Alma Berrow: Echo

LAMB Gallery is pleased to present ‘Echo’, a new installation of ceramic work by British artist Alma Berrow opening 5th October 2023.

With playfulness and humour at the heart of her practice, Berrow’s meticulously hand-moulded ceramic objects trans- port us to moments of nostalgic familiarity, creating vignettes inspired by everyday life, human interaction, and shared experience. Growing up in a one-bathroom cottage with her mother and two sisters, the shared bathroom was always full of life, a place for daydream and wild imagination: from elaborate gowns made from towels and deep-sea diving in the bath, to mimicking the daily rituals of older siblings or parents.

At first glance, Berrow’s new work appears to be a functional, run-of-the-mill bathroom installed within the gallery space. Viewers are invited to physically step into the work, and on closer inspection, minute details are revealed to suggest that the room has been recently inhabited. Ceramic toothbrushes, open pill boxes, towers of empty loo roll, a pile of dirty mags and pube-covered soap, half-smoked cigarettes in ashtrays, and an abandoned backgammon reanimate the seem- ingly static space. Berrow reminds us that the bathroom is a space where the unimaginable becomes possible, adorning an uncanny bathtub with large surrealist-like hands, taps shaped like noses and a plughole disguised as a mouth. These ornate bathroom fixtures give the impression of nymphs caught mid-play, evoking notions of escapism, joy and coming of age. As Berrow elaborates:

“I use a lot of my own memories in my work, so many of the objects are odes to my own upbringing. What I wanted to do with this installation is capture what this very intimate, usually shared space means to the many. From watching a parent shave and mimicking them to becoming an adult and shaving, hiding at parties, standing naked in front of the mirror, sneaking cigarettes out the window, the loo that doesn’t flush, your first period...there is something very vulnerable about a bathroom. The bathroom is very clean and unaged, with black and white checked floor, I want to make it as ubiquitous as possible. It’s a playground of action and nostalgia, dark and light. Hopefully something for everyone to relate to, shock or giggle at.”

Often inspired by intimate day-to-day experiences from her formative years, Berrow’s nostalgic and sometimes uncanny artistic vocabulary is inextricably linked to personal memory. From an intimate standpoint, she explores the aesthetics of the surreal through the reconstruction of her family bathroom combining ready-made objects with her highly detailed ceramic works, which she refers to as ‘fake-real’ objects. This installation encompasses Berrow’s ability to transform ordinary objects into art pieces that are both humorous and other-worldly beautiful, inviting us to revisit our own memories through these site-specific, ceramic pieces.