Tender Mooring
Solo show by Anousha Payne
Deli Gallery, New York
September 6 - October 7, 2023
Video by L.A. Art Documents / www.laartdocuments.com
Text Source: www.deligallery.com
For a few years now, a creature appears in the garden. It stays close by and visits often; remaining elusive and often out of sight.
- Anousha Payne, ‘Gravity of Fur’.
Underpinning Anousha Payne’s practice is an ongoing fascination with storytelling. In a fictional story written by the artist, a woman falls in love with an imagined creature living in her back garden. The creature takes shape as a soft form, more reptilian than human; it possesses an iridescent sheen that reflects in the light; its eyes are long and wide apart, stretching downwards rather than outwards—held up by short legs that intentionally keep it close to the ground. The creature visits daily and the pair spend hours in each other's company. After each visit the creature retreats to the mud, slithering back into the dark earthy tones of the soil and laying to rest alongside neighboring molluscs. With time, the language-less intimacy builds and the relationship between the pair deepens. They become one and come to exist out of necessity; an imagined companion conceived to combat loneliness.
Anousha Payne (b. 1991) graduated from Camberwell College of Arts with a BA in 2014. Her work explores the boundaries between personal experience, fiction and myth. Informed by Indian folklore, work often centers on characters from Indian folklore who display transformative qualities, playing on ideas of chance, moral dilemma, magic, animism and the performative powers of objects. Solo and two person exhibitions include Tangled toes, twisted ears at Public Gallery in London, UK; As she laughs at Cooke Latham in London, UK; and, and here she dwells at Indigo+Madder in London, UK. Recent exhibitions include Midsummer Night’s Dream at Alkinois in Athens, Greece; Hawala at Paradise Row in London, UK; Vessels at Island Gallery in Brussels, Belgium; Into the Soft at C4 Projects in Copenhagen, Denmark; and, HOT MILK at Post_Institute in London, UK, curated by Lucy Von Goetz and Oliver Morris Jones. Payne has been a resident at Cravieral Farmhouse, Portugal; London Bronze Editions, London, UK; Fores Project in London, UK; and Villa Lena in Tuscany, Italy. Commissions include 'Darling, Look' for The Absence of Paths, in conjunction with Tunisia Pavilion at the 57th Venice Biennale.