REVIEW Jan 2025 'Local / National / International' at Lowry

Jo Manby

Premiering at Lowry, Salford Quays, is a brand new visual arts initiative, Local / National / International, which presents the work of three artists who share similar themes or work in similar media, in three concurrent, comparative solo exhibitions. Reviewing the first iteration of this new programme, the Fourdrinier Editor Jo Manby explores the work of artists Aliyah Hussain, Paloma Proudfoot and Renee So, all of whom employ ceramics to construct imaginary narratives through a combination of objects, tableaux and installation. Feminist themes occur across the presentation, with gender norms and expectations confronted and historic representations upturned.

https://thelowry.com/pQOk7sP/local---national---international

FREE events (booking required): Paloma Proudfoot Lay Figure Performance Sunday 16 February 2pm

Audio Described and Touch Tour of Local/National/International Thursday 6 February 10.30am

British Sign Language-Led Tour of Local/National/International Sunday 26 January 12pm

United by the medium of ceramics, the three artists featured in Local / National / International (LNI) also share a cultural and literary sensibility and an interest in feminist speculative inquiry. Here, historic subjugations of populations and individuals are sublimated into a dramatic series of concurrent solo exhibitions which reference fashion, psychiatry, colonialism and mythical transformation. Oppressions are redressed, patriarchal power structures capsized.

Moving from one to the other of the three linked exhibitions in LNI, the first in the sequence is ‘Aliyah Hussain / She was waiting for her roots’. Hussain’s entire space, centrally occupying the central of the three first floor galleries, is an enticing imaginarium coated in rich chocolate brown paint that comfortably encloses the viewer. Traceries of glazed ceramic trickle across all four walls, picked out by spotlights in an otherwise dimly lit womb-like cave. The space feels fertile, breathing, organic and alive.

To the right of Local is National, featuring ‘Paloma Proudfoot / Lay Figure’. A clinical light washes over this exhibition, where fabrications of the feminine are flayed, unfurled and displayed before our very eyes, in a series of counterintuitively pastel-coloured, jointed bas relief ceramic depictions, weighted by the undertow of psychiatric history. A performance created by Proudfoot with dancer and choreographer Aniela Piasecka as part of ‘Lay Figure’ launched the exhibitions on preview night (to be repeated at the end of the exhibition). The performance in took place before a spellbound audience in Gallery A at Lowry.

To the left of Local is International, showcasing ‘Renee So / The Essence’. A series of ceramic snuff and perfume bottles, enlarged to around 50cm in height, line up across a long, wall-based plinth, each one charged with cultural import as they reference and critique historic colonialist transgressions. Adjacent is a small room occupied by a reach back into historic culture, the revival of an ancient magic mirror from a plunge into precolonial China, framed in a lacquer red shrine-like goalpost.

I asked Curator of Contemporary Art at Lowry, Zoe Watson to what extent the work on show was specially commissioned, how much of it was work the artists were already making. ‘Each artist used the invitation to create new work informed by their own areas of research, manifesting in ambitious presentations, on a scale that they hadn't worked in before,’ said Watson. I also wondered about the close alignment of the written word and the chosen medium of ceramics. The artists were paired with three writers who each produced an accompanying text:

‘This wasn’t something I knew was there at the start of LNI planning stages. The discussion around books and literary influences came from the joint studio visits that we had; there were so many book titles being shared between the artists that I figured it might be interesting to fold into the show. I’m always interested in finding out what inspires artists. We also talked about things artists listen to while in the studio including podcasts, radio shows and the Olympics which was on [last] summer.
In terms of pairing each artist with a writer, I thought it might be interesting to invite a different voice to interpret the work in a different way; and I left the approach open to the writer, whether that be as a creative writing response, or a more prescriptive piece of text.’

It was important for Watson to showcase artists who despite significant common themes, each have a very personal and idiosyncratic feel for the medium of ceramics. ‘The artists have such a unique approach to ceramics and really push the boundaries of what’s possible with the medium.’

Local: Aliyah Hussain / She was waiting for her roots

I spoke to Aliyah Hussain (b. 1986, Blackburn, lives/works in Todmorden, West Yorkshire) about the processes involved in making ‘She was waiting for her roots’. Watson’s invitation came around 18 months ago; preparation began in earnest about a year ago. Watson arranged for all three of the artists to visit each other’s studios at the back end of summer 2024 so that they could have an exchange of dialogue, about half way through, involving what Hussain describes as ‘lots of nerdy clay chats.’

