Pippy Houldsworth Gallery is pleased to present a new sculpture by London-based artist Josephine Baker in The Box, the gallery’s micro project space. Incorporating the contorted aluminium skeleton of a water wheel against tiles broken up into the forms of sea stacks, Prime Mover: Stack 1 reflects on the role of water in commercial energy production and reclaims the narrative function of materials in an industrial and post-industrial world.
Through a practice that comprises sculpture, installation and drawing, Baker explores the interrelation of human infrastructure and the natural world. From the cellular to the leviathan, the zooplanktonic to the hydroelectric, scale is minimised and magnified at will in Baker’s hands, bringing into focus material histories that underpin and illuminate socio-economic realities. The ‘prime mover’ to which the work’s title refers is loosely defined as an initial source of power used to drive machinery or infrastructure, of which the water wheel is one such example. Sea stacks, columnar geological formations that rise out of coastal waters, are fashioned by the erosive force of waves against coastlines, a dramatic natural expression of the latent power the water wheel so effectively instrumentalised as the literal and symbolic prime mover of the Industrial Revolution.
As is typical in Baker’s work, the water in Prime Mover: Stack 1 is rendered largely in concrete, a seeming juxtaposition of material and form that, in fact, belies their shared histories. Concrete’s principal constituents, sand and water—long before their treatment, trade, and ossified reunion—can ultimately be traced back to the sea. In reconstructing landscapes from materials both of and against themselves, Baker gives voice to the commodified and space to the territorialised. In the process, the artist subverts traditional narratives of landscape representation, which demand that we ‘look upon this, which is mine’, in favour of a polyphonic chorus that exhorts us to ‘look upon this, which is ours and its own’.
Josephine Baker (b. 1990, London) completed her undergraduate studies at Central Saint Martins, London (2012), and received her postgraduate diploma from the Royal Academy Schools, London (2017). She was a 12-month resident award holder at The British School at Rome (2017–18); awarded the Sainsbury Scholarship in Painting and Sculpture; and a participant on the V.O Curations Studio Residency programme, London (2021). Recent solo exhibitions include water-resistance, St. Chads, London (2023); Outfallers, Nir Altman, Munich (2022); Focus, Frieze London, with Nir Altman (2022); Clear out the wounds closest to the sun, V.O. Curations, London (2021); The Land Lies, ChertLüdde, Berlin (2020); and Islands, Kupfer, London (2019). Her work has been included in group exhibitions at The British Museum, London; The Drawing Biennial at the Drawing Room, London; Love Unlimited, Glasgow; Royal Academy of Arts, London (2018); amongst others. An artist book, Submarines, produced in collaboration with writer M. Ty, was published in 2022.