Reviews of Marigold
Islington Gazette August 5 1993.Paul Ravenscroft
Gloves at First Sight
Passers-by have been baffled by a window stuffed
with red and yellow rubber gloves in Rosebery
Avenue, Finsbury.
The display is the latest in a series of "window
installations" by artist Maggie Ellenby, titled
Marigolds, and made using a florist's techniques
to create a design with a flower-like quality.
The gloves were surplus stock donated by the
Marigold Houseglove company.
Previous window displays included paper lit up
at nightby ultraviolet light, an illuminated
"Speed Kills, Jesus Saves" design and a "Pause"
sign which returns while she considers what to
do next.
Maggie describes her work as being "all about an
urban landscape", and the window installations as
"art for travelling past".
And there is more to come, although she wants to
keep her next project secret. "My next project will
have to be another surprise!" she says.
Time Out September 1-8 1993. Robin Dutt
Maggie Ellenby
Housed in an empty shop opposite Sadlers Wells in
Islington is Maggie Ellenby's installation of
Marigold rubber gloves. It's not every day one bumps
into so many gloves crammed into a little box window,
and the effect is not entirely unpleasant. Stripped
of their domesticity, the gloves - red in one window
and yellow in another, all in a blue box frame -
create intense areas of colour. At first glance, the
many layered, multi-digit kitchen familiars resemble
collapsed cows udders or flat teats from an S&M
game. The poetically inclined might even be reminded
of luminous fields of orange flowers. Marigolds for
instance.
Ellenby's point is to unveil the strangeness and
poeticism in everyday objects. By placing the
seemingly mundane in unexpected situations, they
take on a weird and wonderful life of their own.
We've all put on a pair of rubber gloves in our
time, most of us to do the washing up, some of us
to explore the seamier side of life. But whether
the piece intrigues or just reminds you to include
a pair on the weekly shopping-list these humble
objects worm their way into one's consciousness.
Daily Express August 23 1993. Sam Taylor
You've got to hand it to her
If you got down to the theatre today you'll be in
for a big surprise.
In a gallery window opposite the otherwise sedate
Sadlers Wells, the artist Maggie Ellenby is
continuing her series of window installations with
Marigold (price on application), an exhibition of
household rubber gloves.
Using a technique employed by florists when making
the elaborate local funerals. Ellenby has filled
the windows with red and yellow rubber gloves.
She claims to enjoy the fortuitous correlation
between the flowerlike and their trade name -
Art as Product. Product as Nature.
And you thought they were just for washing up.
The Independent 19 October 1993. Iain Gale
Modern Icons
I've worked a lot in rubber and I've used gloves
before but in a very tactile way. This piece,
"Marigold", came out of looking at the local funerals.
They have amazing flower pieces that say "Mum" and
"Dad". But it was obvious that I should be more
minimalist and so it became a colour-field work.
I use materials for what they are but then they
take on connotations. I'm very much a formalist
but that doesn't mean there aren't other things
going on here. It's that Shakespearean thing of
the city being the beehive. I'm interested in the
sociology of the street. The audience brings things
to it. It seems to appeal to the Fifties housewife
generation. The gloves are domestic and pretty
and I like the way they grope the window.
Review of "No"
The Times October 19 1994. Sacha Craddock
Maggie Ellenby has repeatedly used the same shop
window for her work.It really doesn't pretend to be
much more than something to walk past or see from
the bus as it turns the corner. The current
installation, which has thousands of individual
marshmallows filling the window to spell out a
thin and shaky "No", is part of a consistent plan
of artistic activity. In a gallery this idea might
seem to be only about extending the range of art
made from confectionery, but here it works much
better. Is this a general protest? Is it serious?
And at what kind of level is such suddenly surprising
street art supposed to operate?
News Item on "Shadow"
Art Monthly March 1995. Art Notes
Nightmare on Rosebery Avenue
Maggie Ellenby's recent installation at 108
Rosebery Avenue,"Shadow" was cause for the
emergency services to be called in January.
The outline image of a man in jeans and a bomber
jacket - projected onto a screen - was mistaken
by three boys for a real man hanging in the window
near Sadlers Wells Theatre. Upon arrival of the
police and ambulance, Ellenby apologised for the
false alarm and for the misinterpretation of the
image, and was told that she may be under threat
of arrest and prosecution for the 'use of images
in a public situation which could be perceived as
offensive or threatening'. After seeking legal
advice, the lights were turned back on in the
installation, but the figure had been adjusted so
as to avoid any further confusion. The works are
intended to deal with aspects of everyday life,
and while this time Ellenby says her work may
perhaps have been a little too successful, she is
somewhat consoled by the fact that the boys did
take action and call for help. 'People often see
incidents and remain bystanders.'
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