Nancy Lupo's artistic journey, as showcased in her exhibition 'Several Chickens Later' at Spike Island, Bristol, offers a captivating exploration of the elusive nature of home and the artist's own real-estate fantasies. Lupo's work, particularly her novel 'Meow Meow Real Estate', delves into the itinerant artist's quest for an apartment, revealing a complex interplay between reality and fantasy. The novel, a roman à clef, serves as a thin veil over Lupo's personal experiences, chronicling her search for a sense of permanence in a world of successive rentals and sublets.
One of the most intriguing aspects of Lupo's work is her ability to transform the mundane into the extraordinary. In her exhibition, she employs a variety of materials, including yellow napkins, paper towels, and glue, to create sculptures that evoke a sense of disorientation and fragility. The central piece, 'The Enclosure', is a three-quarter-scale replica of a Victorian bay window, elongated to allow visitors to sit inside and experience a sense of immersion. This sculpture, with its polished surface and subtle play on scale, serves as a literalization of the narrator's attenuating fantasy, capturing the pathos of a dream house that remains just out of reach.
Lupo's use of ground-level, wilted pyramidal sculptures, referred to as 'tellers', further emphasizes the theme of disorientation and the failure of our fantasies to materialize. These sculptures, formed from layers of glue, patterned paper towels, and pearlescent paint, are often repurposed between shows, their signification seemingly leasable. In 'Disko', they became abstract stand-ins for icebergs, but in Bristol, they fold and wilt pathetically, almost anthropomorphically, under the weight of their own meaning.
The exhibition also features 'Hark', a contiguous formation of yellow napkins in protective plastic cases taped over the skylights on the roof. The yellow firmament flickers, creating a disorienting effect akin to the insomniac time of night. The napkins, with their corners flipping down in the breeze, allow in open triangles of undoctored daylight, adding a layer of unpredictability to the space.
Lupo's work challenges the traditional sense of immersion, making the audience question their own perceptions of reality and fantasy. The breathing motors, visible through the delicate paper towels, and the pervasive yellow haze created by the cocktail napkins, contribute to a sense of ambivalence and giftshop pathos. These sculptures, if they can be seen as moorings, tie a loose and fugitive knot, securing the dream to a material reality in a tenuous and precious way.
In conclusion, Nancy Lupo's exhibition 'Several Chickens Later' is a thought-provoking exploration of the artist's own real-estate fantasies and the contemporary disorientation involved in home finding. Through her use of materials and sculptures, Lupo challenges the audience to question their own perceptions of reality and fantasy, offering a unique and captivating perspective on the elusive nature of home.
