‘Around You, Within You, or Nowhere At All’

MADE IN BED’s Reviews Editor, Olivia Wilson, visits Pippa El-Kadhi Brown’s exhibition at Ashurst’s art space. As receiver of the Overall Award for the ‘Ashurst Emerging Artist Prize 2020’, Pippa is currently exhibiting there until April 2021 and it is not to be missed (dates subject to change due to Covid-19).

The exhibition, Around You, Within You, Or Nowhere At All, explores the concept of the home as a conscious space, existing physically and psychologically. A space that encapsulates our pure lived experience, even more so during a time of consistent lockdowns, the home environment embodies an authentic sense of self. In the solace of our homes we are not an intimation of what we think we should be or are told to be by society. Home is where we drop the visage we hold up in public. Pippa reflects this idea in her works, presenting us with a kaleidoscope of fragmented images, memories and, perhaps most importantly, sensations.

“As the nation has once again taken to the safety of their homes, our complicated relationship with domestic space grows more and more eerie.” - Pippa

Floater, 64.5 x 89.5 cm, oil and acrylic on canvas.

 Contrarily, the home can also offer an insight into one’s desired sense of self.  In this way, living spaces are reflections of inner worlds, but are simultaneously masks, fashioned facades, where perceptions can be manipulated through displaying certain objects, ornaments placed purposefully, to model how we want to be perceived by others. This dichotomy is central to Pippa’s exhibition and how she presents her works in the space. It also relates to the title, Around You, Within You and Nowhere At All, referencing the home as a physical space you can enter into, but also as something existing in the consciousness, beyond the physical realm.

 “I explore the home in order to challenge the fascinating, and also rather terrifying, idea of what it is to ‘be’. Above all, this extraordinary notion of being is my greatest stimulation.  Our intimate homes; our private sanctuaries, offer a tangible insight into us as human-beings, creatures, thinkers, and feelers, demonstrating the fine line between the physical and the conscious, as the two merge and separate in tandem.” - Pippa

Pippa’s large-scale works Takeaway?, Rotten Tomatoes, and Yucca, are all-consuming and confronting. When one stands in front of the canvases, it feels as if you are a part of the scenes portrayed. When viewing Rotten Tomatoes, you join the figures sat at the table, the kitchen surrounding you. The thick impasto adds an unrestrained, gestural and three-dimensional quality to the canvas.

Rotten Tomatoes, 178 x 209 cm, oil on canvas.

Pippa frequently utilises altered perspectives and distorted spaces, like in Yucca. In the background a manipulated sitting room, and a swerving staircase in the foreground. This composition challenges our concept of interior versus exterior. In this way, the domestic interior becomes a limitless entity, unconfined. Pippa believes this allows it to ‘exist in the consciousness’ as well as physically. Pippa’s lines are purposeful and defined, and her use of colour extensive.

Yucca, 239 x 209 cm, oil on canvas

The exhibition space itself is reminiscent of a domestic environment with armchairs, coffee tables and ‘domestic relics’. Collectively, they evoke a sense of the person who might inhabit such a space. On the floor in front of The Smart Cat Does Not Let On That She Is (2019) there is a dominoes game, echoing the game in the painting. Pippa extracts certain pictorial elements and brings them into our physical realm, so that we can reach out and touch them.

The Smart Cat Doesn’t Let On That She Is, 148 x 148 cm, acrylic on canvas.

“I have always been drawn to the idea of bringing the physically domestic into the exhibition space, as a way to prompt the psychological experience of viewing the works. My curators, Louis Chapple and Aya Koudounaris, and I were selective about what objects accompanied the pieces. We wanted them to have agency no matter the size, whilst simultaneously being able to merge and blend with the works around them. Potted houseplants bring organic life to the space, an out-dated home phone sits amongst a matte silver VCR player and small kitsch figurines take the forms of porcelain cats and velvet Santas. Each exhibited work is reflected in various objects in some way, placing the viewer within the painting and inside the mind-set as they move around the intimate, and at the same time public, domestic space.” – Pippa

Following a year during which we spent considerable amounts of time inside, this exhibition and its curatorial concept seem particularly poignant. Our homes are our sanctuaries: where we sleep, eat, and everything in between. Pippa’s body of work is instinctual, expressive and will no doubt stay with you long after you leave the exhibition.

Follow Pippa on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, or visit her website.

All images sourced from emergingartistgallery.com.

Olivia Wilson

Reviews Editor, MADE IN BED