Borders Unfold
Supported by Arts Council England.
Multi-channel audio in collaboration with sound artist Matt Faulkner.
The tone may seem to have changed from abject to upbeat,
but that is deceptive. Ana Cvorovic still works consistently in a subtle and sideways manner on the cataclysmic effect of forced movement. As always her work runs alongside the plight of displaced people. At a recent residency at Sculpture Space, Utica, US, the artist collected raw material, such as glass, children’s mattresses and swimming costumes from thrift shops. Each object she brought back, however, shared, and suggested, individually and collectively, the excitement, hope and promise of holiday. The light, fallible pleasure of blowing up a pool inflatable, for instance, pulling on a swimming cap, being somewhere else. But each, second hand, limp, discarded object, originally brought with a perhaps temporary promise of escape, is also a tawdry reminder of sudden shifts, being forced to leave home and becoming the embodiment of loss, unease, and unfulfilled hope.
Hope is the ultimate metaphor for art. These originally cheap semi props, this cheap but cheerful gear, also begins with the
suggestion of water in the sun, wet and dry. Squeezing objects
into glass domes, Cvorovic makes a mass of microclimates which convey atmosphere, and mimic the fragile, stuffed head of a child.
The twist is that this representation of hope and anticipation,
can carry the atmosphere of discard, and loss, the strategy of children being forced to move, and, in extreme cases, being incarcerated. Resting their heads, on a different scale, on their way through. The promise is that something might carry enough conviction and conceptual value for it to function. Here escape has been dashed by reality. The materiality of the found object, slightly reconfigured and recontextualised by Cvorovic, has landscape scenes painted upon it. The red plastic tarpaulin organises the space to suggest an inside, outside, barriers
and walls. Cvorovic sets the scene with objects that carry their own dual promise and so a concentration of hope, along with
the commissioned sound, also reminds that so many promises
of release and freedom turn out to be a chimeric reflection of other people’s states so easily forgotten.