Material Bodies

‘Matter is a substance that is becoming and bodies live from the world. In being permeable systems, bodies are not self-contained. Matter-energy flows through bodies as discrete entities, it composes bodies, transforms them and then dissipates; discrete little entities. Challenging conceptions of the body, this work intermeshes the human with other life forms and geographical places. Humans emerge from the same ‘chaotically’ coded forces that continuously entangle them. Despite being one from the environment, we don’t recognise our own ecological dimension. We pushed the earth into the Anthropocene forgetting that it touches us too.

Following Ruth’s graduation from Glasgow School of Art in 2017 with her project Nothing is Solid, her first solo exhibition is a reaction to an eight-month residency at DSKD, Denmark, where she considered the body and its place. Indiscriminately referring to any entity which exists, “Material Bodies” is an exhibition of process and object groupings. Using material and digital recordings alongside a deeply embedded mode of research, Ruth makes to know materiality in process and texture, contemplate time and her bodily experiences, and consider our ecological disorder. Newfound studio processes respond to place and to the environmental humanities and science studies by Stacy Alaimo and Karen Barad. Jewellery, objects and moving images deepen the maker’s notion of corporeality before they turn to act as an interface between different bodies, human to human, and human to non-human.'

Material Bodies, exhibition catalogue, 2018. 297x210 cm, 4 pages. Design by Zag. Photography by Susan Castillo.
Material Bodies, exhibition catalogue, 2018. 297x210 cm, 4 pages. Design by Zag. Photography by Susan Castillo.