Strange Relations

Carys Reilly & Simon Le Boggit

Archive Exhibitions (9 October to 28 November 2021)
Fabrica and Outside In present Strange Relations by artists Simon Le Boggit and Carys Reilly. For Fabrica’s autumn exhibition we’ll be exploring extremity and diversity, and invite audiences to experience work of an extremely large scale and that at a tiny intimate size.
This juxtaposition of the artists’ works will offer visitors a playful ‘sizeshifting’ experience – at first loomed over by one work and then towering over the other. In this highly anticipated exhibition, the artworks position the visitor as the ‘norm’ in the room. Playing with the norms of human scale, looking beyond the norms of human experience and questioning the cultural norms in current exhibition making.

Carys Reilly’s series includes psychologically charged sculptures, though tiny, they powerfully convey bodily intimacy and interiority. In contrast, Simon Le Boggit’s expansive video installation, Even Giants Have to Bend, fills Fabrica's 10 metre high ceiling with the movement and sound of huge trees in a strong wind, immersing the viewers below it.

The artists were selected via an open call disseminated to the pool of around 3000 artists registered with Outside In, a national charity that aims to provide a platform for artists who face significant barriers to the art world due to health, disability, social circumstance or isolation. The panel of selectors who chose the artists included: Marc Steene – Founder and Director of Outside In, Liz Whitehead – Founder and Director of Fabrica, Artist and Curator, Jeff McMillan and Cathy Lomax, Artist and director of Transition Gallery, London.

Strange Relations attempts to interrogate ‘norms’ within the contemporary art world and society, through exhibition making - a subject that both Outside In and Fabrica have each explored for some time. This focus set the parameters for the selection of the artists’ works which are two extremely different immersive encounters.

About The Artist

Carys Reilly is a contemporary artist living in Glasgow. Her practice combines drawing, sculpture, photography and body art. Her work is influenced by the 'Pictures Generation' artists, and the radical narcissism of 1970s feminist performance. The narratives of her practice are shaped by her own experience of chronic illness, neurodivergence, and a fascination with historical texts on hysteria.

Carys graduated from Winchester School of Art in 2015, specialising in woven textiles. Her BA collections integrated sculpture, illustration, typography and weaving to create immersive worlds and narratives critiquing contemporary attitudes towards women and mental illness. She then went on to study at the Royal College of Art, graduating with a Masters degree in Textiles in 2017. Here she further developed her sculptural pieces and her flair for melodrama and performance, expanding on her exploration of femininity and chronic illness. Carys has worked with several artist collectives, including Womanstanley, Outside In and Sweet ‘Arts. Her piece The Hermit, The Waif, The Witch and The Queen has been exhibited in America and Vietnam, as part of an International Art Exchange with Sweet ‘Arts.

Simon Le Boggit is a multimedia artist living and working in Lincolnshire, UK. Focussing on the distillation of “meaning” from chaos, his recent works have resulted in the creation of abstract or skewed imagery, expressive sculpture, mesmeric videos, evocative textured walls of sound, and the generation of chaotic algorithmic musical compositions capable of generating moments of “apparent intentionality” (where any melody, harmony and syncopation is a product of chance and the human compulsion to identify patterns).

Arts council england
Outside in
FBA 1133621
FBA 1133593
FBA 1133578
FBA 1133653
FBA 1133689 2
FBA 1133656

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