Dust To Dust

About

In collaboration with Tom Cole, the gallery is delighted to announce DUST TO DUST, a three person exhibition featuring Magdalena Abakanowicz, Phoebe Cummings and Robert Mapplethorpe that considers the relationship between the organic world and the condition of the human body.

Exploring decay and renewal, each artist uses motifs and forms evocative of the fragility and vulnerability of nature, positioning cycles of life within the temporality of the natural world.

The exhibition will centre on Robert Mapplethorpe’s flower photographs; an installation by Phoebe Cummings made from raw clay; and Magdalena Abakanowicz’s signature sisal works. All three artists engage directly with the seemingly decorative tradition of flowers to ask much deeper and profound questions of our place in the world, and the fragility, tenderness and transience of life.

The human body is also implicit in the work of each artist. This blend of the organic and corporeal is clear in woven fibre works by Magdalena Abakanowicz (b.1930-2017). Probably best known for her Abakans – vast enveloping, womblike, seemingly timeless structures or figures that hang from the ceiling – Abakanowicz creates shroud-like forms that evoke a metamorphosis of some form of ambiguous organism; a brooding refuge to take shelter in or emerge from, imposing yet benevolent.