Under Ash Beds was a collaborative work made with Marianne Mulvey, exploring the relationship between language, material and transformation. It stemmed from an idea of talking something, or in this case writing something, into existence.
A fragmented narrative unfolds through a series of sentences adorned with embossed alchemical symbols. Each symbol represents fire, earth, ash, fumes and wood. The text emerged from a conversation between Lathwood and Mulvey, held in a woodland beside the ruins of a former foundry. The conversation centred around the imagined event of burning one of Lathwood’s sculptures to fire new ceramic works.
The resulting text works were presented as sixteen perforated booklets fitted to the gallery wall with wooden batons. Visitors were invited to tear off and take pages of the work away with them, gradually dismantling the installation over the course of the exhibition. Beneath the booklets was the text “Under Ash Beds”, inscribed on the wall using a homemade egg-and-ash paint.
This work was commissioned by WITTA and exhibitied at Spike Island as part of When Language Becomes Material Symposium and salon.
‘When Language Becomes Material’ was an exhibition devised by Lizzie Lloyd and Kit Poulson which explores the material possibilities, traces and manifestations of language in art. The exhibition, in which words materialise and dematerialize, includes work by Huma Mulji and Emmanuelle Waeckerlé, Young In Hong and Owen Lloyd, Jo Lathwood and Marianne Mulvey, Mary Hurrell, and Amak Mahmoodian.
When Language Becomes Material Symposium programme
When Language Becomes Material text by Lizzie Lloyd
