This will be the final installment of the touring solo show entitled 'Lands End' that started at the Ikon Gallery in Birmingham in the UK, and has since travelled to three further UK public galleries: the Oriel Davies Gallery, Powys; Spike Island, Bristol; and The Grundy Gallery, Blackpool. At each venue the sculptures are reconfigured into new scenarios that address the specific architectural details of each space. Thus Claxton sees her sculptures as constantly mutating and developing, just as the individual installations give the impression that a viral infection is mutating the space itself.
" Claxton's use of figurines recalls Rachel Harrison's incorporation of ready-made figurative elements into otherwise non-representational agglomerations, while her masterful handling of the rhythms produced by multiplying small units is comparable to that of Sarah Sze. But her work is neither as funky and brutal as Harrison's nor as delicate and airy as Sze's. It is plainer and more clearly structured and yet finally more bewildering than the work typical of either of those sculptors.
Ruth Claxton (b. 1971, UK. Lives and works in Birmingham, UK). Known Unknowns, curated by Jonathan Watkins, Gallery LOOP, Korea (2009); Lands End, Ikon Gallery, Birmingham and tour (2008-2009); 'Fantopia – A state of impossible perfection. Or, how to live with perfect people (and not kill them)', Mothers Tankstation, Dublin (2009); a solo exhibition of paper works The Barber Institute, Birmingham (2008); The Ingleby Gallery, Edinburgh (2008); An Archaeology, Project Space 176 (2007); Self-Effaced: Ruth Claxton, Dave Miko, Geerten Verheus, FA Projects, London (2007); Strategic Questions, Venice, curated by Gavin Wade, 52nd Venice Biennale (2007); 'A Place of Rainbows', ARQUEBUSE (now Faye Fleming & Partner), Geneva (2006); I thought I was the Audience and then I looked at You, University Gallery, Colchester (2004). Ruth Claxton is represented by Faye Fleming & Partner, Geneva.