Liz Magor's 'The Rise and The Fall' exhibition at Focal Point Gallery explores mortality through surreal sculptures

Canadian artist Liz Magor presents a survey of recent work at Focal Point Gallery in Southend-on-Sea from March 8 to June 10. The exhibition features ten sculptures across two rooms and a large window space, including installations like 'Pet Co' (2018) with transparent plastic boxes containing stuffed animals, chocolate wrappers, and packing paper. Magor's practice since the mid-2000s explores decadence through motifs like bottles of booze, chocolates, white dinner rolls, and cigarettes. In 'Leather Palm' (2019), a polymerised gypsum glove holds a real half-smoked cigarette on a wood-veneer table, contrasting real and artificial elements. 'Delivery (Sienna)' (2018) shows a rubber monkey clutching a Harry Rosen suit bag, while 'Coiffed' (2020) displays domestic items including a dirty blue rubber lion with white hair and hollow eye sockets. Recent works feature bright, sometimes Day-Glo colors that sharpen mortal connotations, departing from earlier earth tones. Magor's humor has evolved from dry absurdity to more puckish forms, as seen in 'Oilmen's Bonspiel' (2017), a chimera made from a stuffed animal, sock puppet, and knitted sweater. Her sculptures manipulate emotional receptors through commodities like cigarettes and plastics, engaging viewers with themes of consumerism and mortality without providing definitive answers.