S1 Artspace presented her private theatre, newly commissioned work by Emma Barrow, Lisa Castagner and Sophie Woodrow.

Emma Barrow’s sculptures were conceived in response to the materials from which they are made, drawing on an inherent property or a feature of a found object. Polystyrene is corroded by aerosols, creases in a disc of cardboard were made firm with resin, a blanket was unravelled to create mossy pockets on the gallery wall. Barrow’s work made reference to figurative and astral forms playing on a willingness to recognise facial arrangements in abstract compositions whilst delivering metallic colour or volcanic texture at the surface.

Lisa Castagner constructed images of heavily stylized situations, achieving a sense of order, symmetry and perfection associated with fashion photography. Domestic interiors were neutralised to become clinical signifiers producing a serenity in conflict with an inner drama located in her female subjects. Castagner’s work alluded to spillage or eruption, a private moment of transgression as a form of escapism.

Sophie Woodrow’s large-scale ceramic work invented sculptural forms in fine clays normally employed in delicate or ornamental pottery. Rude forms achieved brilliance at the surface, a brooding mountain was dressed in a glaze of Welsh colours, a massive rabbit was made a soft, pearly white. Woodrow’s figures revisited romantic ideas of nature in evolutionary terms, sketching a daydream of how technology has created the conditions and the means to adapt.