THE South London Gallery presents German artist Katharina Grosse’s first solo institutional exhibition in London with an installation piece titled This Drove my Mother up the Wall.
Katharina Grosse, This Drove my Mother up the Wall. Installation view.
The piece was painted in-situ at the gallery. Her aim was to focus her work around absence of space — what she calls the void. She did this through covering the floor with a large foam stencil, and painting around it and the surrounding walls. She then removes the stencil meaning that the white area of the floor is the revealed with some splatterings of bright colours where there had been gaps in the stencil. The doors and other permanent fixtures of the room are included in the effect, adding something unique to the piece.
Door included in Katharina Grosse’s installation
The effect of the stencilling on the walls
The effect of the stencilling on the skirting boards
Alongside the installation, Grosse selected two documentary films which explain and explore her creative methods and interests. The first is a short excerpt from Women Artists (2016) by Claudia Müller where Grosse curates a fantasy exhibition by eight other female artists of her choice.
She discusses why she chose these particular artists and the relationship between their work and hers. The second documentary is titled The Gleaners and I (2000) by Agnès Varda which inspired Grosse’s installation at the South London Gallery that examines the marginal, residual and invisible.
by Allie Nawrat
The exhibition runs from September 28 – December 3, 2017
The South London Gallery, 65-7 Peckham Road, London, SE5 8UH