NETTIE HORN
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LONDON | E2 9DG
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Dysfuncadelia
10 October to 16 November 2008
Opening Times: WEDNESDAY _ SUNDAY : 12 - 6 pm
Preview Night: Thursday 9th October, 6-9pm
Featuring: DEBBIE LAWSON
NETTIE HORN is pleased to present Dysfuncadelia, the first UK solo show of artist Debbie Lawson which features an elaborate installation of sculptural works as well as a selection of inlaid wood panels.
Debbie Lawson creates atypical environments through the use of found objects, household furniture and domestic materials such as “Persian” carpet and wood. A new hybrid meaning is found in the use of these « kitsch » materials in her sculptures and installations away from their inherent decorative quality. Tinged by a collective and personal nostalgia linked to memories of the domestic interior and suburban life, these humdrum objects become part of a “mise en scène” which is created thanks to the narrative formed by our own history and memories. The encounter between the material and the object reveals a dramatic other life according to what the artist saw as its own particular aspirational quality.
For her solo exhibition, Lawson turns both rooms of the gallery into two different environments specifically created through the use of her materials of predilection.
Slowly growing into a jungle-house, the main room erupts into a lush landscape of carpeted stacks dripping with leaves and smothered in all kinds of fanciful flora made from different objects and furniture. Playing on the idea of collision between heterogeneous elements, Lawson creates an optical illusion through the association of a rhythmic pattern to a three-dimensional form.
Her full size “wobbly” triptych panel inlaid with marquetry subverts the polite associations of a traditional craft into a warped landscape of wilted leaves. Merged with the stuff that surrounds us, popular narratives and personal histories are intertwined so that the imaginary and material reality seem inseparable.
Debbie Lawson lives and works in London and graduated with an MA from the Royal College of Art in 2004.
She is concurrently exhibiting "Chairway to Heaven" at the Economist Plaza from 17 October - 28 November. Recent exhibitions include East West Dialogues at LTMH Gallery, New York, USA; Interiors at Imoderni, Miami, USA; Pilot 3 at the 52nd Venice Biennale; The Islanders at NETTIE HORN, London; Arboreal at Transition gallery, London; Shibboleth at Dilston Grove, London; Violin/Violence at 1,000,000mph gallery, London.
Gradually contaminating the space and invading the room, these personified hybrid plants create a new genre of the exotic in a dimensionally mutated space. These oversized plants, at once startling but also grotesque, reveal with humour a universe which sources its inspiration from suggestive and affective codes.
Spider, 2008, 'Persian' carpet and furniture
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