I thought I was the audience and then I looked at you

Ruth Claxton

The second in a series of three exhibitions in which artists re-version works for Taxi Gallery.
Ruth Claxton's installation, originally exhibited at EAST International last summer, presents the viewer with a deceptively colourful, kitsch tableau, a crowd of isolated ornaments all ‘looking’ in the same direction but blinded in endlessly different ways. As the viewer walks around the piece he/she becomes both a part of the audience and the object of their gaze.

Ruth says "I began using ornaments because they are a kind of everyday sculptural object. I am interested in the way they are modelled, the way the aesthetic of the object is almost secondary to the practicalities of manufacture, a hierachy which results in forms which are generalised versions of their subjects. In particular I am interested in the way these approximations signify an aspirational desire to be, a more romantic, somewhere else."

The installation for Taxi Gallery transformed the vehicle into a bizarre ornament cabinet, which because of the placement of all the figures with their backs turned facing the house literally drew curious viewers into the garden.

pdf review of this exhibition by Thora Blondal