Moffitt, Evan. The Must-See Exhibitions in New York This Autumn. Frieze. September 13, 2019.
Elaine Cameron-Weir, ‘strings that show the
Elaine Cameron-Weir, it thought you were someone else it
thought you were me bounded by strings in the distorted
phases of a topological superfluid a mysterious density half-
speed vortices and long walls, 2019, concrete, liquid candles,
glass, stainless steel, leather and neon, 115.6 × 81.3 × 78.7 cm.
Courtesy: the artist and JTT, New York; photograph: Isabel Asha
Penzlien
wind’
JTT
8 September – 27 October
Elaine Cameron-Weir seems haunted by medi-
eval ghosts. Her elaborate chain-mail construc-
tions – shot through with wires, neon tubing and
stainless-steel bars – resemble bionic re-anima-
tions of the bodies fished from Nordic peat bogs.
Her solo show at JTT, ‘strings that show the
wind’, likewise jolts Dark Age materials with an
electric current. Most striking is the gallery floor,
a clacking grid of steel tiles used to funnel wires
in server farms. The titular ‘strings’ might be
cables anchored in chunks of polished green flu-
orite, lifting up chain-mail standards emblazoned
with fossils of the Anthropocene: medallions
cast from seashells and what look like chunky
earrings. Two steel trolleys hold concrete drapes
ruched to resemble fireballs, fretted in cold white
neon; at their centres, a floodlight lens glows
faintly from paraffin candles burning beneath the
mottled glass. If unearthed in a thousand years,
this alchemical combination should prove just as
fascinating and mysterious as it does here.