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Head to Head

A two-person exhibition at Castlefield Gallery in Manchester, exhibited works clustered around the theme of face/façade. Prior to this exhibition, I performed ‘Facing’ (2012) at the Cornerhouse Gallery, Manchester. ‘Facing’ was a solo performance about how we relate to others through the face. This theme was continued in the three new works exhibited in ‘Head to Head’. ‘Domestique’ (2010-13) was a series of over 70 dishcloths embroidered with faces (37 were exhibited). It asks what happens (as with the anonymity of sweatshop laborers who made the dishcloths) when a face is no longer present? The work drew on Face-to-Face by Levinas and its thinking around the human face and our social responsibility to each other. The second body of work in the exhibition was ‘Façadism’ (2013 -) short stories about faces and building façades. ‘Façadism’ was presented as a group of A1 posters, pasted directly onto the gallery walls. ‘Façadism’ takes its title from architectural terminology describing the practice of demolishing a building while maintaining its façade. Designed by the Fraser Muggeridge Studio, the stories were mocked up to resemble photocopies of an old book. Pages were unnumbered and the writing is ongoing. The final work in this grouping was a series of frottage’s of the fronts of banks. Titled ‘Histoire Economique’ (2013), the work was a palimpsest of Max Ernst’s ‘Histoire Naturelle’ (1926). While Ernst’s exquisite rubbings were made in his studio, the rubbings in ‘Histoire Economique’ were taken from the fronts of banks; made outdoors in the City of London. ‘Histoire Economique’ was inspired by a story from my novella ‘Common’, in which I write about becoming a bank rubber. Dishcloths from ‘Domestique’ will be shown at the Mead Gallery, Warwick University, in Autumn 2013 (other artists include: Fischli and Weiss, and Francis Alys).