Bow Down and Very Low - 123 (2021)

Collaborative art works developed for Ingrid Pollard (MBE)

Photography by Franklyn Rodgers

"In her research and investigation of the body in action and repose, Pollard has worked with film archives and contemporary media to create, collaboratively, a new kinetic sculpture incorporating three "characters". Using the familiar gesture of bowing and curtseying, Bow Down and Very Low -123 references our shared history of power relations and resurgence.”
​Gilane Tawadros

Ingrid Pollard talks with Gilane Tawadros about the exhibition Carbon Slowly Turning at Turner Contemporary Gallery.

Poetic Mechanics of Bow Down and Very Low - 123

my role here is a thing selector 
my part to play is 
an assembler 
of shapes 
of objects 
of histories
of places 
of combinations

I am a choreographer of things
into another thing
born of ideas
carried by Ingrid Pollard to me through many conversations
words
spoken and written
between these word spaces
a dynamic 
here what is no longer words
becomes a thing
natured illuminated uncovered
in drawings
and 
by multiple calculated failures which are known as prototypes

systems of support
systems of animation
systems of manipulation
systems of restraint
systems evocative to the human

systems

separate
together
mechanical
cold
hard 
warm 
soft 

systems

dynamic
static
moving 
unmoving
passive
violent 

objects