SALLY THURLOW
SYSTEMS FAILURE

AUGUST 31 TO SEPTEMBER 24, 2016
OPENING RECEPTION: SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 10, 1 - 5PM.

The Red Head Gallery is pleased to present Systems Failure by artist Sally Thurlow.

Sally Thurlow’s sculptural practice gives form to a subtle and deeply personal voice that protests the degradation of the environment, opposes the marginalization of social groups, and grieves the breakdown of family.  In Systems Failure, we confront the visual force of four ribbed characters - familiar yet uncomfortably strange. What do they expect from one another?  Is their system on the edge of failure or success?  

There is a relationship between the four characters. One work, the caged heart, traveling on a robot vacuum or “Roomba”, has a compulsive need to visit the other characters. Is this a symbol of an over-caring parent, striving to hold everything together while sacrificing him or herself?  Or perhaps a social worker or an activist trying to make a difference in an indifferent world? The reading of all characters is deliberately ambivalent. 

Thurlow believes we are all complicit within the systems we belong to.  Our individual responses, taken together, can lead to the failure of a whole system - disintegrating national, social, and family goals. For every hierarchical group there is a delicate balance between autonomy and dependency, social and sexual functioning, and healthy growth that allows for individuals to become mature and self aware. Since it is an ever-evolving cycle, there are always system failures for which we all carry some responsibility to varying degrees. 

Thurlow has taken on the theme of Systems Failure in her earlier work. Inspired by the film The Matrix,  she created a multimedia work for her travelling exhibition Canoe Dreamings that featured a canoe that metamorphoses into a dream-hammock for a Native hunter. It was a gesture of support toward indigenous peoples. Thurlow’s material choices, while mainly ecological, now exhibit quirky juxtapositions. Increasingly sophisticated, her work has evolved from lyrical driftwood characters to a new kind of surrealism that includes the manufactured, the machined, and the robotic.  

  Thurlow notes optimistically that out of the ability to withstand failure usually comes a positive reaction where some individuals, cooperative groups, companies, and countries fire up their imaginations to create their very best. Much innovation has come through desperate times and the need for transformation. Culture, it seems, expresses itself more keenly on the cusp of change.

For more information please visit her website: 
www.sallythurlow.com and You Tube: Sally Thurlow, for a four minute video.