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LEITH ELDER
I'M JUST SCARED YOU KNOW (EVERYBODY IS) 17 SEPTEMBER-11 OCTOBER 1998 Leith Elder's exhibition conjured a strange kind of surreal space, where objects floated as if we were inside someone else's dream. And like dreams (and surrealism) the elements in the installation flipped back and forth from benign humour to a darker sense of circularity. Lit by little plug-in lights that run the perimeter of the space, like theatre-aisle lights, or lights from a Disney cartoon epic, stood rows of cast and split cats of the Chinese 'good luck' variety. The cats with upraised paws were lorded over by a silhouette of a cat with its tail raised, an archetypal image, its form described by black velvet, absorbing the light. Elder's use of different materials with different properties (plaster, velvet, gloss-painted wood, polished parquetry, light) acted to suggest the mutability of each. There came a point when, after orientating ourselves within the installation, it started to unravel again, and we're not sure just what is going on. |
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| installation view | Documentation Photography by Stephen Gray |