Fascinated Witness

Koraï project space invites you to the solo exhibition of Erica Eyres "Fascinated Witness".

Erica Eyres (b. 1980 in Winnipeg, Canada) lives and works in Glasgow, UK

Through videos, drawings and sculptures, Eyres' work explores narrative fallacies that complicate the viewer's understanding of the author's subjective truth and problematizes the notion of the autobiographical. Frequently borrowing from the aesthetics of low-budget television, her videos centre around narratives based on her own family or people she has known and are re-told by exploiting elements of storytelling to create works of fiction that allude to the personal.

For her exhibition at Korai, Erica Eyres will present a body of drawings based on archival images found in British fetish magazines from the 1970s and ‘80s. The drawings feature female figures who engage in such activities as nude wrestling, modelling latex fashion, and posing as dominatrices. Each image is selected for its’ uncanniness: for example, a model’s wandering gaze reveals her boredom. Through their rendering in black and white, these anonymous women are enlarged from their pages to become more detailed and life-like. This translation also represents the image with heightened emotional weight, as the densely layered graphite offers an intensity to the subject. Each woman is known only by their first name as stated by the work’s title, providing a (possibly false) clue towards their true identity.

Alongside the drawings, Eyres will also show a series of ceramic masks rendered flat, as though cast aside. Despite their obvious reference to costumes and disguise, the masks become un-wearable in their concrete copies. These clay versions suggest a kind of relief sculpture that is figurative yet deflated and absent of human form.

Bio:

Solo shows include: New Hobbies and Pastimes, Katharine Mulherine Gallery, Toronto (2019); Alone and I, Queen’s Park Railway Club (2017); Inflatable Head, site-specific installation for PlugIn ICA "Stages", Winnipeg, Canada (2017). Group shows include: Mark-Making: Perspectives on Drawing, Gallery of Modern Art, Glasgow (2019); Good £uck, site-specific installation for Glasgow International (2018); and The Laughable Enigma of Ordinary Life, Arquipelago Centro de Artes Contemporaneas, Azores (2018).

Opening: Friday 24 of May 2019 at 8 pm
Duration: 24 May - 14 June
Open Wednesdays 4 pm - 7 pm and by appointment