Alice Anderson - Body Disruptions | Waddington Custot
Alice Anderson is known as a performance artist as well as a visual artist, but this show is definitely big on the visual wow factor. Dominating the larger gallery at Waddington Custot are a series of copper-wire-covered monoliths. Anderson calls them Body Disruptions, and they’re built by wrapping the wire around a rectilinear wooden structure so that it forms repetitive motifs and patterns.
As an artist, Anderson’s very interested in digital connectivity, and of course copper wire’s a transfer medium for online information. (Elsewhere in the show are some crayon-on-paper works where keyboard symbols are repeatedly depicted until the shapes break down into illegibility.) But regardless of source, these objects are highly impressive craftworks.
There’s a machine-like, gem-like precision to the patterns, a simultaneous heft and lightness to the sculptures. Things go a bit haywire in the show notes, which details Anderson’s research into the Indiens Kogi, a community in a remote part of Colombia.
This found expression in her Nuhé series, featuring totem pole-like structures wrapped with copper wire. The internet connection seems to have been lost here. But they’re impressive objects too. Isn’t that enough?
Alice Anderson: Body Disruptions is at Waddington Custot (London). 12 March - 10 May 2019