Sol Bailey-Barker explores the uncertainty of history, revisiting narratives from a parallel non-colonial perspective

Artworks

ALICE BLACK presents Sol Bailey-Barker's solo show: 'A Bouba/Kiki Paradigm, 9 August – 8 September 2018.

The 'A Bouba/Kiki Paradigm' effect is a non-arbitrary mapping between speech sounds and the visual shape of objects'. Bailey-Barker's abstract sculptures draw from symbolism and objects he studies, using materials associated with both agriculture and industry to provoke an association between the industrial born from technological development and its ancient spiritual origins.

Drawing on the sound of rhythmic heavy machinery, deep space and sacred bells, Bailey-Barker's sculptures double as ritual instruments; the exhibition becomes a temple both revering and questioning human endeavour and where it has brought us to now.

Sol Bailey-Barker (b 1987) is a British multi-disciplinary artist working primarily with sculpture, sound and performance. Informed by the development of technologies that were for millennia seen as shamanic for their transformative power upon the landscape and their influence over life and death, Bailey-Barker's practice follows this journey of body-hacking and augmentation from the ancient sacred axe to contemporary prosthetics and machinery.