Elke Finkenauer
visual artist

​​​‘Hold’ is an exhibition of new sculpture and moving-image work by Elke Finkenauer and Jolanta Dolewska, exploring themes of power, care, adaptation and resistance. The exhibition is accompanied by a text by Laura Haynes, and a limited edition publication.

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Finkenauer’s body of work, ‘Tend to Improbable Structures’ is a series of sculptural snapshots reimagining unconventional constructions her late-father built around the home, like an outdoor TV shelf under a grapevine lit by coloured bulbs, and a doormat screwed to the laminate floor so it didn’t slip. Using what was to-hand he created slices of a personal, practical utopia. Borrowing his fabrication ethos she re-imagines these forms in wood offcuts, repurposed fabric and construction paper – material remnants of lived-in spaces and a practice of working things out.  

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Dolewska’s moving-image work ‘Overthrows’ presents a play-like engagement between a performer and un/human soft sculptures. This encounter draws on grappling techniques from Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, based on the idea that a smaller person can overcome a larger one through technique. Seeking to trace movements of engagement, defence, and withdrawal she explores the potential for overthrow inherent in the process of physical encounter. A series of ceramic sculptures ‘Heads’ document the physical impacts of varied self-defence manoeuvres.
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Elke Finkenauer (born Aotearoa New Zealand) is an artist based in Glasgow.

Jolanta Dolewska (born Warsaw, Poland) is an artist based in Glasgow.
Laura Haynes is a writer, editor and academic based in Glasgow.