Fallibility Cabinet

Marica is very concerned about climate change, out of concern for nature and wildlife, as well as the havoc it is making with our built environments. Hurricanes, floods and wildfires are far more common and intense than ever, and the newspapers are filled with images of the wreckage left by these events. She's not even getting into the displacement of people because of these changes, but that is clearly a huge issue as well. Extreme weather events result in massive wreckage and loss. Collapsed, broken, water damaged and burnt building materials have to be carted away to make room for rebuilding new structures, requiring newly sourced materials. How feasible is the way we are living? How can we manage to live with this precariousness, and what changes could be be making rather than ignoring it or fighting it?

Placed on top of TOD is a piece of a disused shed (the triangular wooden form) and a ceramic form Marcia made, which was inspired by another newspaper image of a canoe on a dried out lake. Because of foreshortening in the photograph, the canoe looked more like this odd shape she made.

The sculpture on the top shelf is based on a broken shop awning. She spend a lot of time taking photos of awnings and also market stalls around London and am fascinated by these temporary and precarious structures, built to provide some protection from sun and rain. There’s something about the softness of the fabric stretched on the frame, and how vulnerable it is. The sculpture shows what happens to the fabric and also the striped pattern when the frame has been broken and the awning is no longer serving a function (i.e. it is sitting on the ground after whatever happened to it, rather than hanging on a facade).

Alongside the obvious tragedy of climate change, Marcia often finds the sculptural qualities of the wreckage to be incredibly compelling. The breaking down of existing structures is an opportunity for new forms to come into being, in the physical world as well as more philosophically, psychologically, etc. The idealised, perfect forms our designers and engineers envision are replaced by imperfect and wonkier versions. She is attracted to the abject and sometimes humorous shapes that come out of reassembling the parts, and she thinks such forms can reflect something about us as human beings. Her vote in the future is for more honest and empathetic forms that reflect our fallibility, quirkiness and humour, rather than some idea of perfection that we never can achieve. 

The items on the second shelf reference to both the collapse of the Morandi bridge in Genoa as well as floods. The paper sculpture is a printed with an image of the bridge, and then has been twisted and folded into a new form. Marcia was at an artists’ residency in Italy in 2018 when the bridge collapsed, and the news and images in the newspaper made a huge impression on her (not to mention having driven over the bridge just a week before). The collapse is what got her started on this line of enquiry, which she has been pursuing for the lat two years. 

The bottom of the three shelves is more about rubble and detritus and less about it reforming materials into something new. Just about collapse. It includes some ceramic objects she made, parts of a brick wall that collapsed near my studio in London, a few cement forms she cast and some other bits and bobs. 

She is interested in the shape of the inside of the London bricks, as well as the shape it casts in the mortar, which was revealed only when the wall collapse and the the mortar was separated again from the brick. This idea of a hidden volume of space inside a solid object, which is revealed through casting, is endlessly fascinating to her.

Above is a collection of ‘abject objects’ made from a variety of materials, including a painted paper sculpture with a transfer image inside and a strange folded object made of found metal and painted paper (these were inspired by the crumpling and twisting of the ruins of the Morandi bridge), a cut up and reassembled banister found on the street, a recreation of a support for a sign along the road, another part of the brick wall, and a bit of broken car. Whatever the objects are made of and wherever they came from, they have their own new personalities and stories to tell.