Beth Collar "Basher Dowsing"

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May 1st - June 6th, 2021
Washington DC: von ammon co is pleased to announce its eleventh project at 3330 Cady’s Alley, Basher Dowsing, a solo show by Berlin-based multidisciplinary artist Beth Collar. The exhibition’s namesake is William “Basher” Dowsing, an English Puritan iconoclast whose mandate was the destruction and removal of idols and objects of superstition from buildings in Cambridgeshire and Suffolk in the middle of the 17th century. The most prominent adjustment to von ammon co (a former grocer’s warehouse completed in 1904 and adjacent to the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal, whose construction was completed in 1850) is the painting of the gallery’s structural columns from white to black, in order to evoke the two-toned siding of timber-framed homes of the English countryside and suburbs. Similar to Oliver Cromwell’s residence (and likely that of Mr. Dowsing), this quaint style of architecture was pragmatic in essence during the Tudor period but resurfaced as a popular faux style in the mid-20th century, as England became industrialized and the middle class gravitated towards a synthetic suburban experience based on nativism and nostalgia. On the upper segments of eight columns hang narrow vertical tablets wrapped in various linen and wool fabrics. This second intervention alludes to the modern amplification systems in churches. Easily overlooked, these normally electronic devices crackle with the activity of the altar, whether that be sermon or simply the ambient murmur surrounding the microphone. This adjustment reconsiders the peculiar architecture of the grocer’s warehouse gallery as a church nave with no altar, its ambiance defined by eerie absence. Installed on the gallery’s rough hewn columns (some of which are made of unshaped tree trunks) is a series of objects carved from Linden wood using traditional methods. The subject of each object, whether it be a vignette of veiny skin, or a realistic body part, or a gush of liquid frozen in time, is the human circulatory system and the blood that flows through it. Collar’s sculptures cite the Crucifixus Dolorosus, or forked cross. Often the site or container for relics, the Crucifixus Dolorosus began appearing in the Gothic Period, tracking closely with the Black Death, and depicted a shockingly corporeal representation of the Christ, his arms either nailed splayed in a Y-shape to a cross, or, frequently, to a Y-shaped construction that represented the forked branches of a living tree (The Tree of Knowledge, charged with bringing sin to the earth). These lurid manifestations of sensitivity and pain belied Christ’s commonly assumed role as the conqueror of death, and instead allude to the frailty and fallibility of the human body under strain. Collar’s installation is made of objects, but its primary strategy is to refocus the attention of the viewer to the peculiar character of the space, and to form a nexus of sensitivity, pain, and longing using the structure of the gallery as its basis. In this sense, Collar is working inversely to Dowsing: while Basher sought to purify parochial spaces of their sense memories; Collar’s strategy is to not only revive the consciousness of the space but to encode it with a new intelligence, a logos borne out of personal and collective trauma. Drawing on her memory of visiting the whitewashed sacred spaces of Cambridgeshire and Sussex, Collar uses the gallery’s space as a similar type of void, and reinscribes it with a new prosthetic iconography.
WORKS
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DOCUMENTS
INSTALLATION VIEWS


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Holding out a hand to show the coin of avarice. Mammon's howl, just audible across the cabbage fields. Throw the moon out with the duck pond water.
708577
Beth Collar
Holding out a hand to show the coin of avarice. Mammon's howl, just audible across the cabbage fields. Throw the moon out with the duck pond water., 2021
linen/cotton/polyester, pine, beech, pins
41.34 x 3.74 x 4.33 in.
105 x 9.5 x 11 cm
BC020
 
Spurt III
708089
Beth Collar
Spurt III, 2021
carved linden (lime) wood
11.42 x 4.92 x 1.97 in.
29 x 12.5 x 5 cm
BC015
 
Coverlet. Dishcloth. Weetabix. Apron. Jobsworth. Rolled Oats. Hot Porridge. Salt, brown sugar, milk. Running vest. A lynx etched in red laser focus.
708575
Beth Collar
Coverlet. Dishcloth. Weetabix. Apron. Jobsworth. Rolled Oats. Hot Porridge. Salt, brown sugar, milk. Running vest. A lynx etched in red laser focus., 2021
linen, pine, beech, pins
41.34 x 3.74 x 4.33 in.
105 x 10 x 11 cm
BC018
 
Spurt V
708087
Beth Collar
Spurt V, 2021
carved linden (lime) wood
12.99 x 5.71 x 4.72 in.
33 x 14.5 x 12 cm
BC013
 
Not Yet Titled
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Beth Collar
Not Yet Titled, 2021
carved linden (lime) wood
6.69 x 4.13 x 2.36 in.
17 x 10.5 x 6 cm
BC009
 
