ebgi is pleased to announce Charlotte Edey All Words Are Written In Water on view at 6150 Wilshire Blvd from April 27 through June 15. This is Edey’s first solo exhibition with the gallery and presents bead-embellished tapestries, pastel drawings, and sculpture. A public reception will take place on Saturday, April 27 from 6 – 8pm.

The language of drawing is translated throughout Charlotte Edey’s tactile, mixed media practice. Mark making and gesture are explored through extensive hand-embroidery and beading on tapestry. Comparable to hatching and stippling, these processes forge direct relationships between line, thread, and surface. Her jacquard weavings are hand embellished with thousands of glass seed beads and freshwater pearls. This latest body of work weaves together organic materials including crystal, moonstone, opalite, obsidian, onyx, lava, and topaz, giving a luminescent quality to the surface of her ethereal compositions.

All Words Are Written In Water emphasizes the slippery relationship between consciousness, embodiment, and water. The works are sequenced in the gallery like a sentence. Employing punctuation as a semiotic framework, the dashes of commas take the form of nautilus shells, quotation marks flow like droplets, parenthesis form crescent moons, and full stops interchange with pearls and bubbles. These marks are anchored to a liquidity of form and through a lens informed by both hydrofeminist and new materialist theories, forming symbolic structures that consider what it means to inhabit a watery body.

Thinking about ourselves as aqueously extending through both time and space, connects us to all of the strange bodies of water that flow into us across epochs and generations. This concern with time is grounded in the use of found and antique objects. The trio of soft pastel drawings are presented in antique found bullseye bullion glass. A familiar feature in British Victorian architecture, this early glass-making method creates a droplet effect by spinning molten glass with the navel, which ripples out to create a liquid distortion above the drawings beneath the surface.

Echoing how water sculpts landscapes, the artist has reupholstered an Edwardian era 19th century conversation chair, also known as a tête-à-tête, or gossip chair. Utilizing the linguistic history of the object, the conjoined serpentine shape allows sitters to engage in discreet conversation, while viewing the exhibition from multiple perspectives. A mirrored floor heightens Edey’s liquid metaphors by transforming the gallery into a still pool of reflection.

The exhibition is accompanied by an original text by Vanessa Onwuemezi.

Charlotte Edey (b. 1992, Manchester, England) studied at the Chelsea School of Art and Design and the Royal Drawing School, London, England. Recent solo exhibitions include Ginny on Frederick, London, UK; Robert’s Gallery, Glasgow, UK; Public Gallery, London, UK; and Flowers Gallery, London, UK. She has participated in group exhibitions at Drawing Room, London, UK; South London Gallery, London, UK; 1969 Gallery, New York, NY; Christies, London, UK; Rugby Art Museum, UK; Cob Gallery, London, UK; The Design Museum, London, UK; and The Great Women Artists curated by Katy Hessel at Palazzo Monti, Brescia, Italy; among others. Her work is held in the permanent collections of Nasher Museum, Durham, North Carolina, USA and The Royal Collection, London, UK. Recently featured as one of the 2023 Artsy “Artists On Our Radar,” Edey’s work has also been featured in publications including Financial Times, Autre, Artnet, Creative Review, Elephant, British Vogue, Metal Magazine, It’s Nice That, Dazed, Elle, AnOther Magazine and others. Edey lives and works in London, UK.