Local/National/International – The Lowry – Review

t is a freezing Sunday, and The Lowry is warm. Warmer than outside, at least. I am here to visit the temporary ceramics exhibition: Local/National/International. It is 10:30am and barely anyone, besides a couple staff members, are here. It is also a designated quiet viewing time. I was unaware of this beforehand but wasn’t planning on making tonnes of noise anyway.

Image via The Lowry

The title of the exhibition simple refers to the fact that the three exhibiting artists are local (the North of England), national (London) and international (Hong Kong). Respectively, Aliyah Hussain, Paloma Proudfoot, and Renee So. The stated purpose is “revealing similarities and overlaps in their practices”. Whether this is achieved is up for debate. Each artist is exhibited in demarcated gallery space, with no physical overlap. Each space has its own character. While comparisons can be drawn, the overarching geographical conceptualisation seems like an afterthought. As if – and this is purely speculative – The Lowery wanted to display ceramics from these artists and constructed the theme around it.      

That said, there is a strong feminist link tying the artists together, most evidently in reappropriating the female form, but more subtly in the drive behind the construction of the artworks.

I approach the gallery clockwise. I am very aware, as one of the only visitors at the moment, that I am being observed. This is understandable. I have just placed my backpack on the floor, withdrawn a single sheet of A4 from my laptop case, folded it into four and tucked a pencil behind my right ear. My first encounter is with the introductory text. It sets out the context of the gallery and gives a short introduction to each artist. The writing is perfect, each blurb accompanied by a 2D monocolour rendering of a relevant artwork. As the wall on which this is written pulls away to the left, I naturally head in that direction.

The first artist shown is Renee So. Unfortunately the text overshadows the actual exhibit. Her practice draws inspiration from Museum Objects, specifically orientalised objects within Western Collections. This is a fascinating draw, and a subject with a lot of meat. Through her ceramics she responds to the storied history of British involvement in China, and the trajectory from snuff to perfume, teasing out physical comparisons across history. Specifically, the wall text explains how she has responded to Yves Saint Laurent’s Opium perfume campaign.

Image via The Lowry

The gallery itself is a white cube, undisruptive lighting falls on a hip height shelf, upon which sits her works. The majority are scaled up perfume bottles, or objects made to look like perfume. They are impressively crafted works. However, their content and context has been overexplained. Spending time with them, I found that I could not gain anything new from the artworks other than moments that confirm what had been written in the gallery text. To me, the artworks are so purposeful and direct, that any subjectivities have been muted. It felt obvious. Obvious too were the parallels between their display and the display of perfume in a cabinet, or a store. Their horizontal layout meant that no piece stood out. The strong commentary on orientalism in consumerism left little room for anything else.

That said, So does speak to an intersection between feminine identity, consumerism, and exploitation that plays out throughout the history in question. I get it, but that seems to be the long and short of it.

Before encountering our next artist, I move through a small library. Each artist has chosen a selection of books. However, here, much like the exhibition as whole, the artists are sectioned off from one another. While the shelves are not attributed to specific artists, it is evident which one of the three each artist has curated.

Continuing my clockwise direction I next encounter West Yorkshire artist Aliyah Hussain. Cutting any suspense, this room is incredible. Any misgivings generated by the previous room are immediately forgotten.

Image via The Lowry

I walk into a much larger room, high ceiling and earthy burnt umber walls. It is unsettlingly lit. Spotlights cast light at unpredictable angles, not quite catching the art, pinning down the visitor, crafting spots of shadow and moments of blinding bright. In the centre of the room sit three giant flowerpots. They are seats, all facing different directions, allowing only one person to sit at a time. They dwarf the visitor. I am now mere inches tall, trapped in some sort of subterranean hall, an overgrown world of disturbing plant life. The walls seem alive.

Her artworks are mounted, like lichen or fungi on the walls. They sit in unpredictable places. The entire room feels oddly organic. They cast elongated shadows, stretched by the odd angle of the lights, their glazing creating a slimy-like sheen on their curved surfaces. Hussain’s work is “plant horror, transformation and female refusal”. Inspiration is taken from Anne Richter’s 1967 short story ‘The Sleep of Plants’, in which a woman, transported to an unknown world of soil and plants, embraces the solitude and grows roots, actively and willingly rejecting the real and metamorphising into plant life.

