A member of staff at Jerwood Space recommended that I also visit new work exhibited at Poppy Sebire located on Copperfield Street SE1. Ms Sebire (and her terrier, Louis) welcomed me into a gallery that is both intimate and airy, allowing adequate space to reflect upon the work. The exhibition was sensitively curated with themes of natural history, masks and abstract hand coloured etchings positioned harmoniously next to one another. Boo Ritson is a sculptor who works within multi-media. She has recently produced sculptural work that links the three media. Previous work by Ritson was a media hybrid of painting, photography and elements of performance art. Models are clothed according to specific occupations or (stereo) type. The artist paints directly onto models in a manner reminiscent of recent portraits by Glenn Brown and then she photographs them as living sculptural forms. The effect is heightened by concealing the eyes with reflective sunglasses. The obscuring effect of the eyewear creates a jarring sensation in the viewer (this sensation is attenuated in the images where the model doesn’t wear the sunglasses. It is as though the illusion is contingent upon the anonymous persona of the living mannequin). After four years of developing her practice, Ritson’s work appears to have evolved further towards statuary constituents in her imagery. The most prominent work on display is a painted costume placed beside a large format photograph of a model wearing the same. One is conscious that there is an allusion towards fetish outfits (the livery, at first glance, appears to be a rubber nurses uniform), but also an idea of theatrical costume. Somewhat unnerved, I felt that there was a blurring between the consolidated images.
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