Nicola Dale

The Distressed Look
2 October - 4 December 2020

Visiting us: In order to keep our staff, students and visitors safe, viewings are strictly by appointment only, please contact us at blank@ucleeds.ac.uk to arrange your visit.

‘The Distressed Look’ presents new work that visualizes contrasting perspectives on love and on reading: from love as a battlefield, to the pain of a broken heart; from reading for pleasure, to the sting of toxic language.

The exhibition is the first in a series evolving from Nicola’s collaboration with Adam Smyth, Professor of English Literature and the History of the Book, Oxford. 

An unusual book from Adam’s collection has inspired ‘The Distressed Look’ – an English translation of Ovid’s ‘Art of Love’ (1813). Beneath its leather-bound, gilded exterior lies unsettling content. Aside from the age-old misogyny of Ovid’s poetry (‘love’ as conquest), unknown persons used this particular book as a container for thoughts on love, relationships, sex and marriage.  Shakespearean quotes mingle with dirty rhymes and suggestive images. As an archive, the book is seductive; but as the snapshot of a worldview it is unattractive. ‘The Distressed Look’ gives physical form to these contradictions.

Nicola Dale works across sculpture, performance, image and text. She is concerned with how knowledge is made visible and the implications for reading, writing, speaking and learning as knowledge morphs into information. Time is a favourite material, but she also uses wood, plaster, leather, pipe cleaners, GIFs, silkworm cocoons or whatever else is right.

Recent highlights include solo exhibitions at Echo Echo, Derry-Londonderry, Leeds Arts University and International 3, Salford; performances at Corte Super Nova, Venice, MOSTYN, Wales, Turner Contemporary, Margate; and residencies at The University of Manchester, Lazio Museums Centre, Rome, Chisenhale Studios, London and Atlantic Center for the Arts, USA.