Hussain’s works were all made on one of AA2A’s unique residency programmes at UCLAN in Preston. Running since 1999, AA2A matches artists in the midst of their creative journeys with one of ten host institutions across England. Hussain compares the experience to ‘an accidentally hacked MA’. She thrived under the busy atmosphere of the university, ‘making new work in amongst lots of people.’ Hussain had originally studied the now discontinued Interactive Arts course at Manchester Metropolitan University. Coming from a painting practice, the Interactive Arts course felt like the right place for her to be. She began to work in ceramics in 2016, repeating 7-Spot Pottery evening classes until she had fine-tuned her skills and then successfully applying for Develop Your Creative Practice with which she ‘did quite a lot of training on the wheel.’

I asked Hussain where her interest in aligning visual art and the written word came from and if it was a recurring theme. ‘My connection to fiction is ongoing,’ she explained. She became interested in the idea of one discipline accompanying another around 2015, when she was making soundtracks, such as Native Tongue, when she was invited by artist Chris Paul Daniels to create an ‘Interruption’ for the Holden Gallery’s film programme, an animation with audio inserted between screenings.

Hussain took as inspiration for ‘She was waiting for her roots’, Anne Richter’s 1967 science fiction short story The Sleep of Plants. In this speculative myth, a woman out of kilter with society decides to slow down her life and creep into a pot to commence anagenetic metamorphosis, burying her roots deep in the soil on her way to becoming a plant. Hussain uses mechanical extrusion to form the stems and branches in her work, the core concept of botanical growth so integral to the work that even the profiles of the mild steel extruders she uses are based on cross sections of parts of plants. The clay falls with its own weight into these torn-edged, long looping forms before being stained in blots and accretions of earth, sap and lichen-coloured glazes.

Standing in Hussain’s room, dotted with outsize model plant-pot furniture, surrounded by the warmth of compost-brown paint and the snaking tendrils of the ceramics, it’s easy to feel that you and the other viewers around you are seeds planted in an enveloping fecund medium. I found the experience profoundly inspiring.

National: Paloma Proudfoot / Lay Figure

Creating large flat areas of clay and linking them together, glazed in a subtle palette of pale pastel colours accented with deep red and blue, Proudfoot (b. 1992, London, lives/works in London) has an instinctive ability to orchestrate a space which the curator of the exhibition has taken care to interpret. Each work is allowed room to breathe on the cream painted walls, plenty of space to articulate the overall narrative.

I asked Proudfoot what process she uses to make her work, as it evidences fascinating technical details. A key influence on Proudfoot’s unusual approach to ceramic is her knowledge of pattern-cutting. ‘I’m mainly self-taught [….] apart from a couple of short courses with a tailor called Joe Allen and at Morley College. I also used to work for other artists fabricating textile works and in sewing jobs for money on the side [….] Before I started using ceramics in my work, I was predominantly using clothes making techniques to make textile sculptures, as well as making costumes for performance, which is still part of my practice.’

The larger frieze works start with sketches and reference photos as a basis for full scale drawings ‘on dot and cross clothes pattern cutting paper. I redraft and segment the drawing into sections that will fit into my kiln. Tracing off the sections, I then work from these flat templates, turning them into ceramic slabs, adding texture, cast body parts and dimension to each section that plays between the initial 2-dimensional shape and a more 3-dimensional form or impression.’ There is a long drying out process before the pieces can be fired and glazed. ‘I’m almost always playing with different ways to construct and dismantle the body, blurring the borders of skin and cloth, interior and exterior, self and other. The fragility and visceral quality of clay is the perfect vehicle for me to explore these aspects.’

I wondered what Proudfoot used to articulate, link and join the various pieces. ‘The articulated mannequin piece Layfigure is held together with taught bungees to allow it to move while still remaining together,’ she explains. ‘The other works are generally not joined together, but are independent sections each held with brass bolts. I often use cord in my works, giving the impression that the bodies are threaded and suspended together such as in Ventriloquy or using the cord to imply a hair line and vacant bodily parts such as in Archivist.’

