CURRENT EXHIBITION

In an effort to increase our support of Artists during the current Public Health Restrictions we will be highlighting the work of scheduled exhibitions here on our website, on social media and incorporating works by the artists available for sale into the Gift Shop. We have extended the gift shop to allow for a safer shopping experience.

The scheduled Gallery Exhibition for this time was

New Materialisms by Arianna Richardson

Artist Statement

I want to understand the many implications of the late-capitalist, hyper-consumptive society that
we are embedded in: my practice and research revolve around the intersections between
environmentalism, materiality, labour, agency, feminism, ubiquitous consumption, excessive
decoration, and spectacle.

My work takes the form of interactive sculptures that mimic or modify everyday objects such as
garbage cans, advertising signage, and absurdist consumer products. These objects are
functional and require direct interaction with an audience for their completion. I frequently use
feminized, hobby-craft techniques such as cross-stitching, knitting, embroidery, and sewing,
introducing intensively laborious, hand-crafted production to vernacular objects that are typically
mass-produced with great speed and efficiency. Aesthetically, my work pushes the boundaries
of kitsch and maximalist, over-decoration.

I use performance in my work, adopting the pseudonym of The Hobbyist, to activate my created
objects and act as a public face to spread a message of environmental awareness and agency.
My performances are where I work through my own climate-crisis anxiety, frustration, and
despair, creating an imaginary, handmade world in which humorous and absurd individual
actions can make a difference against the gigantic environmental catastrophe we currently find
ourselves in.

My sparkly, seemingly superficial aesthetic invites the viewer in to a difficult conversation,
disarming their typical responses to a subject that makes us feel powerless and frustrated,
making space for a consideration of our collective complicity in a system of destruction and
oppression and ways that we might try to intervene and stimulate change.