Sarah’s
collection of seven tall, elegant forms in glass dominate
the space with their light and suggest simultaneously standing
stones and museum cases.
The
use of light is a recurrent theme for Nicholson as it engages
with the idea of illuminating the unseen (ob-scene) rediscovering
and uncovering lost knowledge. As fairytales are such a
vigorously ridiculed form of knowledge, she is constantly
trying to show it literally in a new light in order to draw
attention to the value of female epistemology. The work
also explores the aesthetic properties of the written word,
it’s ability to convey information in a beautiful code,
where the actual words form only half the meaning, and the
memories conjured completing the evocative image.
Each
case’s glow grows to reveal the story within, yet the
light fades before the dense handwriting can be deciphered,
leaving the viewer frustrated, unsatisfied, pursuing the
story from case to case…
The
works pose questions of accessibility and of knowing, what
you can know and what remains uncertain, ambiguous in the
mind and to the eye.
