Rosslynd Piggott

Rosslynd Piggot, La Somnambule (installation view), 1997

Rosslynd Piggot, Parting Note (installation view), 1999

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Rosslynd Piggott (b.1958, Frankston, Victoria, Australia)works in a wide range of media including painting, sculpture and mutable installation. Her works are characterised by their formal fragility and their use of objects closely identified with the body: particularly clothing.

For TRACE, Piggott installed two works at the Bluecoat Art Centre which responded to two very particular spaces. In each case the defining characteristics of the installation were the given qualities of the architecture.

Rosslynd exhibited small decorative interventions in the space. Parting Note (1999) and Silver Lining (1999) were delicately detailed objects made from materials such as silver, pearl, and engraved glass. Her work entitled Arranged Meeting: Breath of Two Men (1999), consisted of two blown glass cylinders. One of these cylinders was blown by a glass-blower in Melbourne, the other in Liverpool. The breath of the two glass blowers was captured and preserved within the sealed glass cylinders and ‘met’ again to be displayed in The Bluecoat Gallery.

Another room formed a corner between the hall and the main gallery. An arched alcove dominated one wall, while another contained beautifully framed windows that looked out onto the garden. There was also a large convex mirror above one of the two doors that acted as a surveillance device. Meaningful intervention into sites as specific as this one were particularly difficult, but Piggott’s La Somnambule (1997) elegantly animated the room. Two suspended silk dresses conjured the ghosts of the building’s Georgian past. Their implied passage through the space was echoed in the polished surface of the mirror, which repeated the arch and the lunettes of the windows.

Rosslynd Piggott at Liverpool Biennial 1999

La Somnambule, 1997
Silk, hooks, chrome plated coat-hangers, perspex
Courtesy of the artist and Sutton Gallery, Melbourne
Exhibited at Bluecoat Arts Centre

Arranged Meeting-Breath of Two Men, 1999
Blown glass and painted walls
Courtesy of the artist and Sutton Gallery, Melbourne
Exhibited at Bluecoat Arts Centre

Silver lining, 1999
Silver leaf and pearl
Courtesy of the artists and Sutton Gallery, Melbourne
Exhibited at Bluecoat Arts Centre

Parting Note, 1999
Screenprinted mirror, engraved glass, mirror
Courtesy of the artists and Sutton Gallery, Melbourne
Exhibited at Bluecoat Arts Centre