Following the success of her solo exhibition 'The Dark Self' with the York Museums Trust and Arts Council England, we will be exhibiting the works by Susan Aldworth in our project space on the ground floor at the 30th London Art Fair.

 

The exhibition was inspired by her research into the experience of sleep during a three-year residency at the University of York.  Aldworth, a highly original artist renowned for her experimental printmaking techniques, challenges us to reflect upon our nightly transitions from consciousness to oblivion.

 

Sleeping is an act we cannot will: we speak of falling asleep, of sleep overcoming us. The folds and creases of the pillow speak both of the struggle to sleep and the sinking into it. In these works the artist explores the progress of the sleeper down into deep sleep.

 

Aldworth employs an everyday object – the pillowcase - as a visual metaphor for sleep.  For The Dark Self, she has used vintage pillowcases inked in gold and silver and printed onto Somerset Black Velvet paper.

 

There is also a series of porcelain sculptures – The Evidence of Sleep – where the artist has captured the indentation left by the sleeper on the pillow: a manifestation of the unconscious nothingness of sleep.  Aldworth's film Dormez-Vous? will also be showing.