Download here the Visitor's guide. - Les Ateliers de Rennes

LYDIA GIFFORD
Dell, 2012. Installation view. Courtesy galery Laura Bartlett, London.
Les Prairies's artists
Lydia Gifford has developed a wider approach to painting, bordering on the
immaterial. Traces of paint, pencil or dust, spread about the exhibition space, are
suggestive of acts and intentions left purposely uncompleted. "My work attempts
to create an impression of beginning", she has explained. Dell (2012), which was
created for her one-woman show at the David Roberts Art Foundation, London, is
an installation in situ of long wooden planks arranged in parallel on the floor or
propped up on breezeblocks and covered in places with a layer of charcoal ash.
The physical impact of moving them is left visible, as are the curves of the sagging
boards (Dell in the sense of 'valley') and the traces of ash that, stencil-like, reveal
the negative space of the structure. After being sieved, the dust is spread in layers,
which gives a sense of weight and density in utter contrast to the natural properties
of so light a material. In reworking the installation for the Ateliers de Rennes, Lydia
Gifford produces a silent choreography that connects the architecture of the site to
the subtle balance between orchestrated and improvised movement.
F. O. tr. J.H.
Born in 1979 in Cheltenham (Great-Britain), lives and works in London
(Great-Britain).
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