South London Gallery, Friday, 20th January to Sunday, 26th March 2017<\/p>\n
For New York-based artist Amie Siegel\u2019s first solo show in London, the South London Gallery presents recent works which explore the mechanisms through which objects become imbued with meaning. Known for her layered, meticulously constructed works that consider the undercurrents of value systems, cultural ownership and image-making, Siegel works across film, video, photography, performance and installation.<\/p>\n
Quarry<\/em>, 2015, projected at cinematic scale in the SLG\u2019s main gallery, traces the excavation of marble from the deepest underground quarry in the world to its almost inevitable use in the modern luxury apartments of Manhattan skyscrapers. Beautiful, formally rigorous, and pointedly underscored by dramatic orchestral sound, this moving image work draws us into a mesmerising expos\u00e9 of the multi-layered relationships between art, labour and value.<\/p>\n Fetish<\/em>, 2016, presented in the first floor galleries, delves further into the stratified relationships between culture, value, and material by focusing on Sigmund Freud\u2019s personal collection of archaeological statues and artefacts. Filmed at the Freud Museum in north London, it portrays the annual nocturnal cleaning of the psychoanalyst’s collection, suggesting an analogy between the careful, almost ritualistic removal of layers of dust from the objects and the intimate excavations and disclosures of analysis, both of which are normally hidden from view.<\/p>\n Proposing a conceptual link between Fetish<\/em> and Quarry<\/em>, Siegel presents a new work in the second upstairs gallery – a fragment of pink marble from the lobby of New York\u2019s Trump Tower. Offered for sale on eBay immediately following the 2016 US election, the marble fragment was purchased by the artist. The fragment\u2019s transformations, from having had a clear use within a building into an apparently functionless piece of rock, and then into a historic relic, are both continued and emphasised through its incorporation into Siegel\u2019s work. Parallel narratives are therefore set in motion, both with the material concerns of Quarry<\/em>, and the potentially infinite circular conversations around the themes of objecthood and desire explored within Fetish<\/em>.<\/p>\n