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Scottish artist Anya Gallaccio, one of the leading sculptors of her generation, born in 1963, is due to arrive in Brazil in the beginning of July for her first solo exhibition in South America, which will occur at Galeria Leme, São Paulo, as from July 11. Throughout her career, her ambitious and often large-scale works have become memorable due to their use of organic materials such as flowers, fruits, chocolate and sand. Looking at one of the several books which compile her work, Anya Gallaccio—The Look of Things, which came out in 2005 by Italian press Lito, one feels that she expands nature, referencing Duchamp by placing the natural inside the unnatural. |
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Content is Form – Eduarda de Souza
Scottish artist Anya Gallaccio, one of the leading sculptors of her generation, born in 1963, is due to arrive in Brazil in the beginning of July for her first solo exhibition in South America, which will occur at Galeria Leme, São Paulo, as from July 11.
Throughout her career, her ambitious and often large-scale works have become memorable due to their use of organic materials such as flowers, fruits, chocolate and sand. Looking at one of the several books which compile her work, Anya Gallaccio – The Look of Things, which came out in 2005 by Italian press Lito, one feels that she expands nature, referencing Duchamp by placing the natural inside the unnatural. ‘’Here form is content, content is form” wrote Samuel Beckett about James Joyce’s book Finnegan’s Wake, which begins by teaching us about cyclical history. It is where one finds the essence of Anya´s work. Untitled, Lion Tree (2005), one of her major works that will be exhibited at Galeria Leme, is a real Californian Apple Tree which was going to be removed from its orchard to be replaced by an olive tree. Anya takes care of our ever-changing nature, going beyond its transience and ephemerality. The creative process is more important than the outcome itself. For Anya, nature passes, it does not die but goes through several natural époques, like humans. In contrast, she makes use of its most beautiful forms to create permanent pieces such as the solid cast duranian fruits in glass which she produced in 2005. Poetry is present now not only in her sculptures but in her words, the titles of her pieces. I dwell in possibility, five delicate bronze bean pods and 18 loose bronze beans, makes us question our needs; Whatever, a huge melting candle exhibited in the street, prays for the best for everyone; Preserve Beauty, a wall of gerbera daisies pinned behind a single sheet of glass, explores the ease of nature, which grows by itself; Because I could not Stop juxtaposes a bronze tree with real apples, showing Anya’s absorption of time. Amongst her major sculptures is also the 34-ton cube of ice that she constructed in an old Pumping Station in Wapping, East London, which melted over time, accelerated by salt buried in its core. Capturing the romance of historical sites, Anya presented Glaschu in 1999, where she took a pattern from a carpet design found in the archive of a local factory and recreated it in foliage on the interior of Lanarkshire House in Glasgow. Other works at the Leme exhibition include: If I Could Look Inside Your Heart and Unable Are the Loved to Die, two delicate fishing nets of gold lamé, hand-knotted by fisherman in the Netherlands, which show her interest in materials and craftsmanship. Anya is a heroine which captures the best of nature’s sensibility and its environ.
