Cally Spooner

Across objects, writing, sound and choreography, Spooner addresses the manners in which specific technological and financial conditions shape and organize life. Featuring WhatsApp messages, the voice of a business, the sound of a head cold, eroding support structures, a child development theorist, a poisoning and an oversized graph. SWEAT SHAME ETC. Spooner's show at the Swiss Institute, depicted an absurd contemporary ecosystem in which entities run the risk of managing themselves and one another to death. SWEAT SHAME ETC. placed emphasis on a supporting architecture by foregrounding the role of the exhibition plinth. The plinths wer eonstructed from recently poured olive oil soap that underwent a curing process throughout the duration of the exhibition. 

Installed at the back of the gallery was He Wins Every Time, On Time, and Under Budget (2016). In this stereo audio installation, two women delivered two performances. On the left, Ivanka Trump narrated her capacity to “architect” work, life, children and goals, while on the right, Maggie Segale, a dancer from New York City, trained for a performance whilst suffering from a head cold. Segale’s sniffling and strained breathing was visceral in comparison to the smoothly managed register of Trump’s voice. The title of the work is taken from a speech at a Republican rally in summer 2016, in which Ivanka Trump introduced her father to the stage.

Born in the UK in 1983, Spooner is currently based in Athens. Recent solo shows include Everything Might Spill at Castello di Rivoli, Turin (2018); DRAG DRAG SOLO at the Centre d’Art Contemporain Genève, Geneva (2018); Soundtrack for a Troubled Time and Notes on Humiliation at Whitechapel Gallery, London (2017); And you were wonderful, on stage at Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam (2016); On False Tears and Outsourcing at The New Museum of Contemporary Art, New York (2016). Spooner will open a solo exhibition at the Art Institute of Chicago in 2019.

Text courtesy of the Swiss Institute