Exhibitions

MARY HALLAM PEARSE: MATTERS AT HAND

Stove Works / 1250 E 13th St. July 28, 2022 - September 18, 2022

Mary Hallam Pearse

Matters at Hand by Mary Hallam Pearse, examines how materials and objects accumulate meaning while expressing paradoxical links between the world brought to us by our senses and our desires, and death. The accumulation of matter plays a role in shaping the work while simultaneously conveying the emptiness of over-consumption and the deep gulf between what is recorded of the past and present experiences. Lead contributes to the making of a number of pieces and brings with it a dark and troubling history. Its properties make the history of its uses manifold and contradictory, as murderous projectile and shield; protecting and destroying, attracting as much as repelling. Flowers and jewelry-symbols of luck and love, markers of mourning, of devotion, of celebration, used to remember, to fill voids, to declare; together they play a complex role in seduction and desire. In all of the work the social, political and personal merge together to explore themes of mortality and the human condition itself.