That is my question and wouldn’t it be nice if everyone shouted ‘me me me, yes please’?
But that’s not how it works. – I want peace and love and security – food too. Clean air, clean water and eternal youth please, travelling in comfort, a good car, nice clothes etc. Nobody wants the dark painful bits. Nobody – Or?
The installation across five black windows at Kings Place with the Pangolin London Gallery is a short review of my journey very loosely based on Dante’s Divine Comedy. I am looking into the mystery of my life past and present and finding loss and fear as well as joy.
I have constructed minimal landscapes and populated them with ceramic pieces most of which were made during lockdown when I had plenty of time to think and reflect. The small clay cubes, ‘Indensities’, in Window 1 acquired human qualities during the process of hollowing them out and revealing their innards. As soon as I grouped them together in little huddles they started to relate to each other. They are very tactile little pieces and when they are not on display I carry some around with me in my pockets.
In Window 2, ‘The Dark Wood’, the trees assumed anthropomorphic qualities and yet it is easy for me to shrink myself down to the size of a thumb and wander amongst the huge looming dark stumps.
Window 3, ‘The Harbour Wall’, is the most precarious of all 5 installations. More than once it threatened to collapse during the construction, so I left the supporting props in place. The white strands mark a tideline. This harbour is not a safe place.
Window 4, ‘The Slaughterhouse’, deals with the childhood horror of watching animals slaughtered on the farm where I grew up. I am transforming these coils to assume the fluidity of water and waves pouring from a big bowl. My aim is to keep extending the coils to cover a section of a floor into a proper abundance.
Finally in Window 5 ‘Paradiso’, all goes up in smoke for which I am using thin rusty wires. I made different clay pieces that reminded me of hieroglyphs, white flowers, worms etc. all suspended in midair.
Almuth Tebbenhoff LG, 2020
WHO WILL BUY MY DARK DARK WORLD
Pangolin London
Location: Sculpture windows & Foyer
17 Oct – 22 Dec 2020
Kings Place, 90 York Way, N1 9AG
E: [email protected] T: 020 7520 1480
