London-based Danish artist Maria Zahle has arranged her latest body of sculptures and wall-based works in this former shop space with a named, but elusive muse in mind. In 'And Annika' the making of art is aligned with sartorial decisions and experiences, such as what one chooses to wear every day or the abstract beauty of seams and stains. The inherent intimacy of the accompanying text – a short fabric-focused tale by Zahle's partner Jason Dungan on living as artist co-habitees – proves both useful to and a distraction from one's reading of these works as a collective.
Manipulated home and studio armatures – a Duchampian-bottlerack-type stand, Swingball post and easel legs, all bandaged with powdery imprecision in the muted rainbow hues of a fashion season – appear to teeter into the window space like a clutch of Tim Burton-esque props awaiting direction. The wall-based works, on the other hand – abstract-painterly strips and swatches of printed fabric stitched together and secured against the wall under Perspex – appear infinitely more custom-made, as if the artist is in the process of dressing the building itself.
Zahle has a lightness of touch with materials, an ability (like contemporaries Vanessa Billy, Alice Channer and Audrey Reynolds) to elicit a satisfying sense of things neither half-made nor undone, which keeps one intrigued as to the narratives behind her compositional decisions. Yet so many referential hooks are thrown here to secure the journey of motifs and forms – through the high and low, public and private segments of art and design – that this deceptively simple presentation leaves one with little idea of who or what this 'Annika' represents.