Alongside her famed acid-coloured latex pours, many of the constituents of Lynda Benglis's extensive practice – the gold leaf and aluminium folds, glittered knots, ceramics, videotapes and self-portrait prints – are represented in this slim, yet astutely selected exhibition. Spanning 40 years of creation from 1970 to 2009, this offers a considered cross-section of work by this exceptional American post-Minimalist sculptor.
Most striking among this lively collection of forms is Benglis's peculiarly insistent insertion of her own body. Her presence is traced in the rough finger marks on the wrought surfaces of her ceramics, and her own dimensions dictate the scale of her totems – the lengths of which appear to mimic her height or other bodily measurements. Further, entanglements of plaster and copper twists register the forces of her pushes and pulls, and she is resolutely present in photographic print 'Self', where she is pictured as a child dressed as a Greek soldier.
Benglis's prints and videotapes (her contentious dildo-wielding Artforum ad included) are often conceived as sitting apart from her sculptural practice, but here, they are rightly drawn together. Her unusual mode of self-reference highlights the conflation of performance and sculpture in her work, a move supported by the inclusion of the 1973 video, 'Female Sensibility'. Splicing together up-close shots of two women kissing, with an audio of radio clips of women pattering about losing weight, among other inanities, the video sits with large lumpen bronze work 'Eat Meat', and the lighter, sparkling form 'Lagniappe Luck'. Drawing together discourses of erotica and self-obsession, with issues of matter, form, process, and most prevalently, the body, this is a remarkably strong arrangement of Benglis's works.