This October, during Frieze week in London, Palmer Gallery will be returning to Minor Attractions (an alternative art fair at The Mandrake Hotel) for a second year running.
The gallery will be presenting work by Madeleine Ruggi, an emerging British scupltor and sound artist. Ruggi’s work seeks to grasp her own position among vast infrastructures of trade that sprawl across the globe yet remain largely unseen by consumers. She uses conversations, site visits, radio communications, field recordings, and found materials along with steel, collage and print to ask how she can responsibly engage with the world, understanding how decisions in her immediate setting may impact systems at large.
At the core of Ruggi’s works are the intricate proximities between commodity exchange, volatile systems of value, and production lines, considering both those who produce and those who consume. She is drawn to the tension between these worldwide abstract infrastructures, characterised by their rigidity and detachment, and the bodily realities they inevitably shape, govern, and often exploit.
Recently, her research has broadened to explore the decentralised logistics and labour of haulage. It focuses on the tentacular systems of distribution whose roads and pathways crisscross the UK to reach one’s own very door. Ruggi's monumental sonic scuplture Distress Purchase, which is the culmination of some many strands of her practice, will be shown at Minor Attractions.
A VIP opening will take place at the Mandrake Hotel on Tuesday 14th October, 12-8pm. Tickets for the fair can be purchased here.
