Wall Drawing 28
An Indoor Heaven, running at Colchester’s firstsite until June 24 2006, is Brazilian artist Brigida Baltar’s first solo UK exhibition.
All the works in the exhibition use objects and brick dust from her house in Rio de Janeiro and explore the relationship between inside and outside and how we make our homes. She also explores the relationship with firstsite’s own building in Colchester.
Bricks are normally thought of as solid things, making safe and secure homes. Baltar, however, has removed some of the bricks that make up her Brazilian house, ground them into dust, and brought them to Britain where she has made sculptures and wall drawings from the dust mixed with glue giving it back some of the material’s former permanence.
New Image 3
The drawings play with the ideas of inside and outside by representing, in beautiful, graceful drawings, vast sweeps of desert and a rain forest and by occupying entire walls of the upstairs galleries at firstsite. Her smaller drawings, of two cocoons with filigree design, link with the butterflies she made from more brick dust and were inspired by her impression of firstsite’s gallery as a cocoon.
These drawings are the most impressive items in the exhibition, although the open book, made once again of brick dust, has a fairytale quality about it. There is also an interesting video of Baltar’s work in her home removing bricks and investigating rafters, which is interesting.
The video installation in the library space left me bemused, however, and unfortunately my Spanish (non-existent) was not up to reading the accompanying book. Baltar has been widely exhibited in her native Brazil, and this exhibition is part of firstsite’s ongoing commitment to promote Latin American art.
As well as its main exhibitions, firstsite contains an artists’ space which gives emerging artists three to four week residencies.
