past exhibition | Louise Ashcroft: UPLANDS: Utopia I.O.U. | 22 April - 23 May 2021
Bobinska Brownlee is delighted to present a new animation work by Louise Ashcroft.
Uplands: Utopia I.O.U. is made from digitally collaged fragments of an industrial estate adjacent to her home in Walthamstow, north London.
Characters conjured from the trash and asphalt find themselves entangled in a darkly comic narrative poem which rifles through the socio-economic clutter of 2021.
The show is an aggressively cathartic, hallucinogenic love letter to the (es)tate we’re in, as we emerge from plague and isolation and work out how to live together again.
The viewing room features limited edition seating welded from drain covers (a toilet humour nod to infrastructure enthusiasts) and a series of limited edition guest soaps embedded with mud and grit exfoliants from the estate and its environs will be available to take away: “...wash your face dirtier, while reflecting on who owns the land and how is it used, in this rapidly-changing part of London”.
The artist will also run a Trashcameo, a litter-picking and character development ‘walkshop’ towards the end of the exhibition. Trashcameo critically parodies the recent craze for NFT cryptocurrency tokenised artworks: trash is alchemised into treasure in the form of digitally collaged characters who the artist hopes to monetise (off-blockchain in various ways) in order to fund a series of Trashcameo walks across the UK and further afield…
Vermin, an analogue ‘app’ in the form of an interactive postcard has been made to celebrate the launch of the show and help you re-enter social life.
Louise Ashcroft is a graduate of Ruskin School of Art Oxford and Birkbeck College London. She teaches at Goldsmiths London and is co-founder of the alternative art school AltMFA.
Recent exhibitions include Frans Hals Museum Haarlem, solos at Arebyte and Deptford X, Turf Projects Croydon (billboard commission) three audio commissions for BBC Sounds, as well as performances or participation in events at Museum of London, Gerrit Rietveld Academie online, Open Space Contemporary, BQ Berlin, Salisbury Arts Centre, Artsadmin, Coastal Currents Festival, Fringe! and Art Night.
At Museum of London, Gerrit Rietveld Academie online, Open Space Contemporary, BQ Berlin, Salisbury Arts Centre, Artsadmin, Coastal Currents Festival, Fringe! and Art Night. She has performed at Latitude and Supernormal festivals, as well as Wellcome Collection Lates. Residencies include Tate Modern learning department, Camden Arts Centre families department, Z.U.T. Lisbon and Yinka Shonibare's Guest Projects London. Bursaries include Artsadmin, Artists Fund and AN.
The gallery is open Monday - Sunday by appointment. We're located in Canonbury, Islington, a couple of minutes from Essex Road rail, and a ten minute walk from Angel or Highbury & Islington tube.
Visitors should contact the gallery to arrange a viewing slot and for address details. A drinks reception will take place on Saturday 22 May - please contact the gallery for further details/RSVP.
Images: Max Colson