Zabludowicz Collection Invites: Lindsey Mendick

About

The starting point for this work is a short autobiographical text, which recounts a family holiday when the artist was 13 ¾ years old; the disco nights out, days spent lounging on the beach and the sexual encounters she had with the entertainment staff. A recording of this text forms the soundtrack to the show, read by the artist and interspersed with snippets of music recollected from the dance floor. Mendick’s new body of work is motivated by an anger at the dangerous situation she found herself in as a child, and the urge to confront the troubling aspects of coming-of-age stories as a genre. It addresses abuses of power by men, but also the confusion and mixed emotions that follow. The installation explores the sculptural potential of glazed ceramics, merging the grotesque and the comic in a space that is generous and engaging, but far from simplistic in its emotional register.