In Pig Latin Library, Claire Barrow re-imagines the vivid visions she experiences while asleep through a new series of painting and sculpture. Coaxing the viewer into a paranormal dreamworld, the artist at once presents a revealing insight into her subconscious psyche and a seductive spiritual fantasy in which anyone can participate.
At Soft Opening, a symmetrical display of various characters, symbols and repeated motifs accompany an elevated jackal-headed Egyptian god Anubis that occupies centre-stage in the gallery. With each sculpture positioned carefully to mimic a shop window display, Barrow makes her paranormal vision readily available for her audience’s visual consumption. Nestled in the underbelly of the central commercial district of London, the installation continues a consumerist narrative that pervades above ground. Manipulating spatial organisation to engage with a visual language comparable to merchandising, suggests Barrow’s spiritual vision can be bought-into just like everything else situated behind glass. As a result, her sculptures become souvenirs of her outward expression of spirituality. In an exhibition titled to playfully reference a universal secret language shared among children, Barrow tests the feasibility of her superstitions and dreamlike visions on her audience, engendering the nighttime encounters of her subconscious with invigorated meaning.
For Pig Latin Library, Barrow incorporates a diverse assortment of found objects and readily available materials to create compositions, objects and assemblages that simultaneously engage with and depart from the textile designs and DIY aesthetic that reverberate in her fashion design work. The collision of unexpectedly familiar materials merged with supernatural iconography and a shrine-like symmetrical arrangement, establishes Pig Latin Library as an engrossing installation capable of arousing a collective spiritual experience of a deeply personal supernatural vision.