Corin Sworn
Corin Sworn uses formal strategies of appropriation and détournement to address the means by which our interpretation and digestion of cultural matter (histories, artefacts, images) produce us as social subjects. This will mark Sworn’s first exhibition in Scotland since 2014.
Corin Sworn
Corin Sworn
Corin Sworn
How bodies function within constraints is addressed, on a more local and limited scale, by Corin Sworn’s Work House at Koppe Astner. The narrow gallery space is divided into three chambers by two temporary walls, through holes in which you are forced to clamber. A video at the entrance to the gallery shows two dancers moving more elegantly through the space, obeying a set of instructions that dictate their interactions with it and with each other. Attached to the wall, hand-sanitizer dispensers of the type you find in hospitals reinforce the impression of arbitrary rules being enforced (speaking on the opening day, Sworn cites Eula Biss’s On Immunity (2014), which suggests that these devices serve no purpose beyond reassurance). But the most compelling work is tucked away at the back of the gallery: a sketchbook has been opened to its centre spread, turned through 90 degrees and pinned within a frame. A systems diagram has been overpainted in white, which provides the ground for esoteric drawn symbols including a pair of cupcakes and a dollar sign; from a small neighboring speaker come squalls of sirens and police radio dialogue. That the work’s logic is at once engrossing and impenetrable seems, at least partly, to be the point. [Artreview]
Corin Sworn
Corin Sworn
Corin Sworn
Sworn was awarded the Max Mara Art Prize for Women in 2014 and is the the 2015 recipient of Philip Leverhulme Award. She represented Scotland at The Venice Biennale in 2013 and is currently shortlisted for the 2018 Margaret Tait Award for which she will present new work at The Glasgow Film Festival in 2019. Sworn lives and works in Glasgow.
Corin Sworn / Work House
April 20 – June 2, 2018 / Koppe Astner, Glasgow
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