Feet. Brain. Back Again.
Galeri, Caernarfon, 2022
Solo exhibition (first iteration)
Galeri Caernarfon is happy to announce Sarah Ryder’s first solo exhibition in Wales.
For over 20 years Ryder has worked with a variety of materials to test out concepts of expanded painting, often making 2D works that transform into 3D. Underpinned by notions of imperfection, temporality, the structure of systems, and the balance of chaos and control, Ryder’s processes fluctuate between playful and contemplative – both states being equal to, and dependant on the other.
This latest body of work sees Ryder focus predominantly on making paintings with aluminium foil as a substrate to work on, and with. The paintings vary in size from small wall-based pieces to a large suspended installation in Galeri!s atrium. The floor-based ‘repose series’ have their forms defined by the aftermath of someone being enveloped in the painting then creeping out, leaving a freestanding piece structurally settled by the action and space a body once took.
Rutger Bregman’s book ‘Humankind’and Ece Temelkuran’s book ‘Together’ are significant inspirations for Ryder, with their thoughtful and empowering words on the age we live in. In particular, the assertion from Temelkuran that:
“…all the insanity of our times is the consequence of the collapse of a system, not the collapse of humankind.”
Ryder’s foil paintings are defiantly never finished; almost fluid in an ever-adapting status of iterations, vulnerable in the time they have yet strong, open, and active in creating the possibilities of their future.
