Vibrant Matter

At The Bearded Tit, Redfern Emma Price asked me to do the window of the bar, and in response to the surrounding area and Jane Bennett's wonderful book https://www.dukeupress.edu/Vibrant-Matter/, I installed a hodge-podge installation...haha you can see my fat feet in the bottom photo...

Trashcan Dreams

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October 2010
Trashcan Dreams at The Performance Space
with dancers Morisan Yasuaki and Lina Ritchie
The title comes from an Elton John song; Mona Lisa and Mad Hatters
There were many elements to this exhibition, primarily I was responding to the site with my collection and with pieces that would provide an environment to respond to. The dancers, from Japan, worked in collaboration with the materials, over a nine day intense period, where we explored a huge variety of movement.
The work consisted of vast quantities of plastic collected over the last ten years from my local neighbours and friends. Many of the plastics were re-cycled from other exhibitions, being re-fashioned for this event.
The piece I am most proud of; Kyoto copy was made entirely of plastics and is a literal copy of a piece I saw in Kyoto in 2009.


Working with colour, materials, video and objects, interacting with the space and reacting to site-specific as well as historical contexts within the site.

Rectangular dance workshops with participants

Fear Not

A shrine to all women 2005, based on the piece by James Hampton, The Throne of the Third Heaven of the Nations' Millennium General Assembly. Hampton had spent his lifetime as a janitor, but when he died, they found he had created a wondrous installation of artifacts, wrapped in tin foil. It is the most remarkable endeavour, absolutely fantastic, and he died without being recognised. This show, curated by DJ Robert Lake called Seven Beauties entails seven hard working artist women who play together and have social ties in and out of the art world. He curated it based on this.

I collected objects from all the women in the show; Lisa Andrew, Mishka Borowski, Sadie Chandler, Maria Cruz, Elizabeth Day, Elizabeth Pulie and wrapped these, as well as domestic objects and ephemera, to create a dazzling montage. I am in love with chocolate, and the wrapping really reflected that, but I also remember when I was young, my father (single after my mother's death) was a swinging bachelor, and he wallpapered his bedroom with aluminium foil. Installing these objects into this shrine formation on an upturned tabletop filled with water added to the reflective qualities, and also happened to host a colony of mosquito larvae for the duration of the show! I had been looking at the Taj Mahal, and was mightily impressed.Fear Not was borrowed from Hampton as well. It seemed a fitting epithet for a group of women all singularly trying to make it in the art world.

Essay

I wish I were bigger


Fatter? Taller? More famous? Or just giant?


I wish my work was bigger!
The stain on the carpet looks like spew. The day I was minding the show outside on the pavement someone had done a big red spew and I knew I had done right.



Catalogue Essay

Sarah Goffman’s wish to be ‘bigger’ is a clue to the ethos of her latest installation. If only she was more capacious, then she might be able to harbour all the junk in the world. This passion for objects may be read as a symptom of intense curiosity. While studying literature at university, Goffman was plagued by the thought that she could never read everything, marvelling at libraries stacked with more books than she could hope to absorb. Evidently she feels the same way about all the detritus she now seeks out. Her plaintive proclamation may be understood as the inevitable outcome of a collector’s obsession, or the manifestation of a desire to save the planet from rubbish. Indeed, the two aims may be intertwined in an altruistic yet covetous drive to improve the environment.
Goffman’s installation, made almost completely from found materials, is full of intriguing combinations, seemingly infinite in their variation, like a microcosm of the world made from trash. Here, the artist suggests new aesthetic forms for things which are usually despised or beneath notice. Arranged in organic formations, these cast-offs appear compellingly beautiful. A tree branch in a giant bag, plastic shopping bags sport customised pockets and toilet paper is embroidered like exquisite craftwork. Commonplace items are repeatedly transformed from the prosaic into the decorative, blurring the boundaries between categories.
While this composition may be read as an inspiring DIY dream, or a masterpiece of waste management, darker themes may be discerned. The structures on display have unmistakably apocalyptic resonances, suggesting a crumbling cityscape after a disaster. Miniaturised scaffolding submerged in a fishtank illuminated by a floating strobe, with stained carpet beneath, summons up the spectre of civil decay. Here, nature is visibly damaged by artificial constructions, but is itself already man-made and mass-produced, reflecting the perils of excess. In spite of these black undercurrents, humour is evident in various distortions of scale: scaffolding inside a fishtank, a small box labelled ‘Extra Large’ and a miniature newspaper mountainscape.
Goffman’s collections could be understood as a way of filling the void, a compensation for loss or momento mori. After all, every collection is a constant reminder of the very reality it has been created to stave off. The objects she covets are talismans of an inverted conoisseurship, each piece the grave of a past desire. Many of the materials Goffman puts to use will be around long after we are gone, given their virtually indestructible, toxic qualities. In this installation, people are absent except in caricatural forms while inanimate objects testify to the folly of our endeavours. Inhabiting a blackened zone, an empty motorcycle suit hangs surrounded by an audience of cut-out faces. Elsewhere, money and ashes sit side by side on glass, as in a macabre shop display, posing an equivalence between human life and hard currency.
B.L.Magner

I

Install detail I wish I were bigger 2003 Solo show at Scott Donovan Gallery, Liverpool Street
Found motorbike rider's suit, lace gown, goggles filled with sand, embroidered toilet paper, light, tissue box, candied nuts, hot glue bowls and cubes, plastic bag with orange on glass plate, found table.

Protect me from what I want found Simple shoe box

Newspaper mountain
Newspaper, water, tray

After you

After you 2003

Rubber band face detail and painted Vitawheat biscuit I've got love in my tummy

bubbling light fog machine

mirror, found objects, wooden fruit, tissue box, wire, paper, hot glue, paintings on canvas Someone told me I should try painting

Front Room Kitchen

Trouble

Texter on Kleenex tissues.

Found book

More trouble

Top Found postcard with plastic and hot glue

Centre Repetitive texter on blotting paper (site specific work)

Bottom Detail Glass beaker, water, styrofoam, light

I used a lot of different coloured detergents and liquid soaps in the show, Playing on their scents and different pearlised colours.

A factor of my shows has to do with experimenting with putting objects out into the gallery environment. I am constantly learning how to install, always trying.