Alaya Ang
Unravelled Gathering (The Rope)
Talbot Rice Residents 16 Mar - 31 May 2024
Talbot Rice Gallery, Edinburgh
A lead line is a device for measuring the depth of the water and is one of the oldest of all navigating tools. Marks made of leather, calico, serge and other materials are often attached at intervals along the rope so it is possible to "read" them by eye during the day or by feel at night. The nautical unit of measurement for the depth of water is in ‘fathom’, from the Old Norse word, fathmr, for “outstretched arms” that was standardized at six-feet.
Responding to this practice of depth measuring, the series of cast ceramic tubes contains imagery of zodiac animals from Alaya’s family intermingled with motifs of the landscape, clouds, mountains and sea. Wax castings of feet in their suspended state, held at sharp angles, create a flow of choreography that forms a material link to Alaya’s family who are tailors, conveying the image of arched feet over treadles of sewing machines and to Samsui women, a group of Chinese female immigrants who came to Malaya and Singapore between the 1920s and 40s, who did manual hard labour similar to coolies.
The moon blocks, made out of wood, carved into a crescent shape are a divination tool frequently used by Alaya’s grandmother when requesting an answer from the divine. The gathering of objects become intimate geometries of sustained spiritual and familial links, they are all forms of attachment to be done and undone, their symbolic configuration looking like relatives in conversation with each other.
Photo credit: Najma Abukar
Read Artist Guide
Writings from James Clegg and Kandace Siobhan Walker
Special thanks to Robyn Walsh for their assistance on ceramic roof tile tube, and to technicians at Edinburgh College of Art.
This work is the first part of a longer-term project The Sea, the Heat, The Rope and The Fingers Pulling the Thread, a series of work that investigates matrilineal and genderqueer genealogies. Each cumulative form is an invitation to relationality by meandering through different material discoveries and processes.