Transparent Man. Split Tongue. Pre-paid. I used to run my finger down the dry, taught threads, breaking every stitch.
708580
Beth Collar
Transparent Man. Split Tongue. Pre-paid. I used to run my finger down the dry, taught threads, breaking every stitch., 2021
linen, pine, beech, pins
41.34 x 3.74 x 4.33 in.
105 x 9.5 x 11 cm
BC023
 
Vascular Panel I
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Beth Collar
Vascular Panel I, 2021
carved linden (lime) wood
4.92 x 7.87 x 1.97 in.
12.5 x 20 x 5 cm
BC006
 
Smoke from the campfires infuses the skin, clothes and all of the baggage. A sherbet fountain has a red and yellow paper wrapper pretending to be a stick of dynamite - the fuse is a long strip of black liquorice that sticks out of the end, exposed.
708576
Beth Collar
Smoke from the campfires infuses the skin, clothes and all of the baggage. A sherbet fountain has a red and yellow paper wrapper pretending to be a stick of dynamite - the fuse is a long strip of black liquorice that sticks out of the end, exposed. , 2021
camel/silk, pine, beech, pins
41.34 x 3.74 x 4.33 in.
105 x 9.5 x 11 cm
BC019
 
Spurt II
708088
Beth Collar
Spurt II, 2021
carved linden (lime) wood
10.63 x 4.72 x 4.92 in.
27 x 12 x 12.5 cm
BC014
 
The Labyrinth Spider has a damp washroom - scullery maid - with her mop heads and a tin bucket. Maw of Hell with a gaggle of sinners going down the funnel seven days a week.
708578
Beth Collar
The Labyrinth Spider has a damp washroom - scullery maid - with her mop heads and a tin bucket. Maw of Hell with a gaggle of sinners going down the funnel seven days a week., 2021
wool, pine, beech, pins
41.34 x 3.74 x 4.33 in.
105 x 10 x 11 cm
BC021
 
Vascular Panel II
708079
Beth Collar
Vascular Panel II, 2021
carved linden (lime) wood
4.72 x 8.27 x 1.77 in.
12 x 21 x 5 cm
BC007
 
Vascular Panel IV
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Beth Collar
Vascular Panel IV, 2021
carved linden (lime) wood
4.53 x 8.07 x 1.77 in.
11.5 x 20.5 x 4.5 cm
BC008
 
Stubble in the fields. The bodybag, the shroud - two knots fastening each end. One at the head, one at the feet. Public Bank Holiday.
708573
Beth Collar
Stubble in the fields. The bodybag, the shroud - two knots fastening each end. One at the head, one at the feet. Public Bank Holiday., 2021
linen, pine, beech, pins
41.34 x 3.74 x 4.33 in.
105 x 10 x 11 cm
BC016
 
Vascular Panel III
708084
Beth Collar
Vascular Panel III, 2021
carved linden (lime) wood
4.72 x 7.87 x 1.69 in.
12 x 20 x 4.3 cm
BC010
 
Spurt I
708085
Beth Collar
Spurt I, 2021
carved linden (lime) wood
8.27 x 4.72 x 4.72 in.
21 x 12 x 7 cm
BC011
 
Little bits of the dried flesh dangling from the neck of the mummy head fell onto my school desk and the Egyptologist didn't collect up the pieces when they took them away again and then the bits went on the floor.
708574
Beth Collar
Little bits of the dried flesh dangling from the neck of the mummy head fell onto my school desk and the Egyptologist didn't collect up the pieces when they took them away again and then the bits went on the floor. , 2021
linen, pine, beech, pins
41.34 x 3.74 x 4.33 in.
105 x 9.5 x 11 cm
BC017
 
Spurt IV
708086
Beth Collar
Spurt IV, 2021
carved linden (lime) wood
8.07 x 3.15 x 5.71 in.
20.5 x 8 x 14.5 cm
BC012
 
The wings of the salesman's lapels - cold and clean. Empty bladder. Sit upright in bed. Long, thin bed. Sit upright. Tucked in tight. Hands on thighs. Fingers long. Allow five working days.
708579
Beth Collar
The wings of the salesman's lapels - cold and clean. Empty bladder. Sit upright in bed. Long, thin bed. Sit upright. Tucked in tight. Hands on thighs. Fingers long. Allow five working days., 2021
linen/cotton/polyester, pine, beech, pins
41.34 x 3.74 x 4.33 in.
105 x 9.5 x 11 cm
BC022
 
Beth Collar, Basher Dowsing, PR
710258
Beth Collar, Basher Dowsing, PR
BC_WAPO_REVIEW-2.pdf
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BC_WAPO_REVIEW-2.pdf
BETH COLLAR.pdf
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BETH COLLAR.pdf

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COURTESY OF von ammon co. COPYRIGHT © THE ARTISTS.