Upstairs Gallery - Monica Banks "All You Can Eat"
"Borders, boundaries, and language, exist throughout my work and have
manifested themselves in my sensibilities as an artist. The repetitive
mark-making within my practice explores the relationship between chaos and order, and the ways in which it is possible to manipulate or
exaggerate time. I'm interested in creating spaces that translate the
micro and macro perspectives within urban and rural environments, and introducing a new possibility for the viewer of abstract navigation
through real and imagined terrains." - Maeve D'Arcy
Monica Banks is a sculptor who has worked in many mediums, from large-scale steel public works to fine wire and found objects. Inspired by the earthquake in Haiti in 2010, she started working in porcelain to form one-inch long human corpses and writhing figures, as a tribute to the anonymous victims of this and other natural and man made disasters.
She added life-size porcelain portraits of teeth, insects, feathers, pebbles, and birds to her imagery to evoke the full range of joyful and tragic occasions that swirl around us, and in 2015 started aggregating all these elements on homemade porcelain cakes. The cakes are a series of domestic monuments to life’s enchantments and perils. The prettiness of the cakes and their corresponding plates is an invitation to explore the emotions evoked by the elements on top.
