In her second solo show at , Ida Ekblad presents two new bodies of work in painting, stretching across the gallery’s twinned sites: A Day of Toils Among its Ruins at Herald St and A Gentle Looking Little Alien of Sorts at Herald St Golden Square. Fuelling the Norwegian artist鈥檚 chance-based practice, is an eager search for renewal and nourishment in an urban context. Foraging, collecting and inspired by the resources found on her daily walks, Ekblad brings the essence of everyday, discarded materials into the painter鈥檚 process.
Currently on show at Herald St is work from Track (2014), a series of paintings that stem from Ekblad鈥檚 scrap metal and shopping trolley sculptures. These individual sculptures, which feature texts and poetry cut into the rubber surface of their wheels, have been used as an active and performative tool in the composition of the artist鈥檚 paintings. Utilising these objects as a printmaking and painting device, Ekblad marks her blank canvases with the traces of these peculiar constructions, and sequentially revisits her paintings with hand crafted lines and reiterations of selected poetry texts. This layering technique offers prints that are sometimes overpainted, and often simplified with a reduced palette of black and blue. Over at Herald St Golden Square, a new series of abstract spray-gun paintings on canvas and paper are on show. In this recent work, Ekblad鈥檚 connection with folklore is exposed through dreamy childlike depictions of animals and people.
Ida Ekblad, A Day of Toils Among its Ruins and A Gentle Looking Little Alien of Sorts, until 16th November, Herald St, 2 Herald St, London E2 6JT and Herald St Golden Square, Soho, London W1R 3AD.
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Credits
1. Ida Ekblad, Tracks 2014. Courtesy of Herald St.
