Aimee Lax

Confines and Mutations

Feb 29th – March 15th 2008

Aimee Lax, winner of the Site07 Darbyshire Award will be showing Confines and Mutations;a body of new work that investigates the experience of what she terms ‘artificial nature’, focusing in particular on the botanical. Her new sculpture questions the values that we project onto nature. This is the first opportunity to view her new work that has been realised with funds from the Award, and will be presented at the Stroud Valleys Artspace’s recently refurbished building in the centre of Stroud.

In this exhibition Lax explores themes of attraction/repulsion, familiar/unfamiliar and the fear of other-wordliness by examining the conventions of display with which human culture frames the natural world. She uses the combinations of colour, pattern and materials such as ceramic, acrylic glass and concrete to examine these themes. In doing so she presents a reflection on the contemporary situation of the relationship between nature and culture. “I am captivated by our present day experiences of nature as well as of what we might see in another lifetime and another place. The truth is, that nature is being artificially adapted, apparently without limits.”

Aimee Lax is known for creating larger ceramic works in components often using porcelain which is highly symbolic to her. Wait a While, showing at this exhibition, is a large mutated thorn sculpture that eerily resembles a pile of human bones. Pitcher plant-like ceramic forms exist amongst the everyday and unremarkable environment and object, other works include an experiment in artificially colouring a ceramic plant form.

Since graduating from the Royal College of Art in 2005, Aimee Lax has exhibited in Denmark for European Ceramic Context 2006, recent exhibitions include ROSL Scholars at OXO Gallery 2007, as well as exhibiting extensively for Site07 Arts festival in Stroud 2007. She recently returned from a summer residency at Banff Centre for the Arts, in Canada and commissions include working with Sir Terence Conran and partners at the Chelsea Flower show 2005. Permanent collections include the V&A.

photography by Nigel Noyes