Alice Anderson

Alice Anderson (born 1972) is a French-British sculptor and filmmaker. She works primarily with copper wire associated in Postdigital movement.

Work

Alice Anderson was mainly known for her films from 1999 until 2007. She started to create sculptures with elements of her own body in 2008. Her soft pieces constructed of red fibre made feminist claims and were the most disruptive.

In 2011, Anderson's practice took a new direction following her personal exhibition at the Freud Museum ^[2] in London, where she worked on Anna Freud's loom and initiated geometrical works of lines and grids. This is also when Anderson began to use copper wire in her studio. ‘I took objects apart and put them back together again, and during one of these dismantling sessions I came across an alarm clock with a bobbin of copper wire inside it’.^[3]

With the ‘Weaving in the Studio’ project, Anderson weaved copper wire around the objects, furniture and architectural elements in her London studio. Objects have always been essential to her. In her childhood, Anderson had very hard time connecting with people, her emotions weren't tied up with people but with the objects associated with them. "I always worry about breaking or losing an object, therefore I have established rules: When one of the object around me is likely to become obsolete or is lost in the stream of our lives, I memorise it with wire before it happens. If an object breaks, I encapsulate it in steel, I leave it outside for few weeks until it rusts, then I perform a ritual and when the dance is over, everything is repaired. The broken relation is healed".^[4]

Desiring to encourage collective discussions and human exchanges, Anderson invited people to join in her actions, expressing art as a powerfully charged communal ritual. This experience was going to initiate the basis of her new practice aiming to memorise objects and keep physical DATA.^[5]

In 2015 she exhibited her objects ''^[6] in copper wire at the Wellcome Collection in London. Jonathan Jones of The Guardian described the work as "glutinous in the memory. The reason it works is because she takes the whole thing so stupendously seriously. This is passionate, obsessive, intensely concentrated work."^[7] Visitors were asked to help the artist record a Ford Mustang^[8] in wire through a collective sculpture. Anderson also uses rough material such as recycled steel and works with metallic meshes to create sculptures from repetitive gestures ^[9]

Digital age

Anderson's work explores alternative ways of memorising objects and places in 3D in the age of digital technology. The digital world gives us information, freedom, creativity, and at the same time it fundamentally changes the process of our memorisation.^[10] Permanently immersed in millions of informations that machines 'memorize for us’, Anderson responds to the idea that our memories live exclusively ‘online’ and questions the ‘how’ and ‘what’ to remember.^[11]

To do so she has developed a process of movements around the objects^[12] and expressed strong interests between Art and Science, Colliding Worlds: Hans Ulrich Obrist and Martin Rees.^[13] The digital evolution is a fascinating process that is going to turn out as decisive for the mechanisms of human memory as the invention of writing was.

Time Capsules

In Alice Anderson's constant explorations of alternative ways of memorising, she has previously worked on recording objects in 3D through a physical interaction with thread. More recently the artist has pursued the idea of "recording" significant "broken" objects whereby the object lies within a cor-ten steel that creates dynamic history capsules.^[14]

The artist engages with the idea that an archive of the future can be created to generate other forms of preservation that can co-exist alongside digital memory.

The resulting sculptures: totem-like - conceptual and minimal - take their size and shape from the objects they contain.^[15]

Travelling Studio

In September 2012, Anderson founded Alice Anderson's Travelling Studio after a debut performance at the Whitechapel Gallery in London. Set-up as a performance lab, the Travelling Studio is defined as an ‘itinerant space' containing a studio, an archive with its ongoing collection (sometimes done with guest performers or public), a physical archive, an exhibition space inviting curators, historians, scientists to establish connections between people, worlds and communities that questions objects witnessing our time. If it evokes Andy Warhol's factory, for Anderson it has to be understood as a place producing solidarity bound to objects. These objects are therefore intended to become contemporary ‘archeologies’. Addressing multiple aspects of our societies, the ritual objects have no aesthetic value, only that of the performance.^[16]

The itinerant space creates the conditions for an immersive experience anywhere; black walls, intense lighting, repetitive movements and the sound of bobbins hitting the floor, engage each participant in a ritualistic action. These conditions produce strong collective expressions and result in a common creative force, similar to the collective vital energy between the people and objects, that reminds of ritual dances or qi science.

Without particular rules or methods, participants are enabled to contribute to a collective sculpture. Utilising copper-coloured wire, each participant must formulate their own gestures around their object, they also must realise individual understandings of those actions. Small objects generate an intense concentration, resulting in faster motions. Whilst larger objects demand slower movements and collaboration with others. In both cases, the performative objects are ‘magically charged’. They carry the collective energy and the identity of each participant. Objects produced collectively are authored by the 'invited performers' with their names and details.^[17]

In 2013, Alice Anderson sculptures were featured at the 55th Venice Biennale. In 2013/2014, Anderson's work was shown at London's Freud Museum.^[18] Parallels have also been drawn between Anderson and the Post Minimalism movement. In 2015 Wellcome Collection London, Espace Culturel Louis Vuitton, Paris. In 2016 a series of large scale sculptures featured at the Saatchi Gallery,^[19] London showing new woman artists.

Further reading

Time Capsules, Glass Tank Oxford, 2016

Recording the Present, Data Space, Espace Culturel Louis Vuitton by Juliette de Gonet, 2015

Notes on Sculptures, Data Space, Espace Culturel Louis Vuitton by Olivier Lussac, 2015

The Art of Memory, Memory Movement Memory Object, Wellcome Collection by Kate Forde, 2015

The Science of Perception, Memory Movement Memory Object, Wellcome Collection by Israel Rosenfield, 2015

From Dance to Sculpture, James Putnam, 2013

Performing Life, Françoise Mamie, 2013

Studio International, Anna McNay, 2016

ARTPRESS, Alice Anderson by Annabelle Gugnon, October 2015

The Art Desk / Sarah Kent

BBC / Saturday Critics (Starts at 10min 50sec)

Alice Anderson Travelling Studio at tumblr.com

10 British Female Artists You Should Know

References

External links

• Alice-Anderson.org
• Alice Anderson Art

Images