Casting Light
Sammi Gale, Plinth
October 2024
These are lines from Alison Wilding’s Without casting light on the subject (1975). They sit below a black-and-white photograph of the arrangement described. The specificity of the inches and feet and the ‘light proof muzzle’ is satisfying, the textures are balanced – ‘watery emulsion’ next to the solid ‘slate’ – and yet, in a way that feels novel, the sentences refuse to signpost, to take you anywhere conclusive, or indeed cast any light on the subject, just as the title promised. Rather, the subject is the subject. Here, as in the work Wilding has produced in the 50 years since, everything is what it is, and yet — and yet. Faced with sculptures that are just as poised yet un-signposted, literal and figurative, as the sentences above, the viewer is left holding these contradictions, inventing statements of her own. ‘That’s what I like, in fact. Ambiguities can be an interesting place,’ the artist says. A light is cast after all — even if it flickers.