Uncanny loops: Summoning the Material Past into the Imaginary Present

Molly Stephenson

1-11 April

Please join us for the opening celebration, Tuesday 31st March 6-8pm

‘Uncanny loops: Summoning the Material Past into the Imaginary Present’ is a body of work that comments on what it means to endure. Through a process called ‘übermalen,’ also known as ‘overpainting,’ Molly is constantly challenging and returning to the oppositional conception of representation and concealment through the process of assemblage. Found surfaces that had once been discarded are now adorned with old aquatint prints, disposable paper palettes and under appreciated objects of significance.

Similarly to a wunderkammer, or a ‘cabinet of curiosities,’ each individual artwork is an affirmation to the fleeting. Like a flock of birds migrating across the sky, their presence is amplified when they are in relational with one another, revealing an intuitive, dynamic relationship that bleeds and permeates into the present future through their own materiality. There is a second-order quality to Molly’s art, embracing a kind of sloppiness or crudeness not out of irony, but as an intentional working methodology that reveals suggestions of previous shapes, decisions and stories.

Traces of this kind of tense working method can be found across most of her practice, as can traces she has once abandoned. But, these works are not complete or resolute, but instead behave like portents, remaining still and persistent through their own dormancy.