Alice Channer: Worms

The artist says “The show is called ‘Worms’, the title of one of the sculptures. I titled the show ‘Worms’ after small and significant animals that live underground, whose labour is rarely acknowledged by vertebrate production chains. Many of the materials and forms come from underground (rocks, sand, fossils, metal), and have been brought above ground for the exhibition. It is guided by gravity and anti-gravity, and different kinds of scale vast and tiny.

Channer calls into question the concept of authorship as well as those of unity and determination. Who makes what? Everything is in a constant, continuous transformation, voluntary and involuntary, predetermined and accidental. Every object, every form is the product of a work in which organic and industrial processes, genetic mutations and temporal and spatial stratifications participate. The surface of the objects made from crafted fabrics, from fossils brought back to life is — literally — scabrous, bearing marks of ruptures, scratches, concretions, sediments, folds, and marks, just like human skin. Alice Channer calls it 21st-century process art, as the process of creating the works is a substantial part of her practice. For this and her use of materials, she has a special connection with the Italian Arte Povera movement, which is evident in a particular alchemical style open to the contribution of chance along with the physical forces that inhabit matter. From primordial rock to digital prints by way of industrial fabrics and animal fossils, her creative universe expands from the chthonic realm to the hyperuranion one.