Claire

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Une exposition de Claire FitzGerald

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Atelier E.B
Anna Barriball 
Isabelle Cornaro
Doris Guo
Miriam Laura Leonardi

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We felt it. We travelled together to countless sunsets. But where did this object come from? ^[1]

Felix Gonzales-Torres about Roni Horn’s Gold Field (1982)

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On 25 July 1984, Svetlana Savitskaya took a 3 hours 35 minutes’ long space walk outside of the Salyut 7 station, becoming the first person to weld in space, alongside her crewmate Vladimir Dzhanibekov. They tried out a new multipurpose tool, welding, brazing and metal spraying.^[2] Amongst the particular challenges that working in these conditions raises, is the phenomenon of unwanted cold welding. If two pieces of the same type of metal touch in space, their atoms will be unable to know that they are distinct objects so they will bond and be permanently joined together.^3]

Welding in Space brings together contemporary practices that speak of objects – lost & found – repurposed forms, fragments of memories compacted into a space – images that somehow stick without requiring any glue.

Amputated of its back legs and nestled within a wooden, coffin-like receptacle, Doris Guo’s Untitled Sit posits the remains of restaurant seating salvaged from New York’s Chinatown. Meanwhile, a skewed reflection of fairytale dreams marketed to children can be glimpsed in Miriam Laura Leonardi’s Your Fantasy My Tyranny 9, the Disney hand mirror having warped under extreme heat. With Atelier E.B, the owner of a Scutum umbrella from their Jasperwear collection is equipped with an Amazon shield to brave the elements.

Objects are otherwise marked by opacity in Isabelle Cornaro’s Orgon Doors (edition) and Golden Memories. Cryptic narratives are whispered by moulded metal hardware fragments and chain links. Elsewhere, they entice against a piece of carpeting that references the chance patterns that appear upon the artist’s studio’s floor as a by-product of spraying paint on props or sculptures. The politics of looking and representation are equally challenged in Anna Barriball’s manipulation of scale and orientation. Her Untitled reworking of a small black and white found photograph plays with the silvery surface of a stream to open up further reflections, both literal and metaphorical.

With Welding in Space, the LEMME takes on the function of a time capsule and invites you to ‘travel together to countless sunsets’.

Claire FitzGerald

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^[1] Gonzalez-Torres, Felix. « 1990: L.A., ‘The Gold Field’. »  Earth Grows Thick: Works after Emily Dickinson by Roni Horn. Bremner, Ann, ed. Columbus, OH: Wexner Center for the Arts, 1996, pp. 65 – 69

^[2] Elspeth Lewis, ‘Sevtlana Savistaya – Unsung Hero of Space’, The National Space Centre, 07/03/2018, https://spacecentre.co.uk/blog-post/svetlana-savitskaya-unsung-hero-space/

^[3] A. Merstallinger, M. Sales, E. Semerad, B.D. Dunn, Assessment of Cold Welding between Separable Contact Surfaces due to Impact and Fretting under Vacuum (ESA STM-279 November 2009)