ALICE MARDEN
Our bodies are constantly navigating through space, engaging in a dance with obstacles and paths that surround us. Architecture, in its quiet authority, inscribes itself on our bodies. We duck under beams, align with walls, and pass through frames; we contort and adapt the spatial rules around us. Subconsciously, our bodies ask, How do I stand in relation to what is imposing on me, and how does my body transform to it.
A faint tiled interior and a dampened hallway sit just beneath the surface, absorbed by the layer that behaves like skin. The waxy, translucent surface laid bare on the cold metal surface becomes a membrane, something that both covers and records contact. Colour moves across the works the way it moves across a body, catching on the green and yellow hues beneath the skin, suggesting the body's inner mechanisms.
Through the active technique of screen-printing, I was able to emphasise the tactility and the residue of ‘movement’ explored in the photographs. The print becomes an analogue to skin, capable of receiving pressure, holding memory, or wearing its own deterioration. In this way, the work collapses distinctions between interior and exterior, structure and flesh.
Screenprint on aluminium, encaustic wax
45 x 30 cm
Screenprint on Steel, Encaustic Wax
87 x 55 cm
Screenprint on aluminium, latex
46 x 30 cm
Screenprint on aluminium, encaustic wax
60 x 30 cm