Polis

In the exhibition Polis, Glasgow based artist, Helen de Main presents a new body of work in printmaking and sculpture. The works appear as fragments and remnants of objects, building encounters between real or fictive events that have either just happened or are about to take place. These images and texts continue de Main’s concern with questioning power, movement and control through a series of dysfunctional calls to action.

POLIS

New work by Helen de Main

From the stairs looking through the window,

I’m a visitor here.

Walking through the door I’m met by a series of rectilinear metal forms demarcating authoritarian stances. Strips of newsprint like lacerated posters pasted side by side over banal elements of the urban environment.

Repetitious hand-torn gestures moulded over raw metal edges,

Skin over bone.

Glancing out through the window back towards the stairs,

Hard line on soft material.

Closer,

The pale half tones of faded grey, red and yellow hum to the monotonous media machines of the ages,

A white noise from an old television,

No picture here, no text,

A textural broadcast.

Dry fibres remember moisture to form corrugated sheets,

Sugar paper city.

I’m a visitor.

Holding onto the grey metal rail I begin to descend the stairs again.