Three exhibition openings in one day? That's dedication for you. But there is one upside of looking at art all day. The Wellcome Collection give me lunch from their nice cafe, the Whitechapel Art Gallery offer some little snacks in the afternoon, and, in the evening, Trolley Books becomes almost like a little deli. There's plates of smoked cheese, hunks of crusty bread, a shallow dish of olive oil, and an enormous leg of cured ham. Hmmm... art.
The other upside of looking at art all day is, of course, that you get to look at art all day. Trolley Books present a first solo exhibition for Brazilian contemporary artist Juliana Cerqueira Leite and it's a fascinating show. I admit that I was initially a little sceptical (perhaps just feeling a little jaded, or 'arted out') but this is a show that rewards the inquisitive.
On display are a series of drawings, sculptures and photographs that explore the concept of the human body as a creative tool. The drawings are the result of a series of self-imposed rules stemming from physics and are curbed in size and shape by the limitations of the artist's own slight stature. The photographic work is a time-lapse image of the artist moving around a wheel specially designed to match her proportions. The belly-button is always at the centre and is therefore in focus, whilst the rest of the body becomes a blur.
Juliana Cerqueira Leite, courtesy of Trolley Gallery
The most interesting pieces however are the sculptural works. Each one starts life as a block of clay 210cm high and 90cm square. For one, Leite digs 'up', shaping the clay with her body as she goes, before making a plaster cast of the negative space; for the other, she digs 'down' – traces of knee, toe, and finger are visible, stretching the clay in apparent attempts to escape. The fascination here is more in the creative process than the 'finished' objects before us in the gallery. These are almost an incidental by-product of an ongoing adventure, a collaboration between a range of materials and the artist's own body.
Leite does crazy things like throw herself onto piles of snow with no clothes on, or bury herself in clay before digging her way out. There's a childlike sense of curiosity in these actions, but also an exploration of something more interesting, a series of actions that don't translate to words. I'm glad there are people around doing this kind of thing. What's also interesting is that this is not a politicised comment on gender or some concept of femininity: rather, Leite seeks simply to explore the extent to which the human body can become an artistic tool – to see what it can do, and what it can't. It is this exploration of limits that makes the project potentially limitless.
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