Armada

Abstract

In Armada, Dawson presents over twenty new sculptures. Bolted and screwed to the wall, these objects bunch and float across the partitioned surface; clustering, collecting . Though each object has its own independent characterisitcs and internal logic, the accumulation of so many sculptures across a single wall evokes a commonality, a shared aim as suggested in the shows title.

Within the sculptures the welded and sawn steel structures evoke brutalist architecture of the 1950’s in particular Alison and Peter Smithson. Every part of each object bears the marks of reconfiguration, that they have endured an extended production process. A thick layer of oil paint is smeared across many of the surfaces and glazed with a film of glitter subverting the material narrative of the steel.
It is only on closer inspection that miniature model figures become visible and the realization that these are superstructures and are populated by little people. A Sun bather lounges on a length of twisted scaffolding pole. A civil engineer peers out from a section of girder and surveys an infinitely large landscape; these figures dramatically alter the viewers focus, the objects formal characteristics are disturbed by these inhabitants and their microcosmic canivalesque.

This hammers home a distinct sense that these objects are critical of their very own status. And if the work of the 1950’s, that these objects clearly allude, was based on the explosion of consumer capital then this work is grounded in the crater of that explosion

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Identifiers

ORCID for Ian Dawson: orcid.org/0000-0002-3695-8582

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