Zara Ramsay - 'By the fruits of their labour shall you know them’

About

Zara Ramsay’s sculptures exist as daftly confident domestic monuments, or minuments as Ramsay suggests. In direct opposition to heroic minimalism/modernism, the lived experience of these objects are set free to run riot. The works come from a laser-like attention to everyday items such as window blinds and pebble-dashed walls. Here, details become enlarged in a serious wonderland of scale - where physical weight is undermined through a conflation of rough with soft and heavy with light. The outcome builds with an incongruity of materials, colors and forms, resulting in a kind of humanist minimalism.
 
These are minuments to something fleeting within our everyday existence. Something ineffable that exists amidst the design and craft we live with in our homes. In that the titles of these works often point to early modernist artists, women that have sparked Ramsay’s imagination such as Hilma af Klint and Emma Kunz, allusions to energy fields and spiritual matters, ecological concerns and folk-culture, are integral to the creations. It is possible that a philosophy of spirituality and mindfulness is at the heart of this intersection between ourselves and the things that surround us.  Perhaps the unseen labor focused on emotional and mental well-being, most often performed by women, is situated within these forms and Ramsay has tapped into existent intentions lying within otherwise dormant articles.   
 
This suggests the continuation of an ongoing conversation with the works of these women artists, and others as well; Ilona Kesarü, Eva Hesse, Louise Bourgeois, Judy Chicago. References to the Willow Tea Room and the Zia sun symbol sit easily alongside Judd-like influences, but the overarching feature is Ramsay’s obvious pleasure in the materials she works with. From hat-net mesh to clay to pipe cleaners, these sculptures suggest an expanded domicile, sitting just alongside the places we currently inhabit.  

Dr SE Barnet is an artist and educator whose practice employs anecdote and language towards a consideration of personal histories sited within political discourse. She is Senior Lecturer and Course Leader for Fine Art at the University fo Suffolk.