Watson had mentioned that Proudfoot involves friends as models in her work. Does she actually stage the tableaux as part of the process, to draw from, or just to visualise the final piece? ‘With many of the works in this show I worked from historical photos from the Salpêtrière hospital, paintings of casting room scenes, or my own sketches inspired by these sources. Working from these sources and my drawing, I took reference photos of friends in similar poses, often changing them as new ideas came up in the process.’

Proudfoot describes how the work of French neurologist Jean-Martin Charcot at Salpêtrière was in some senses progressive. Mental health conditions were considered an illness there rather than a criminal act. The hospital, however, as a key institution in the study of hysteria (considered at the time a female affliction common among women), only treated female patients. Some women who were sent there ‘weren’t ill, but had transgressed somehow socially,’ Proudfoot explains. She became interested in the fact that processes of demonstration, diagnosis and treatment of symptoms often involved artistic media – plaster casting, photography and sound. She set about reimagining how these processes might have been enacted: ‘what would a casting scene have looked like?’

Proudfoot tenderly reflects the friendships between these women; they are endowed with an agency they will have been denied at the time. It is as if the women in Proudfoot’s retelling are no longer expected to bear the pain (of flaying, of piercing) but are absolved of it, and the shame that accompanied it too. Swerving the temptation some contemporary artists defer to, Proudfoot does not demonise the mentally ill as othered objects of horror and revulsion. Instead, the silenced voices of these women are rescued from the hidden depths of history in a gentle, yet unflinching manner.

‘Whilst I didn’t want to erase the unsettling nature of this source material altogether, I didn’t want to recreate the often violent and macabre feeling of these images. I think using close friends to model for these works is an important way to make this distinction, and to imbue the female/non-binary figures in the work with greater sense of agency or evoke a more caring dynamic amongst the figures, even if still somewhat sinister.’

International: Renee So / The Essence

Exploring source material referenced in work by Renee So (b. 1974, Hong Kong, lives/works in London), I spot an enamelled glass snuff bottle with an estimate listed at Sotheby’s of 150,000 USD, typical of the high value accorded Chinese artefacts in today’s marketplace. So examines themes of exoticism and exclusivity arising from Western perspectives on the way ‘oriental’ is used to market, brand and promote luxury goods.

Exhibited alongside a series of ceramics inspired by snuff and perfume bottles is a unadorned, sculptural prone figure referencing the controversial Opium perfume advertising campaign of the early 2000s, Yves Saint Laurent’s product represented by a naked Sophie Dahl – an exoticised white woman languorously reclining in a sultry boudoir. In Yves Saint Laurent’s own words: ‘…I wanted a lush, heavy, and languid perfume. I wanted Opium to be captivating, and I wanted its scent to evoke everything I like: the sophisticated Orient, imperial China, and exoticism.’ (1) But presumably only if someone who looked like Sophie Dahl was wearing it.

The scale of So’s snuff and perfume bottle works confront the viewer, commanding our attention, throwing their stereotypical tropes into sharp focus. Examples of these include Snuff by Schiaparelli (2024), shaped like a pipe in glazed earthenware, based on a scent inspired by Belgian Surrealist Rene Magritte’s The Treachery of Images (1929), better known as Ceci n’est pas Un Pipe, and launched with packaging and design by Salvador Dali, ten years after Magritte produced his iconic image. ‘Ting-Shang by Rendes’ (2024) is based on a mid-1920s press moulded colourless glass bottle painted to echo a Chinese theatre mask. For ‘Royal Pekingese by Avon’ (2024) a toy dog is rendered in earthenware and glazed to mimic the opaque white milk glass of the original 1970s hollow figurine, which was filled with a perfume called ‘Somewhere’. ‘Nuit de Chine by Rosine’ (2024) is based on a perfume bottle that took its inspiration from a container of opium, originally named ‘Nuit d’Orient’. At the far left of the display is a snuff bottle shaped like a (perfumier’s) nose, and ‘Buddha’s Hand’ Snuff Bottle (2024), yellow in colour and with a jade green lid, is inspired by the traditional motif of the fragrant citrus medica lemon, used to perfume houses in China and Japan. Princeton University Art Museum displays an amber snuff bottle which is similarly shaped, dating from between 1780–1850, (Qing dynasty, 1644–1912).

