Melissa Gordon. Fallible Space

About

Gordon is interested in addressing the exhibition as a ‘theatre in the round’: highlighting shifting perspectives when staging her work. Here she presents the first solo exhibition in Bluecoat’s Performance Space, accompanied by a longer running exhibition in the Vide.

ollision, the 1916 play by British artist, poet, playwright, novelist, feminist and actress Mina Loy, provides the starting point for Gordon's week long installation Fallible Space. An enduring fascination for Gordon, Collision describes the transformation of an interior, a kaleidoscoping of ceiling, floor and walls. 

On the opening evening (Fri 22 Jan), large-scale silkscreen panels will be activated by a physical theatre performance led by corporeal mime artist Rita Pulga. Working with musicians Chris and Morten and lighting design artist Jessica Wiesner, Gordon will focus on the rhythm of Loy’s writing. The vibrations of interfering half-tone lines in the prints and paintings also reflect on the play’s dynamic properties. 

The work will stay in place until Pulga returns to deinstall the work in front of visitors to the gallery on Sunday 31 January. On Saturday 30th January, 4pm installation will also provide the backdrop to a series of readings and discussions on Loy's work curated by academic and poet Sandeep Parmar. 

Vide: Sat 23 Jan – Sun 13 Mar 10am – 6pm, Sun 11am - 6pm

Opening in parallel and running until Sunday 13th March is an on-going series of paintings by Melissa Gordon entitled 'Material Evidence'. The paintings faithfully render closeup compositions of the marks made by the artist at work in her studio; brush strokes on a paint pallet, the splatter of paint on wall, table and ceiling. 

These intimate canvases are faithful renderings of accidental images; somehow both figurative and abstract at the same time. As images they are 'evidence' of the artist's labour in the studio, a clue, something to decipher. Their seriousness as paintings is deliberately undercut by the unfinished temporary walls on which they are hung; an insight into another process - the making of an exhibition. 

Gordon is interested in the relationship between abstraction and representation and seeing and reading, often focusing on the by-products of history, of medium and of making. Reclaiming and interrogating the legacy of female Modernism - a by-product or off-shoot of art history - is an enduring project reflected in her wider practice as painter, printmaker and editor.