Riddles, July 1998

Riddles Jessica Higgins presented Extract. Psycho-emotional in its focus, it consisted of a nineteen-foot cloth canopy over a viewer sitting space. Jessica Higgins makes use of olfactory materials by sewing them into the installation, creating a work which opens internal space for creative induction. About the design she has said “The purpose of the work is to gently enable participants to reconnect to their creative selves.”

21 Hats – 21 Hooks – 5 Elements turned the world upside down. The subtle use of twenty-one white cotton disks hung upside down from twentyone metal hooks put the viewer in a space above the clouds. Accessing a balance between the elemental and the intuitive the interior of the floating cotton disks house materials made from five basic elements; Earth, Metal, Water, Wood and Fire. The dualities of figure and ground, center and margin, physics and metaphysics pose questions as we pass from one series of minimal white disks to the next picking up clues and connections between members of this five element cycle.

Born and raised in the action based culture of Fluxus, Jessica Higgins included her performance Handwritings an intermedia work locating itself between performance and installation. Exploring the ways in which an object can be many things at once the artist presents a simple and engaging cloth slide screen – garment – structure.

Births examined the universal basis of time. A work unleashing the raw voice of the past in the present, it is made from a family heirloom. For this work the artist has stained a twelve-foot silk table cloth with wine and imposed a single trace of black paint. The scroll being stitched in four even sections suggests birth as a challenging process evolving ongoing questions in the present.