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Alison Rylands

ajrylands9@gmail.com
07803 035534

Studio 31 Acme Studios
165 Childers Street
Deptford
London
SE8 5JR

Alison Rylands statement 2020

A preoccupation with stone cairns, teetering towers and ubiquitous packaging is enthusiastically expressed in a series of overtly playful balancing Babels. Listing spires of resin and plaster present clear, fondant coloured and monochrome
markers to disposable consumerism and adult ambition. These saccharine stacks similarly reference Hermes the Olympian God of transitions and boundaries who, according to mythology, was the origin of the first Greek cairn.

A series of sculptures with concerns around a duty of care reflect on the transience of potency and the inevitable apotheosis of physical frailty. Casts of disposable hospital urinals are stacked in pyramidal pyres, assuming the air of defiant deities - monuments to past vitality and prescient vulnerability. These innately masculine moulds are transfigured in their solid state, rendered gender fluid by the mutability of their making.

White or graphite bandaged reliefs evoke images of Iron-Age man preserved in peat bogs for 2,000 years. Recalling the tanned, rustily burnished bodies of Bog People from Northern European wetlands, mutely frozen in thrall to medieval torture and trauma. These subterranean sleepers unearthed in pitted perfection, the crumpled refugees of rot and decay, are transcribed in textile layers reminiscent of mummified remains. Testament to mortal delicacy and the turbulent linen of life, love and death.

Rorschach monotypes on vintage maps, polishing cloths, fluorescent or gilt paper, provide a pigmented diary of mirrored moments in mind. Suspended on bulldog clips to waft and wave like laundered semaphore or Tibetan prayer flags, these molten impressions clink and sway on their fixings like sailboat rigging in haunting percussion.

As with all these elements, ranks of plaster and resin preserved Veil's of Veronica owe everything to the reliquary, the shroud and the shrine. Domestic napery and distressed dishcloths stand in for devotion and belief in the face of adversity . Precious unprepossessing fragments of faith, preserved with spiritual wonder.