Showdown II

About

ALEXANDRA GODIVA THOROLD CURATORIAL

Loulou Siem’s artistic practice centres around a distillation of raw, human experience and a reassessment of value systems through an exploration of the art institution. The surface of the art institution is unsettled and deconstructed in upcoming exhibition Showdown II, as Siem makes a conscious critique of museum display through a cacophony of gold sculptural guns, tongues, fingers and exclamatory faces on the brink of abstraction. These works, shown here for the first time, utilise the precious, cultural and symbolic weight associated with the materiality of gold to question what it means to preserve and display art. The light-refracting, lustrous golden surface of the sculptures works as a subversive play with the psychological darkness that runs like a vein through her work; probing the viewer to question what it means to literally highlight and conserve undiluted emotion through artistic practice.

The exhibition space itself will highlight the fascinating conceit between artwork, viewer and institution through negating traditional display. The work will be presented in a false gallery space in a building designed by Erno Goldfinger, aptly named The Goldfinger Factory. The predominant use of gold in her work, fired onto clay sculptures, sets up a self-reflexive, false alchemy: there is a tension between the seductive sheen of the works, their apparent functional subject matter and the ephemerality of the materials. Whilst on the surface these objects mimic value and functionality; both through their form and appealing sheen; the bullets are defunct, the languid tongues lack the ability to lick and the clay guns would crumble under the pressure of a clasped hand. This self-conscious dysfunctionality addresses the way in which the art institution imbues certain objects with value and underscores the macabre and abject reality that the institution painfully preserves these objects beyond a human lifespan, setting up a relationship that will ultimately outlive us, as seen in weapons collections in institutions like the Wallace Collection and the Metropolitan Museum. This exhibition deconstructs this tense institutional dynamic.

Drawing off the romanticism of the Wild West, Siem focuses on how sculptural weaponry and armature can be viewed as an extension of the body, tying together an institutional critique with an exploration of the relationship between the artwork and its maker. Rather than focusing exclusively on the pertinent debates surrounding gun control in America and its phallic associations, her work makes a subtle exploration of how space is demarcated, activated and occupied through these defunct, violent and often sexual objects. Siem’s guns, bullets and knuckle dusters emphasise the violence of these tools as they make contact with the darker side of humanity. The elliptical trace of violence and gesture in the works and the unconventional, mock gallery setting promises an exhibition that intertwines sex, violence and the macabre to potent affect.