Strange animals bells gold is Nicola Farquhar's first show with JSG, and we are delighted to welcome her to our lineup.

The following text on this body of work has been written by writer and curator Abby Cunnane:

"When she writes about the moon as ‘a chin of gold’, Emily Dickinson gives us an image in phases.[1]

The face, all chin;
the chin, all gold;
the gold, all moon.

Gold runs through this series of recent works by Nicola Farquhar as a colour and as an idea; gold is inert, ductile, malleable. Perhaps it is a living thing too: a terrestrial, non-human—animal or mineral—companion which inhabits them. Associated with light, gold and yellow evoke the warmth needed for biological organisms to survive, as well as the heat which has the potential to kill them. More directly, sun is used in the making of elements of the works, toasting the paper mâché circles crisp, while others suggest they may require oxygen, with breathing straws or periscopes attached to a marine body. A bell, too, has its anatomy: a yoke, a crown, a lip, a shoulder, a waist. And a mouth, on occasion, full of sound."

[1] Emily Dickinson, ‘The moon was but a chin of gold’, Complete Poems: Emily Dickinson (London: Faber & Faber, 2016)

Learn more about the exhibition at jonathansmartgallery.com.