UNDERFOOT
Elizabeth Price
Hunterian Art Gallery
UNDERFOOT
Elizabeth Price
11.11.22 – 16.04.23
Open Tuesday – Sunday, 10am – 5pm
UNDERFOOT is an exhibition of new work by visual artist Elizabeth Price. It takes as its point of departure the archives of Glasgow-based carpet manufacturers, and in particular those of the renowned firms of James Templeton and Company Ltd. and Stoddard International plc, now held in the University of Glasgow’s Archives and Special Collections. Price uses the archival traces left by these companies to explore questions about work, cultural authority and value.
The two-screen film work UNDERFOOT uses archival imagery and digital animation to express the power dynamics at work within the organisation of knowledge in a library building. Here patterned carpets designed to imitate natural forms are transformed to suggest the potential crafting of a less hierarchical public space. SAD CARREL, a hand-tufted rug designed by the artist and produced in collaboration with Dovecot Studios, elaborates a vinyl record motif found in Glasgow’s Mitchell Library into a new composition. It alludes to the emergence of independent cultural forms in the urban spaces forged by de-industrialisation.
The exhibition continues Price’s practice of questioning how archives represent, or fail to represent, social history and experience.