Industrial Romantic was Clare Kenny’s first institutional solo exhibition in the UK, presented at Touchstones Rochdale in 2017. Developed in response to the gallery and to memories of growing up in the North west of England, the exhibition brought together existing and newly commissioned works exploring working-class aspiration, domestic display and the transformation of ordinary materials. Plaster, wallpaper, neon, bronze, fabric, printed glass and Perspex move between the languages of interior decoration, industrial production and sculpture.
Several works draw upon skills and histories within Kenny’s own family. Pastel Dream on a Mid-Summer Morn recreates decorative panelling and plaster effects using techniques learned from her father, who worked as a builder before training as a specialist painter. Its polished surfaces and humorously aspirational title refer to the British preoccupation with keeping up appearances, as well as the elaborate language used to market paint and interior design. Enough Rope to Hang ’emselves originates in the story of Kenny’s grandmother, who worked for many years in a rope factory in Heywood. Its neon lines recall washing stretched between the backyards and ginnels of northern industrial towns, bringing factory labour and domestic work into the space of the gallery.
Processes of reuse, repetition and remaking run throughout the exhibition. For Pastel Dream on a Mid-Summer Morn (Reloaded), Kenny photographed sections of the site-specific plaster work and had them commercially reproduced as self-adhesive wallpaper. The physical artwork becomes an image, a decorative surface and a reproducible product, questioning photography’s claim to truth while reflecting the consumer strategy of repeatedly relaunching familiar products in altered forms. One for the Road and Odds and Ends similarly grows with each presentation, incorporating coloured plaster casts of overlooked objects collected from the different places in which it is shown.
Rather than treating these materials and memories nostalgically, Industrial Romantic elevates the prosaic and workaday. It considers how labour, decoration, resourcefulness and the desire for improvement shape both domestic space and cultural ideas of value.
