Dutch artist Hedwig Houben makes work that is difficult to categorise: Others and I, her first solo exhibition in the UK, was made of key works from the last five years that encompass sculptural objects, scripts, multiple performances and drawings. In these she foregrounds acts of making and talking about art, revealing the questions she asks of her own identity, activity and process and of the nature of the work of art. At the heart of her works lies an expanding cast of ‘characters’, including the Good and the Bad sculptures, the Hand, the Eye, the Foot, It, the Being, the Made, the Imitator and so on.
While each takes the form of an object, Houben personifies them – giving to each attitudes, ideas and points of view – and positions them in relation to each other. The characters often recur across a number of works, in which their relationships shift, suggesting that they are not fixed entities but rather, dependent upon context. Houben has described her work as an attempt to understand how the process of making works ‘relates to the structures that we create together within society – rules, assumptions, expectations.’
Following the exhibition Imitator Being Made was gifted to the permanent collection of the Plymouth City Art Gallery and Museum, which is developing a new contemporary art space. This was part of an initiative by Outset Contemporary Art Fund to benefit museum collections across the South West of England.
ON VIEW: 1st October – 11th December 2016
