Alice Theobald: Weddings and Babies
Overview
Pilar Corrias is pleased to present Weddings and Babies, Alice Theobald's second solo show with the gallery comprised of the artist's recent 3D film work, The Next Step, new sculptures and sound based installation, devised around a scripted and unscripted human interaction.
Alice Theobald's practice draws upon a mixture of pop cultural references to develop multifaceted installations, which incorporate sculpture, music, performance, and video. Theobald's works point to the substance of their fabrication through playing with the metaphorical potential of language, sound, and movement while directly addressing accepted concepts of spectacle and emotion.
Weddings and Babies explores the anxieties of 'Thatcher's Children', the reconciliation of neoliberal and societal aspiration with the realities of parenthood and ageing, and the subsequent effect on relationships and language.
The exhibition creates situations that temporarily casts its viewers as performers. Astroturf wends its way around two sandbag walls, leading the audience towards the rear of the gallery and down the stairs. Dotting the path are three sculptures; spot-lit mic stands adjusted to varying human heights. Like anthropomorphised lecterns each supports a perspex panel upon which scripted dialogues and drawings are inscribed on the recto/verso. As a counter to this, the unscripted dialogue of passers-by is broadcast into the gallery from the street captured by means of an externally installed baby monitor.
At the top of the stairs members of the audience are urged to descend via a stairlift sound installation, their journey accompanied by the sound of the repeated mantra, "He never imagined he'd be so moved […]", ringing in their ears. The work transports the passenger to the next stage of the exhibition, both physically and metaphysically, readying them to alight in the immersive space of the 3D lm installation in the lower gallery: the next step as it were.
Alice Theobald (b. 1985 Leicester) lives and works in Huntingdon and graduated from the Royal Academy Schools in 2014. Recent performances, exhibitions, and film screenings include: Two Queens, Leicester (2016); BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art, Gateshead (2015/16); FRAC Champagne-Ardenne, Reims (2016); Evelyn Yard, London (2016); Lisson Gallery, London (2015); Focal Point, Southend (2015), Wysing Arts Centre, Cambridge (2015); Flat Time House, London (2015); Open Source, Gillett Square, London (2015); Nosbaum Reding Projects, Luxembourg.(2015); South London Gallery, London (2014); Outpost, Norwich (2014); Chisenhale Gallery, London (2014); Modern Art Oxford, Oxford (2013), Spike Island, Bristol (2014); V22, London (2013); Pilar Corrias Gallery, London (2013); Gasworks, London (2013); The Horse Hospital, London (2013); ICA, Singapore (2012). She is currently working on an opera as a member of Ravioli Me Away ( w/ Siân Dorrer and Rosie Ridgway) at Wysing Arts Centre, touring to Nottingham Contemporary and BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art in 2018