Rachel Higgins: Trickle Down

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An immersive installation of floor and wall-based sculptures continues the artist's work with interactive sculpture and performance.

Higgins's new installation transforms the gallery into an intimate and playful environment that appears both familiar and strange.  Simple geometric forms and synthetic materials associated with present-day construction conjure the feel of a luxury bathroom, corporate lobby, or suburban mall.  The focal point of the exhibition is a free-standing fountain the size of a personal shower.  Operating on its own internal plumbing system, it constantly circulates water from a lower basin up through an overhead spout.  Installed with architectural elements that signal an elusory recession of space, such as a textured wall relief fading along a gradient, a linear sense of time meets a cyclical notion of progress. 

As in previous works, Higgins transforms discarded construction materials from corporate and residential edifices into sculptures often coated with cerastone--a false stone typically used to surface building exteriors.  Her new exhibition also ventures further into the realm of plumbing.  Over the past year, Higgins has gained increasing expertise in this area through her work in California as a residential builder and a greywater systems installer.  Greywater is lightly used water which can be captured and recycled, diverting it from the sewer to provide irrigation for plants.  Here, Higgins appropriates elements of this environmental system for use as sculpture.  This merging of the sculptural object, social commentary, and architectural design has been a constant in her work, which might also prod the viewer to consider broader political implications of how our social spaces are constructed, and for whom they are intended.