Laura Ford
(U.K.) *1961 in Cardiff, Wales
One of the most distinctive contemporary English sculptors, Laura Ford has been represented several times in “Blickachsen”. This year her ambiguous figures, reminiscent of characters in a children’s book, take the stage at the Niederhöchstadt Sculpture Park in Eschborn. Her fairytale hybrids or alienated animal and human figures seem at first sight to be playful, yet their apparent accessibility frequently conceals a serious or even melancholy streak. Thus her larger-than-life tomcat “Leaning Behemoth”, based on a character in Michail Bulgakov’s novel “The Master and Margarita”, muses on the bleak reality of being. The group of “Dancing Clog Girls” was originally designed for the Schaetzlerpalais in Augsburg and refers historically to a visit by Marie Antoinette, in whose honour the patrician ladies danced. The intrinsically gay motif of the dance is contrasted by the dark, faceless figures, their thin bodies as if trapped in their wide, swirling skirts. The group of monkeys express their vulnerability through their variously bandaged body parts, invoking in their mimicking of Man his own very fragility.