133 Cumberland Road
Until 6 Sept · Free
Spike Island presents Several Chickens Later , Nancy Lupo (b.1983, Flagstaff, AZ)’s largest exhibition in the UK to date, including new sculptures that probe aspirations, ambiguities and material culture. In her work, which encompasses sculpture, video, writing, sound, drawing, painting, performance and architecturally specific installation, Lupo reflects on how collective fantasies and emotions become embedded in form. She often describes her work as being scripted or held together through a thin thread of narrative which she explores through writing that she publishes as zines, and soon, in her first novel, Meow Meow Real Estate . In this novel, Lupo recounts the story of a woman looking for an apartment. The search is both literal and existential. An epic drama of regular things, dreams and distortions are intertwined. The trajectory comes to an end in The Clock House, a storied Victorian flat located in the residential neighbourhood of Chelsea, in London. What is left once projections turn into possession? The exhibition at Spike Island prolongs the reverie and the longing for domesticity. It refuses a reality-check, and loops back into wistful illusion. Although the mirage is tired, its feeble flame still somehow persists. A corpus of newly commissioned sculptures, playing with the scale and industrial grandeur of Spike Island’s galleries, evokes the fragility of our endeavours, and the futility of our fantasies.