sumVigour - new works by Laura Aldridge at CAMPLE LINE

About

Vibrant and tactile, Laura Aldridge’s work engages, indeed embraces, all our senses. Taking many forms and scales, her work derives from her deep-seated instinct for colour and texture, and from the knowing and intuitive approach she takes to making and to materials and their possibilities. She has said: ‘Being completely absorbed in the process of making, being alert and open is really very important to how an idea develops. It is physical research and it is how I move the work forward.’

Working across textiles, glass, ceramic and found objects, and with processes such as printing, casting and dyeing, Aldridge’s body of work moves freely between wall-based reliefs and sculptural assemblages or installations, playing on the abilities of ‘collage’ to operate in two and three-dimensions. She has herself described her work as a form of expanded collage, and she often arranges elements of her works upon tables, low plinths or across gallery walls to bring ‘things’ together so that they might coalesce as a whole.

Of the exhibition’s title, sumVigour, Aldridge has explained: ‘I wanted to combine some words, to make a new thought for what I was doing. I noticed how words increasingly appear as hashtags and how, often, this affects how you read and take in information. ‘Sum’ works for me because to hear it, you could be saying 'some' - as in ‘with some vigour’- but to see and read it - it speaks of addition, of two or more of something. Then, to have that mundane word next to something much bigger and more assertive - VIGOUR. I like it because it speaks to something beyond the singular - to groups, combines, and energy.’ 

Included in sumVigour is a group of six large-scale ceramic vessels that sit upon their own plinth systems or what Aldridge calls ‘texture totems’. Alongside these are two new works that develop Aldridge’s on-going Things That Soak You series (2016 – ongoing), and two new wall-based banner collages featuring wind chimes, which extend recent works made for Edinburgh and Stavanger in Norway.