Gasworks presents the first London solo exhibition by Malmö-based artist Ingela Ihrman

Gasworks presents the first London solo exhibition by Malmö-based artist Ingela Ihrman.

Moving freely between performance, sculpture and video, Ihrman’s work nurtures empathy, tenderness and a sense of wonder before all living beings’ earthbound existence as part of a larger ecology.

Handcrafted costumes are a recurring element, which come to life in awkward, often humorous performances where the artist embodies the joys and pains of oversized plants and animals while blooming or giving birth.

Ihrman presents newly commissioned and existing works, integrating them into a mythological arc inspired by the life of Swedish nature film-maker Jan Lindblad.

The exhibition opens with Green Paradise, an early video work which offers a gastroscopy-like journey into the meandering digestive tract of a giant snake, imagining what Lindblad would have seen from inside the anaconda he famously wrestled during one of his filming expeditions to the South American rainforest.

A wearable sculpture will enable viewers to merge with nature, by embodying Lindblad’s partially digested remains after his close encounter with an anaconda.

In dialogue with these works, Ihrman will present a new iteration of Oilbird with Nestling, a series of costumes and a performance work produced in conditions of self-isolation during the pandemic.

Oilbirds made their way into Ihrman’s life through the films of Jan Lindblad, who used infra-red light to record the unseen behaviour of this tropical bird species that lives in constant darkness.

The run of Ihrman’s exhibition at Gasworks will be punctuated by a live performance where the artist embodies an adult oilbird in the painstaking process of feeding their chick, as their young regurgitates fruit matter such as peel and seeds, which then becomes part of the fabric their nest.

The exhibition opens on February 2.

Website: https://gasworks.org.uk/exhibitions/ingela-ihrman

Picture: The Passion Flower Blooms Picture: Claude Barrault