Slugtown are pleased to present Shoehorn, a two-person exhibition at Pipeline, London featuring new work by London based artist Hilda Kortei and Glasgow based artist Rachel Adams. Within the exhibition, both artists investigate ideas of value, labour and the overlooked, and present works that abstract quotidian objects into narrative-loaded pieces with new readings.
Hilda Kortei’s intuitive and research-based practice is concerned with strategies of refusal and modes of care, and how these can be used in response to, and to disrupt, systemic violence. In Shoehorn, Kortei presents a body of new sculptural works, including 50/100PCS SELF-LOCKING PLASTIC NYLON CABLE TIE LOOP LOCK SECURITY TIE HANDCUFF HEAVY DUTY ZIP TIE WRAP 13*300MM 13*450MM 13*780MM BLACK. The work, installed facing out from the street-facing window, is a pervasive Foxton’s To Let/For Sale signage along with the uprooted wrought iron residential fence it was attached to when sourced.
The work’s title, taken verbatim from their online listing, brings into forensic focus the almost imperceptible cable ties used to attach the signage in place. The cheap plastic fasteners are used for a multitude of purposes; from linking cables, to gardening, to affixing rental signs as is the case here, and handcuffs utilised by law enforcement subjecting protestors to violence in mass arrests at demonstrations. The work considers the interrelatedness of the private rental market, gentrification, oppression and structural violence.
Rachel Adams’ practice is concerned with lying: material lies, the lies we tell ourselves, and the lies institutions tell us. These lies could equally be described as trompe l’oeil, cultural values, or social constructions. By examining and drawing from labour and its histories the premise of dishonesty is examined across sculpture, print, and decorative objects.
For Shoehorn, Adams presents several bodies of work that respond to the feminisation of digital labour throughout history. Her series Eyeballing is made from slices of agate—a common semi-precious silica—whose blue cataract-like surfaces have been laser etched with circuitry integral to the NASA Apollo Missions. Women’s labour was hidden within the scientific innovations of NASA’s mathematics and engineering departments, but equally within the manufacturing of microchips for the missions, which women of colour predominantly fabricated. The series title refers to the process of marking errors with black dots on silicon wafers during integrated circuit production and the milky opaque quality of the semi-precious stones.
Scattered across both gallery levels are a series of sculptural works resembling axes – the blades replaced by polished resin casts of shoe lasts. The works consider the potential for change and revolt, drawing on the false etymology of the word ‘sabotage’ – where workers purportedly threw their shoes into mechanical looms in the 19th Century to disrupt them. Whilst this story is untrue, the potential of the image of a shoe or one’s own labour as a weapon is realised in these axe works, which venerate women who disrupted traditional ideas of labour in various ways. The works titles: Shirley, Dorothy, and Elizabeth, directly refer to women who have pioneered advances in technology, workers’ and women’s rights.
Shoehorn is part of the gallery exchange between Pipeline and Slugtown. The gallery swap seeks to develop a collegiate spirit between the two arts ecologies and foster a more national inclusive art community.
