Candice Lin: A Body Reduced to Brilliant Colour

Gasworks presents A Body Reduced to Brilliant Colour, the first UK solo show by Candice Lin.

The exhibition explores how histories of slavery and colonialism have been shaped by human attraction to particular colours, tastes, textures and drugs. Focusing on how the desire to wear, ingest or become enraptured by certain substances preceded the will to trade them as commercial goods, A Body Reduced to Brilliant Colour traces the materialist urges at the root of colonial violence.

A low-tech installation of tubing, porcelain filters and hacked household objects boils, distils, dyes and pumps liquid containing colonial commodities such as cochineal, sugar and tea. “Fed” two litres of fermented tea per day, this work—which the artist describes as a “flayed circulatory system”—constantly produces a red fluid, which collects in a basin of Vitruvian proportions and is gradually siphoned off, congealing in a pool on a marble-effect laminate floor in the adjacent gallery.

Living processes, from fermentation to the generation of an electrical current through bacterial digestion, join with objects, organic matter and DIY mechanics to constitute a ritualistic act in which ceaseless movement echoes the histories of trade that entangle them. Transforming prized, historically-loaded goods into a stain reminiscent of murder or menstrual blood, the work speaks to these fraught histories of conquest, slavery, torture and theft, while at the same time exploring what happens when materials so burdened with history and meaning are situated in—and produce—new systems of relations.

Exhibition events

The Intricate Speech of Intimate Objects
Saturday, September 24, 2pm
Los Angeles-based artist and psychic Asher Hartman leads an exhibition tour using psychometry, the art of channeling extrasensory perception to read the histories, energies and associations attached to objects.

Eating the Edifice
Saturday, November 12, 3pm
Food historian and artist Ivan Day presents an illustrated lecture outlining the evolution of edible table art from the early Renaissance to the 19th century.

Gasworks’ 2016 exhibitions programme is supported by Catherine Petitgas.

Residency events

Autumn Open Studios
Open studios: September 24, 12–6pm
Artists’ talks: September 24, 4–5pm

Karolina Brzuzan (Poland), hosted in the Outset Residency Studio
Jamie Crewe (UK), hosted in the Roberts Residency Studio
Jackie Karuti (Kenya), hosted in the Juan Yarur Torres Residency Studio
Priyesh Trivedi (India), hosted in the Sackler Residency Studio

Gasworks’ current international artists in residence open their studios to the public throughout the day on Saturday, September 24. Open studios and artists’ talks offer London audiences a unique opportunity to see, hear about and discuss the research and work-in-progress that these artists have been developing over the past three months at Gasworks.

Gasworks current residencies are supported by Culture.pl in collaboration with A-I-R Laboratory, CCA Ujazdowski Castle; the Freelands Foundation; Mercedes Vilardell; the Charles Wallace India Trust and the Inlaks Shivdasani Foundation.