Untitled Period Piece

Solo exhibition

25 September – 11 December 2016
Vleeshal (Map)

Curator: Roos Gortzak

Working primarily as a sculptor, Amanda Ross-Ho uses a diverse range of materials and techniques. Her large-scale works variously combine readymade or found objects and images with other elements that she meticulously crafts. Their production can be mechanized or engage with traditional handicrafts such as hand-dyeing, weaving, applique, quilting and sewing. Within her exhibitions, prosaic objects from the domestic or studio environment are translated and transformed with dramatic effect. Small objects such as hair accessories, earrings, drawing instruments or scalpel blades are defamiliarised through a process of enlargement. Items of clothing or latex gloves worn in the studio are similarly scaled-up to reveal the colourful, abstract schema in the haphazard marks left by pigments, paint and ink. Her work investigates the sculptural relationship of objects to the body, alternating between an association with objects that are intimate, wearable or ornamental and an idea of scale that verges on the architectural or monumental.

Her exhibition at Vleeshal presented a new body of work exploring themes of labour, time and economy. UNTITLED PERIOD PIECE fits within Amanda Ross-Ho’s series of exhibitions that examines the relationship between the universal (title) and the specific (time). ‘Period piece’ refers to films set in an earlier time period, that offer a cinematic snapshot of a historical moment, such as Charlie Chaplin’s Modern Times. By including an inverted barbershop’s clock and a series of identical garments, enlarged and produced on site, the installation became a theatrical worksite. The space featured a series of sculptures that took the form of workbenches with mirrored surfaces displaying miniature sculptures and small objects from mass-produced baby sneakers to prehistoric silverfish rendered as 3D prints. The exhibition was Amanda Ross-Ho’s first solo exhibition in the Netherlands and was co-commissioned with Bonner Kunstverein, where it opened in a different form on 27 January 2017.