So’s snuff and perfume bottles, alongside the pale ceramic reclining nude, evocatively critique Western imperialism and colonialism, with facets of Chinese history weaving in and out of the line-up, key among which is the reimagined bottle of Yves Saint Laurent Opium perfume. The First Opium War, fought between China and Britain from 1839-1842, broke out when China destroyed opium stocks owned by British merchants and the British East India Company. Britain was oppressing the Chinese population by flooding the market with the intoxicating drug. Following the Second Opium War of 1856-1860, where China was pitted against France and Britain, China was forced to legalise opium.

To name a perfume after the ruinous product that had led to China’s so-called Century of Humiliation, the ceding of Hong Kong to Britain, and the sacking and burning of the Old Summer Palace, the main imperial residence of the Qing Dynasty Qianlong Emperor and his successors, is highly offensive. The whitewashed advertising of YSL Opium with a Caucasian model only serves to capitulate this insult.

For LNI, So also exhibits new work that explores a different area of  interest, with links back to the local. The rich culture of the East prior to colonialism and the Opium Wars is evoked in her magic mirror and goalpost that together reference the ancient ballgame cuju, practiced by women in ancient China, and predating football. With a nod to the Mancunian/ Salfordian sporting pursuit of choice, So acknowledges the character of Lowry’s locale. Magic mirrors, dating back to the Han (206BC-220CE) and Song (960-1279CE) dynasties, have an arcane property: an image inscribed on the reverse of a bronze disc can be projected, with carefully angled light source, onto a screen set up in front of it. So commissioned her particular magic mirror from a Mr Yamamoto, a fifth generation magic mirror maker who is the last of his profession in Japan.

Paloma Proudfoot Lay Figure Performance

Themes of technical wizardry, tricks of the light, mythmaking and transformation, salvaging from the past, recuperation of wrongs, were all present in the performance by Aniela Piasecka in Paloma Proudfoot’s ‘Lay Figure’ exhibition. Piasecka is the same woman who modelled for the main figure standing on a table, one shin being surgically flayed in Proudfoot’s unsettling ceramic tableau that unfolds across the gallery wall. She performed a silent enactment of femininity caught like a caged bird in the machinations of nascent psychiatry. Informed by Proudfoot’s research into the Salpêtrière Hospital in Paris in the 1800s, the performance was accompanied by an audio track populated by the tick of a metronome and the twang of a tuning fork.

I asked Proudfoot if it was the intention that the performer seemed to inhabit the work (almost stepping off the table in the tableau, then wearing the wearable bodice sculpture). ‘Yes, we wanted the performance to directly interact with the work, with Piasecka wearing and engaging with the sculptures, such as Layfigure, the articulating mannequin bodice and Correspondences, the quilted envelope top, but also for Piasecka’s movement to play off the ceramic frieze compositions.’ The team were equally interested in exploring ‘the idea of shifting gaze and the agency of the sitter or performer in how they are seen. The performance shifts the sense of being watched back onto the audience.’

In this balletic madrigal, the protagonist reanimated the ceramic tableaux, teetering on their heels and the tips of their toes, rocking infinitesimally slowly, unhooking a wearable ceramic sculpture complete with zip and dolls’ articulated arms, and putting it on, as an absent-minded woman might try on a bodice to go with a satin skirt. While the bodice was on the hook, it slowly rotated, showing the reverse to be a roughly textured, crimson glazed interior. ‘Piasecka also modelled for the reference photo for the frieze work, further heightening this shift in gaze, from the static subject of the ceramic work to the performer at the centre of the space, engaging the audience with their eyes.’

It was as if a figure had stepped down off the ceramic table and onto the floor – then donned the ceramic bodice, as if they were being absorbed back onto the ceramic plane. It wouldn’t seem so strange if the performance was to continue indefinitely, the protagonist wearing, taking off, stepping out of, and back into, the ceramic tableaux, as the day-to-day routines of the galleries went on as usual all around.

Footnote

1) André Leon Talley, “YSL, on Opium,” Women’s Wear Daily, September 18, 1978 cited by Yves Saint Laurent Paris website, retrieved 26/11/2024

This review is supported by Lowry

Texts commissioned by Lowry to accompany the exhibitions:

https://thelowry.com/pQZwrUl/she-was-waiting-for-her-roots---aliyah-hussain

https://thelowry.com/pQab5TO/paloma-proudfoot---lay-figure

https://thelowry.com/pQDZXC5/the-essence---renee-so