Opening Reception of Keeping Up Appearances by Ashley V. Blalock
Keeping Up Appearances is a large-scale installation series comprised of giant red crochet doilies that take on a life of their own by crawling up gallery walls and dwarfing the viewer. Instead of existing as dainty white furniture coverings, these carefully arranged red forms unsettle and demand attention, hinting at underlying tensions in the intimacy of home life. Each iteration of this installation series is conceived on-site, with doily patterns and sizes selected as the installation takes shape. By recreating the private ritual of interior domestic decoration in public and using the slow, deliberate process of crochet, the series offers a tactile remedy to a world increasingly shaped by virtual connections, planned obsolescence, and instant gratification.
