Jo Dennis | A Kind of Solid Liquid

About

Dennis’ practice centres around abandoned places and explores how waste items found in these environments represent time past and present. The title ‘A Kind of Solid Liquid’ is a quote from Mark Pendergrast’s ‘Mirror, Mirror: A History Of The Human Love Affair With Reflection’, and refers to the materiality of glass and the significance of the window which has historically been investigated in art history. 

The exhibited printed and painted windows offer us imagery which can be a reflection of what is inside or that which is outside, where the interior and exterior interchange. The use of found objects and transparent materials create slippages between layers and perspectives, questioning surface in a physical and metaphorical sense.

The photographs used in the Solid Liquid and Black Wall series are detailed photographs of the walls discovered in a derelict swimming pool in South London. The found window frames become canvases for these prints and paintings as well as a lens or screen through which to view. Dennis draws parallels between the layering of paint and time as a multi-layered entity that manifests in derelict and abandoned spaces and objects. Indeed, the notion of ‘layering’ or ‘covering up’ and conversely, ‘revealing’ is integral to her practice both in what she photographs and the way she applies paint. 

In ‘A Kind of Solid Liquid’ Dennis draws on wide ranging references; from Charlie Brooker’s TV anthology Black Mirror which highlights topics related to humanity’s dependence on technology to the materiality of Seizure in which the artist Roger Hiorns transformed an empty council flat into a blue crystal environment.