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Tea experience and installation inspired by Japanese tea ceremonies and board game play. The piece draws on the 1906 english text 'Book of Tea', by Okakura Kakuzo which invites citizens to ‘cherish their unpolished selves’.
At the centre of the installation is a bespoke ‘tea table’ in the form of an esoteric board game. Tablecloths are displaced to uncover both the table and inconvenient truths.
Benches fashioned from bales of vintage tablecloths are designed to cause guests to rise and sit simultaneously as they move around the table in an act of solidarity that ensures their mutual stability.
Even on my knees’, 2018-19.
A participatory public installation within the Upside Down Table exhibition that celebrates vulnerability. Its form suggested by ancient Torii gates of Shinto shrines.
The installation canopy and floor tapestry expand as new visitors share their reflections through selection of objects. These are added anonymously to the canopy and floor tapestry on public view.
Visitors were invited to attach words of encouragement for other visitors into the tapestry. Taking a moment to acknowledge the hurts and scars that all humans share.
Photos: Bernadette Baksa, 2018
Plywood, recycled felt, vegetable tanned leather, vintage lace and linen textiles.
Bespoke tea table and guidance card.
Example items concealed within the flaps in the tea table designed and fabricated by the artist.
The site-specific installation in a disused cork factory adjacent to a London Underground station, accessible to people living, working and passing through a cultural and commercial hub in London, SE1.
Observers peer through hangings of sculpted lace and linen tablecloths to watch progressive tea ceremony unfold.
Even on My Knees, 2018
Vintage teapot cover on Bamboo cane, gold leaf and clay.
Progressive canopy installation and reflection tapestry developing within Upside Down Table exhibition.
Winner ‘Art Installation of the Year’
Objects as thresholds to past memories and imaginary futures, 2024.
In this multi-sensory installation as provocation drawing on Jean Baudrillard's 1968 text, 'The System of Objects', the artist explores how fragments of family lineage and fragments of objects might intersect in the present, past or an imagined future.
Liminale describes a state of limbo when one becomes slowly untethered from one's authentic origin story, as adopted identities of affinity or fancy fuse into one.
At the centre of the installation is a large, transient structure matching the artist's precise 1.68m stature. A tarpaulin, light ropes, five heavily stuffed hessian sacks and a collection of stones share the burden of support.
The soundscape incorporates water, birdsong and bells, with the scent-scape of rosemary, sage, citrus & clove to stimulate comfort and memory.
Liminale is the Italian translation of the English word, liminal.
Site-specific work for the Casino Nazionale, Lucca Province, Italy.
Supported by Borgo Degli Artisti.
Installation view: tarpaulins, stones, fragments, ropes and sacks tethered and transformed into individual and collective objects of significance.
Natural rock painted with gold metallic base, printed photograph and attached metal piece becomes a stone artefact, an object of memory.
Stone artefact made from natural rock with gold acrylic and fragments of other objects.
Speculation for an ancient - or futuristic head piece.
Speculative instrument
Speculative instrument.
Stone artefact including photograph of the artist and her family.
VIDEO: POLITUS (Refined) : What we choose to remember
Tyler Moorehead, 2019. Running time 11:09
Politus is a silent performative exploration of respectability, aspiration and class, through domestic artefact.
The artist uses items to hand to reflect on the symbols of refinement cherished by her mother. In the process of memorialising one symbol of respectability, she defiles another.
Politus was installed at Tate Modern ‘Art on Air’ as a response to Kara Walker’s Fons Americanus in the adjacent Turbine Hall. The piece takes its name from Walker’s insight ‘what we choose to remember’.
The silent piece uses the shadow of cut crystal glasses as a symbol to explore patterns of achievement, acceptability and assimilation among the black middle classes.
Seeking to acknowledge her elders, whilst denying the power of these cultural expectations, the artist uses wine and condiments to hand to memorialise the image of crystal glasses on a fine linen tablecloth.
Photographs: Malcolm Dixon
