18 September –13 December 2020
Goldsmiths Centre for Contemporary Art presents SOLOS, a series of new commissions by Appau Jnr Boakye-Yiadom, Emma Cousin, Lindsey Mendick and Hardeep Pandhal. All four are early career artists who have been making work at home or in their studios throughout the lockdown.
The programme has been specifically devised as a commissioning structure with which to support the creation of new work during a time of severe precarity, by artists who are part of the CCA's community (either by being based in South East London, or by having worked with us previously). Each artist will make a solo exhibition in an individual gallery in the CCA. Their work either explicitly, or implicitly, tracks the impact of lockdown on their practices.
Lindsey Mendick’s work often draws on the autobiographical, spinning personal stories into fantastical immersive environments populated with objects and sculptures whose materiality and narrative qualities move through seduction, horror and ribald humour. Drawing together a myriad of references, this new body of work brings Mendick’s precise handling of the affective qualities of interior spaces, into contact with the film tradition of gothic horror, with its combination of sex and death, power and bodily violence.
Are You Going to Destroy Me? centres on Mendick’s relationship with her now fiancé; the title quotes the question she asked him on their first date. Taking a cue from the inherent vulnerability one faces within the power structures of a romantic relationship, she draws on their shared love of the gothic horror movies that have been a mainstay throughout the lockdown.
