Holly Slingsby: Props for the Sky
Private view: 20th January 2012, 6-9pm
21-22 January 2012, 12-6pm
PROPS FOR THE SKY is a new performance work by Holly Slingsby, taking place over three days at SHIFT.
In this work the artist takes on the guise of a series of gods and mythical characters, using improvised costumes and props. As the performance progresses, these deities make and remake themselves, producing a series of hybrids – gods with vanity problems, gender confusion and split personalities.
The setting is an artist’s studio, providing the means for these protagonists to create new attributes and appearances for themselves, as well as referencing the idea of the studio as a pseudo-sacred space, where something miraculous or alchemical can take place.
Through this work Slingsby deepens her fascination with iconography from various religious and pagan traditions, exploring how images and figures cross-fertilise and later come to be subsumed into contemporary culture. Using everyday materials to evoke the divine, she interrogates our continuing attempts to envisage the invisible.
Holly Slingsby (born Oxford, 1983) lives and works in London. She studied at the Ruskin School of Drawing and Fine Art, Oxford University, and the Slade School of Art, London. Her recent performances include those at the Barbican Centre, Fold Gallery and Angus Hughes Gallery, London; Modern Art Oxford; and FEM 10 Festival, Girona, Spain.
http://www.hollyslingsby.com
http://www.shiftgallery.com
SHIFT. 32 Shelmerdine Close, London, E3 4UX