THE PERPETUITY OF RUIN

FieldWorks Gallery hosts Sol Bailey-Barker’s first solo exhibition. Bailey-Barker creates an immersive installation which reveals the equation behind his sculptural process through a new series of tapestries in which "route" objects are assembled, categorised and sewn onto canvas. Objects found from the artist’s childhood are displayed beside debris recently washed up on the banks of the River Thames. Certified antiques identified by The Museum of London allude to certain histories, yet the jumbled, declassified presentation and ‘fakes' suggest other possibilities of history and the co-existence of the past, present and future.

Sol Bailey-Barker (b 1987) is a British multi-disciplinary artist working primarily with sculpture and performance. His works fuse historical and sociological research with an inquiry into the power and symbolism of materials, tools and everyday objects. Informed by archeology, geometry, mythology and a diverse range of contemporary and ancient spiritual practices, his work seeks to re-consider history from a non-colonial perspective. 

Throughout Bailey-Barker’s life he has collected objects from natural and man-made environments. Varying from Neolithic tools to contemporary refuse, some have value historically, culturally, emotionally, whilst others are simply interesting for their form or materiality. These objects have been collected from house-clearances, mud-larking, found in wildernesses and junk yards. He is particularly fascinated by tools and the way they have been animated and revered over time.

Bailey-Barker refers to his findings as route objects as they inform his abstract sculptures, which in turn function as new sacred forms, taking on the mythic qualities of the objects they draw from. Each sculpture is born from a ritual: finding a "route" objects, excavating and observing, living with the object, categorising and assembling, extracting or imbuing narrative; resulting in an endless performance.

For example: 17th Century Pipe + flint arrowhead + goldfinch nest + axe once owned by the recently deceased Dr John Slome + crow skull + metal shard = sculpture number 88 (Peripheral Form).

Until recently the "route" objects behind Bailey-Barker’s practice have been concealed and sculptures have been exhibited without their corresponding equation of found objects. In THE PERPETUITY OF RUIN, Bailey-Barker reveals the equation behind his sculptural process, presenting an immersive installation and a new series of tapestries in which route objects are assembled, categorised and sewn onto canvas.

The objects amassed in these works include both certified antiques and fakes calling into question the importance of authenticity in historical relics. Does it matter if an antiquity is real if it points to a true notion of history? Can we identify the facsimile and the genuine? Is there an inherent quality specific to the real? 

Hierarchy affiliated with value is discarded, emotional attachment sacrificed and the resulting tapestries become a means of presenting abstract yet meaningful information about form and the qualities of materials. With these works Bailey-Barker ultimately questioning his own relationship to time and memory and presenting the possibility of the co-existence of the past, present and future.