Each artwork is a mess of organic vines, seed pods, flowers, fruit-like growths. Some resemble anemone, some bulbous fungi. Under closer inspection they are sport lurid colours, picked out by the light, or enshrouded in shadow. In the gloom I could swear that they were moving. It reminds me of the moment in Garland’s film Annihilation, where they stumble upon a corpse in an empty swimming pool now almost unrecognisable, exploded in a mess of fungi, only the top half of the skull remaining visible.  

Usually the gallery is accompanied by an ambient soundtrack made from recording sounds generated from manipulating wet clay, however, during this quiet viewing, this element is unfortunately absent. Yet, even without the soundscape, this remains an immersive experience. Tactile, too. A small shelf provides me with samples of Hussain’s pottery to touch and hold. If the exhibition was centred purely around Aliyah Hussain’s work, then I would have been more than happy.

Exiting Hussain’s vivarium to the gentle light of the hall is jarring, yet I am brought back in upon noticing that the entrance to Paloma Proudfoot’s gallery space is framed by two mannequin hands pulling away a curtain. On closer inspection, these hands are ceramic. I have absolutely no idea how anyone could manage to put such a thing together.

Proudfoot’s gallery is the most forward in its feminism, inspired by the gendered history of the treatment of hysteria at Salpêtrière in the 19^th Century. Introductory text indicates that a performance will bookend the exhibition. If I am free, I will endeavour to attend.

Image via M. Lorkowska, creativetourist.com

The room is brighter but retains the high ceilings. I wonder, now, why So’s gallery space was so cramped, compared to the other two artists. Within this space are perhaps the most impressive works of ceramics that I have ever seen. Tessellated panels form faces and bodies, all pinned to fabric or to the gallery walls. Their three-dimensionality allows for genuinely uncanny elements that protrude. An ear, or the texture of hair. A hand holding a metal tuning fork. It is impasto turned up to eleven.

The three-dimensionality turns this space into a place of genuine body horror. While the faces are close to emotionless – still, cold, and porcelain – different angles of viewings allow for the incorporation of squeamish elements. A mural depicts two figures peeling the skin off of a woman’s torso, revealing bright red veins and sinews beneath. To its left, someone’s calf is lifted away from their bone. From the front, all is well, but any angled approach allows the viewer to see the connecting tissue. Again, the glaze is perfect to communicate an uncomfortable wetness. A pair of hands, their veins picked out in red, sprout feathers at the fingertips. The ceramic mannequin torso, to be worn during the performance, showcases viscera on its interior. It’s all very Black Swan.   

However, the grotesque here is not directionless. By revolving around historical treatments for hysteria performed by male doctors on female bodies, this gallery grounds itself in its exploration of physicality and autonomy. The use of female forms to enact treatment, alongside self-administration, provokes questions of agency and embodiment.

Bracketing the technical marvel of these works (how on earth do you make a ceramic articulated mannequin hand?) this gallery is incredible. It is both genuinely effective body horror tied to potent feminist themes and a substantial investigation of a historical injustice. The works stare at you, or beyond you, their elevated elements making them unavoidable.

Ultimately, both Hussain and Proudfoot’s spaces are remarkable, which only reinforces my disappointment with how So’s work has been presented. Whether my issue is with the curatorial hand or with the works themselves, I don’t fully know. But two out of three spaces are genuine showstoppers. It does, however, bring back the issue of the exhibitions name. I felt that nothing substantial was said on the interconnecting geographies of local/national/international. Sure, ceramic practice has its similarities, but stronger comparisons are in the use of ceramics to explore feminist reinterpretations and challenges. This aspect should be brought to the foreground.

Irrespective of the title, this is well worth a visit, doubly so as admission is free.

Local/National/International is on display at The Lowry between 23 November 2024 – 16 February 2025