Pae White: Too much night, again
Insomnia strings people out, but Californian artist Pae White used the condition to conceive a site-specific installation that strings out 48km of yarn across 4,725 eye screws, spanning the main gallery of the SLG. The result for her was therapy, and for the viewer a remarkable play on space and typography.
White was haunted by Black Sabbath music as she struggled with her insomnia, and the colours of yarn reference their album Masters of Reality. The artist originally envisioned dark walls, but it is as if she is deliberately attempting to dispel darkness with white walls. In the hallucinatory stretched time of sleeplessness, words and phrases can spin round and round amplifying themselves like so many insistent sheep. White has spelled three words out in wall-height capital supergraphics - UNMATTERING in black, TIGER in purple and TIME in red. It all makes the work simultaneously resonant of an insomniac fever, and a stand against it.
Visitors unaware of this context nevertheless encounter a surprising spatial intervention. The not-quite-solid parabolic arcs of yarn organise perception in two ways - together they redefine the entire space into a sort of axial tent, but individually each filament has its own destination on the wall, to create the letters. Any viewpoint sees a different state of space, yarn and letters.
Too much night, again was the result of a crew of eight's work over ten days. They are honoured by a tower of their discarded pizza boxes and a sweated t-shirt, encountered at the far end of the installation. After the strangely cerebral experience of the yarn and letters, it's a warm gesture.
Pae White: Too much night, again
Until 12 May
South London Gallery, London
Herbert Wright
