Forever
Ella Rose Flood & Graham Wiebe

JANUARY 17 — MARCH 15, 2022

Presented as part of BAITBALL02
Palazzo San Giuseppe
Polignano a Mare, Italy

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Artists Graham Wiebe and Ella Rose Flood engage the unspoken rules and expectations, the unseen spaces and gestures, and the disused and discarded materials of the dinner party. Wiebe’s sculptural work, Forever, takes the form of an oversized inspirational stone tucked gently between two cellophane bouquet sleeves. The stone’s intended purpose of soothing anxiety is upended by its enlarged scale and dislocation, as it shifts from a secretive and insular act of fumbling taking place in a nervous guest’s pocket to a shining centerpiece on display for the entire table. The compressed aluminum foil of the stone and its repurposed cellophane enclosures make use of materials that often show up to a party serving important symbolic and practical roles, but likely end the night in the trash can or recycling bin. The stone’s inscribed text amplifies the uneasy feelings it was once intended to comfort and transforms the object into a sort of memorial that will long outlast the evening. Wiebe’s second work, Untitled, takes on a similar commemorative purpose and echoes both memorial plaques and place cards arranged around a table. A tension arises through his decision to leave the foil plaque blank, denoting a spot in which no specific person is meant to sit. However, the work’s placement upon a window bench also creates an opportunity for intimate engagement and sharing of space between guests. 

Ella Rose Flood’s painting, Gum under a glass table, reveals the hidden, shared, and sometimes contested space that exists beneath a dining table. This mischievous method of disposing of chewed gum goes against the established social mores of a dinner party and of one’s home in general. Usually employed by the immature and inconsiderate in public spaces or school classrooms, this gesture is effectively negated by the transparency of the table’s surface. The scene is framed from below — from the sneaky vantage point of a hand about to add another piece of gum to the table’s growing collection — but this pictorial logic is again disrupted by the simultaneous viewpoints of everyone else who is present and can easily see the act taking place. When you peek under a tablecloth, what do you expect to find? People playing footsie? An eager dog awaiting scraps? A guest anxiously trying not to rub thighs with the stranger next to them? Flood’s stark visual language and labored, glossy surface urgently make visible the behaviors we generally wish to obscure while in the company of others. The glass of the table, the rapidly hardening pieces of gum stuck underneath it, and the undocumented foil wrappers from which they came find parallels in Wiebe’s cellophane sheaths and compacted aluminum constructions. In each artist’s work, uncouth actions and disposable materials are collected from the periphery and reified into uncomfortable totems of communality.

Please direct all inquiries to info@jargonprojects.com.