A Most Awkward Divide (All Mind, No Body) – Ruth Fox

With it now being possible to upload our minds separately from our bodies, and with developments in AI and robots questioning the role of the human body, mixed media contemporary artist, Ruth Fox’s new works explores the growing mind-body divide prevalent in the Western World and its effect on our individual physical identities. A heady mix of science, technology and the way we live ‘online’ could mean this awkward divide is set to snowball.

Drawing from her own experiences of an uncomfortable separation between mind and body, Ruth Fox began to explore Dualism, Physicalism and the philosophical ‘mind-body problem.’ Using a variety of life models, she gives a voice to the lines and contours of their bodies.

“We’re not losing our minds, it’s our bodies we’ve lost touch with.”

Applying fabric paint, oil pastel and embroidery threads on to fabric, neoprene and denim-stretched canvases, Ruth Fox’s expressive lines are exhaustive and obsessive, yet find power in their repetition. Whilst some of the lines echo a fragmented, awkward divide between the two seemingly abstract concepts of mind and body – expressing the dissonance felt when our bodies are out of sync with the signals in our minds, and just how easily our minds often usurp any time we give to the body – some of the lines seek harmony through an ebb and flow between one other.

Ruth Fox’s artworks ultimately act as a form of propaganda aimed at generating a reconnection with our physical selves, and as a faithful reminder of our bodies being “the most reliable homes we may ever know.” Acknowledging the increasing foreign relationship we have with our bodies, the artworks highlight the significance of seeking a reconnection between the two.

‘Sounds of My Skin’ – collaboration with singer/ songwriter, Steven Young

Another part of the exhibition will feature a piece of music (which will be sold on a limited edition vinyl of 30) made up of fifteen sounds of the artist’s skin (tapping, stroking, hitting, flicking) which have been manipulated and distorted by Steven Young to become a piece of music which mimics the disjointed, disconnected nature of bodies, before offering a calming, soothing end, an ode to our reconnection with them.

Each of these skin sounds is individually translatedvisually, on a 25 x 25cm canvas to form a canvas wall featuring 15 of these canvases which visually mimic the piece of music.

Ruth Fox

Exhibition: 21 – 27 September 2017
Opening hours: 12 noon – 7pm Tuesday – Saturday or by appointment