Gerda Scheepers @ Mary Mary

Gerda Scheepers peels away at commonplace flat-packed disposable furniture to make unexpected allusions to the body and its heavy physicality

Review by Adam Benmakhlouf | 05 Aug 2016

In white thick acrylic line on black fabric, parts of a garment pattern are drawn in a neat arrangement with an efficient space economy. This is on the large panel in the first room of Gerda Scheepers’ Body Corporate. Sleeves, trouser legs and cuffs are set conveniently side by side without any of the components touching or overlapping. Bulging forms are nevertheless suggested by the subtle curve of the hand-drawn lines.

All of the standing works in the two rooms are made up of the rods of 'instant garment closets'. In one, titled Maintenance, a thigh-height cuboid has a black fabric covering, unzipped at the side and with a part of it hanging off. A large blue thick plastic bag is set in it, and pursed into a pucker. Heft, bulk and convulsing are suggested, but it could also pass as a biohazard bin.

Scheepers makes for moments of incongruous drooping and unexpected convex forms so that in even the most boring consumer spacesavers, there’s an abject bodiliness. Curving bubble text is cut into the fabric covering of one of the travel wardrobes in the second room. 'It’s all ok. Don’t worry,' it reads, with its remainders still attached like peelings, undermining its own assurances.

In an identical structure, a rectangle has been cut out of its covering, bordered by a strip at the bottom that loses its tautness and bends. When the material gives way there’s a familiar tugging gravity, and the cut sections fold over themselves weightily, their plastic skeletons made an important feature. Almost made to ooze out from all the readymade parts and graphic aesthetic of Body Corporate, there’s a delicate but distinct luxuriating in the mess of viscera and bodily functions.

Run ended.