at SPACE ONE TWO ONE

by Mallory Ruymann

Installation view of "Lurking Behind My Teeth" by Janet Loran Hill at SPACE ONE TWO ONE in Boston, Massachusetts.

APRIL 1ST, 2018
RESPONSE > BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS


Lurking Behind My Teeth explores the space between desire and creative output, space also occupied by more sinister forces that limit--and sometimes completely obstruct--expression. The exhibition features Janet Loren Hill, an artist who mines history and her own experiences to discover the shape of those things that silently regulate us. Hill’s Common Scold series (2018) derives from an early modern torture device worn by women accused of being “scolds,” i.e., nags or gossips. Shaped like a bridle and often incorporating sharp metal tongue depressors, the scold’s bridle (or witch’s bridle) completely restricted the wearer’s ability to speak. Hill therefore recovers centuries worth of lost utterances in appropriating the scold’s bridle. Rendered in fluid, ephemeral materials like yarn, silicon, sequins, and even FedEx boxes, Hill’s Common Scold series subverts the power structures which contribute to the historical and present oppression of women.

The premise of transformation--the act of changing one (horrific) thing into another (extraordinary) thing--informs Hill’s installation practice at Space One Two One. Though Hill patterns her work after real objects, people, and places, the results of Hill’s practice border on the uncanny. He came at me with his jet ski, penetrating, but I wanted to see what was on that island on the horizon (2018) ostensibly represents a man, but one broken apart, reassembled, and festooned with bizarre materials like streamers.

Much of Lurking Behind My Teeth inverts domestic life. The video Girlfriend Pillow and Husband Pillow Wash the Dishes. He's so supportive (2017) shows two sets of hands--one gloved in yellow latex, one in green fabric--washing dishes in tandem and mimicking a certain branded scouring sponge. The gallery space, too, constitutes an arena destabilized by Lurking Behind My Teeth. Divided into rooms with unironic designations like “The Entryway” and “The Closet,” Space One Two One also functions as a living space for its founder and curator, Rory Fitzgerald Bledsoe. Hill cultivates the heightened domesticity of Space One Two One by layering mementos from her own domestic life onto that of Bledsoe’s. Every inch of the gallery-cum-living space possesses aesthetic and/or political potential, a move which highlights the un-neutrality of everyday life. Seemingly isolated objects, actions, and speech acts reflect greater systems and relationships...and the thing that lurks behind our teeth.

LURKING BEHIND MY TEETH​: JANET LOREN HILL was on view March 3-17.

Installation view of "Lurking Behind My Teeth" by Janet Loran Hill at
SPACE ONE TWO ONE in Boston, Massachusetts. 

Installation view of "Lurking Behind My Teeth" by Janet Loran Hill at  SPACE ONE TWO ONE in Boston, Massachusetts. Image courtesy of the gallery.

About Janet Loran Hill

Janet Loren Hill received her BFA from University of Washington and her MFA from Massachusetts College of Art and Design. She has exhibited at numerous galleries nationally including Field Projects Gallery (NY, NY), Blindfold Gallery (Seattle, WA), Stone Gallery's 2017 exhibition of "Boston Young Contemporaries", and most recently at UMAss Boston's, University Hall Gallery's group show, HARD: Subversive Representation.

About Mallory Ruymann

Mallory Ruymann is an educator, curator, and art historian based in Boston.

About SPACE ONE TWO ONE

SPACE ONE TWO ONE is a curatorial/gallery project directed by Rory Fitzgerald Bledsoe, a conceptual artist and curator living and working in Boston. SOTO focuses on elevating and collaborating with underrepresented contemporary artists, and promoting experimental concepts and aesthetics, by providing a platform that is not beholden to the traditional gallery structure. 

RESPONSE
A feature of project reviews experienced in person. Response will provide artists with much needed critical response to their work. Response is opinion-based but is not an op-ed.