Jupiter Artland, award-winning, contemporary sculpture park located just outside Edinburgh, will play host to artist Lindsey Mendick this Summer.
Mendick is creating three monumental installations inspired by Robert Louis Stevenson’s gothic novella The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, presenting a contemporary view of duality and supposed binaries between good and evil, virtue and depravity and gender roles in an update the famous Victorian tale. This will be the artist’s first institutional solo presentation in Scotland and coincides with Edinburgh Art Festival that runs from 11th to 27th August.
Lindsey Mendick has established herself as one of the most important artists of her generation. Working predominantly with clay, she houses her artwork in life-like installations, recreating scenes from her personal life – dinner parties, night club toilets, living rooms and dance floors. Her highly crafted ceramics vases, sculptures and stained glass artworks populate these environments, bursting with surreal detail, with animal and vegetal form.
Lindsey Mendick’s work is one of confession, where taboo topics and uncomfortable truths are exposed. Her work is characterised by an intense attention to detail, where everyday scenes are expertly crafted in ceramic and staged in larger-than-life tableaux.
Taking place across Jupiter’s Ballroom, Steadings Galleries, and the Dovecot Gallery, this exhibition is a triptych of sociability enabled by excessive consumption with a different expression at each venue.
Mendick says “Duality is in all of us, we’re neither fully good nor bad. What makes us so fascinating as subjects to draw upon are those gritty nuances of self. I was drawn to the story of Jekyll and Hyde because it resonated deeply with my daily inner struggles navigating the realities I face day to day. We ask modern women to be the perfect balance of chaotic and restrained. It’s exhausting. In the novella, Jekyll feels a burning desire to break free of the puritanical constraints of Victorian society. But in order to be completely free, he would have to give up his social standing. So he creates Hyde. He splits the darker side from himself.”
SH*T FACED opens on 15th July 2023 and is on view until 1st October.
Irene Brown
Radio Summerhall Arts 