Thoughts on The Weight of Things
an exhibition by FOLD Art Collective at Morley Gallery, 25-30 March 2025.
“... the present is always the best time to spread your arms wide and embrace the whole world, all at once, as best you can.” Marianne Fritz, The Weight of Things (1978)
That FOLD Art Collective have borrowed their title from the novel by Marianne Fritz (often described as the overlooked female James Joyce), feels appropriate. This rediscovered modernist text holds much within its slim 144 pages. It is bleak and very funny; domestic and political; heavy and light. The narrative loops and confuses. Not much and everything happens in this story in which Berta longs to protect her children from ‘the weight of things’.
The times we live in feel particularly weighty right now (though perhaps they always have). What are we to do with this sense of burden? How can we carry all that seems to be happening everywhere all at once? And how can this sit with pleasure, or with a lightness of touch? With irreverence or tenderness? We might secretly agree with Hollywood icon Ava Gardner’s remark that: “deep down, I’m pretty superficial”. Or perhaps rather than seeking buoyancy, we find we crave gravitas. Needing to feel ourselves grounded, not untethered. The weight of things is more complicated than mass = density x volume.
The 11 artists in this show prefer questions to formula. They explore the weight of emotional loads: memories and grief, hopes and fears, identities and responsibilities. All are curious about the physicality of made objects, and the experience of being a tangible presence in space (including landscape), where gravity and atmospheric pressures take effect. Consumption, abundance, scarcity and fragility are all manifest, and often overwhelming. Some things float while others sink.
Hold in your mind that all these works are made by a female art collective who meet monthly to discuss their work. The collaborative SHELVED Project (featured in this show) is a reminder that this group is a supportive structure as well as a forum for critique.
The members of FOLD Art Collective are spreading their arms wide, but as Maira Kalman writes in ‘Women Holding Things’:
“sometimes, when I am feeling particularly happy or content, I think I can provide sustenance for legions of human beings. I can hold the entire world in my arms. Other times, I can barely cross the room. And I drop my arms. Frozen.”
FOLD seem to know this truth. They have taken Fritz’s words - “as best you can” - to heart. It’s all any of us can do.
www.foldartcollective.com @foldartcollective
