Sarah Entwistle: The dupe of another

About

signs and symbols is pleased to present The dupe of another, a video exhibition by Sarah Entwistle as part of the gallery’s series of online-only solo presentations of video works.

The title, derived from La Fontaine’s fable, Le Singe et le Chat (The Monkey and the Cat), tells of a cat used by its monkey companion to steal hot roasting chestnuts with its paw. Leading to the idiom a 'cat’s paw' – meaning one who is duped by another to carry out an unpleasant or dangerous task. The artist often asks the question both within her use of her grandfather’s archive but also within the dynamics of her family system; who is duping who, who is using who and to what ends? In this she grapples with the complex circuitry of dependency and caregiving between child and mother.

The central protagonist, a white cat, first appears in an archival photo curled on a mattress, its form reflected in a mirrored bed canopy. For Entwistle, the cat (who also inhabits her installations) is a proxy for the multiplicity of the divine feminine, encompassing both the archetype of the Muse and of the Great/Destructive Mother. Through a montage of found footage, the viewer follows the white cat as a lone figure and as part of a collective with her kittens. Accompanying the cat are the cut-out hands frozen in gesture of the many muses in the archive of her late grandfather. The chorus of hands alluding to the ceaseless physicality of caregiving exchanged between the artist and her children. The visual sequences are accompanied by an audio narration that further explores the figuration of the cat and by extension the cat’s paw through fables, mythology, and scientific phenomena that all carry the colloquial name of 'the cat’s paw.' Seemingly interrelated characteristics and analogistic features emerge that hint to some deeper expression of connectivity and meaning. A white cat walks through a darkened corridor where its kittens sit waiting in a cardboard box. Cat’s paw freshwater river mussel, close to extinction, use fleshy lures to draw in host fish for their parasitic larvae. A Cat’s paw carpenter’s tool draws out a nail from a piece of wood. A hitch knot used in bondage to lead the wrist of the submissive, here rehearsed by the artist and her daughter; its structure collapsed when the wrist is pulled out. Its architecture dependent on the participation of the other. Much like family systems, a cat’s paw capillary wave is a disturbance that travels through space and matter transferring energy from one place to another.

The narration is read by the artist’s son, the youngest member of her family, trailed and interrupted by parents and grandparents. The chorus at once bolstering and competing for primacy. Beneath the spoken word a tonal landscape of sounds has been composed from field recordings of the children banging metal sculptures in her home studio.

*Please note that Entwistle’s video will be viewable online from Tuesday, May 18 at 6:00pm until Friday, June 18 at 6:00pm. Following the end of the exhibition, the video will only be accessible via private link and password. We trust that given our current circumstances, everyone will act in good faith and good will, understanding that these are primary artworks by our artists that are collected and which would otherwise be password protected.

sarah entwistle (b.1979, London) lives in Berlin. She received her BSc from The Bartlett School of Architecture, London and her Dip. from the Architectural Association, London, where she subsequently taught a design unit. Her solo show In short, in theory and with a bit of luck (2012) at the Architectural Association marked the beginning of her engagement with her late grandfather’s archive. She is the 2014 recipient of the Le Corbusier Foundation Grant for Visual Artists and in 2015 presented a solo exhibition, He was my father and I an atom destined to grow into him, at the Le Corbusier Foundation in Paris. The exhibition coincided with the publication of her experimental biography, Please send this book to my mother, Sternberg Press, 2015. She was the recipient of the Graham Foundation for the Advanced Studies in Fine Art, Chicago publication and production grant in 2014. In 2017, she received a grant from the Arts Council England, Artists' International Development Fund, with which she is developing an ambitious site-specific installation for the Zevaco House, Casablanca in collaboration with curator Salma Lahlou. In 2020, she was the subject of a solo exhibition, You should remember to do those things done before that have to be done again, at Museo Nivola in Sardinia.