Bruce Ingram - Arrangements

A solo exhibition centre around three bodies of work that occupy the threshold between sculpture and collage. Presenting familiar objects in unfamiliar new arrangements, works are shaped by Ingram’s interest in the Japanese art form of Ikebana.

The first body of work sees Ingram use photocopied images in black and white as a framework for collage, creating new compositions on their surface. Through the act of pinning, the artists’ signature motif of cut-out painted brush strokes create new abstracted images and reference his sculptural pieces also shown in the gallery.

In addition, Ingram creates a selection of works on a much smaller scale. Presenting a series of sculptures featuring plaster casts of fruit and vegetables stacked and piled in visually precarious formations, Ingram considers the notion of perfection and human control over nature. Like a gardener, the artist clips and prunes his subjects until they realize their full aesthetic potential before freezing them at the height of their visual beauty and toying with the ideas of preservation and ephemerality.

A series of wall-based works provide a backdrop to these sculptural pieces. Working with paper, Ingram creates large-scale paper reliefs. Through spontaneous mark making, painted marks are cut out and woven together before being anchored to a polystyrene canvass with nails, pins and paper clips. The temporal nature of fixing suggests impermanence within the image, allowing the viewer to visually unravel the dense and constructed surface.