"I remember watching my mother trying to snail proof her garden. Proofing nature from nature itself… but," the artist says with a smile, "the snails always found a way."
Sapling presents Smooth Snailing, a solo exhibition by Alma Berrow. The artist takes us by the hand and leads us on a dance through her all-new glazed earthenware sculptures.
Freestanding sculptures include a large ashtray, a playable chess set, a monumental urn, lemons in various stages of decay, and a working celery lamp. The artist will present never-before seen ceramic tarot cards. In tarot, one person asks a question about their lives, and another deals four cards to suggest answers. The cards will be displayed as groups of four as if the cards have been dealt, inviting us to imagine the question.
In her playable chess set, Life's a Picnic, the board is a chequered picnic mat and each piece is a canapé. Knights and pawns have become devilled eggs and prawns. In another new work, she explores kleshas, the Buddhist mental state that clouds the mind and manifests in unwholesome actions. Kleshas include feelings of anxiety, fear and vice which Berrow draws on for her work Kleshas Ashtray. An ashtray brimming with cigarette butts is supported by three golden figures. Each embodies desire, uncertainty, and anger who are being crushed by the unknowing, as they attempt to flip the ashtray over in frustration.
Snails will invade the exhibition. "I remember watching my mother trying to snail proof her garden. Proofing nature from nature itself… but," the artist says with a smile, "the snails always found a way."
Alma Berrow (b. 1992) is a female artist working with ceramics, bringing the still life genre into the twenty-first century to explore questions of how to navigate the joys, sorrows, loves and temptations in life today. She currently lives and works in London. Forthcoming exhibitions include Cerámica Suro: A Story of Collaboration, Production, and Collecting in the Contemporary Arts at the Dallas Museum of Art, opening on 20 April 2023, and Form: (Women) Makers at Sotheby's London from 7-16 March 2023. Recent solo shows include For dust you are, to dust you shall return, at Galeria Hilario Galguera, Mexico City (2022) and Lamb Arts, London, (2022). Recent presentations include In Real Life at Timothy Taylor, London (2021) and Miami Nada, Nino Meir (2021). In 2021 the artist was part of Sotheby's (Women) Artists auction, with her work presented alongside works by Lavinia Fontana, Dorothea Tanning, Cindy Sherman and Helen Frankenthaler.
