The Smallest Gallery in Soho presents Cabbage Patch Kids, a site-specific installation exploring ecological urgency and capitalist exploitation by London-based interdisciplinary artist Molly Grad. This sculptural intervention in the heart of Soho combines natural and synthetic materials to present a fantastical vision for reconnecting with nature and with the creative impulse. The work forms part of an ongoing commitment to making the invisible visible.
Grad’s practice spans sculpture, textiles, painting and public interventions, seeking out hidden histories and marginalised experiences in order to explore redemptive modes of expression. Her work is fuelled by concerns around the social and environmental responsibilities attached to acts of creation and creativity - interests that sit at the confluence of her current and previous identities as an Artist-Parent with a young child with a background as a Creative Director in the luxury fashion industry.
For Grad, the story behind the Cabbage Patch Kids Toys, a soft-sculpture exhibited at arts and craft shows in the 1970s that became a mass-produced consumer product - “the most successful new doll introduction in the history of the toy industry” according to the official website - offers an allegory for thinking about our increased detachment from what it means to create and a perceived erosion of social care.
Recent research into the degradation of urban soil also closely informs the concept behind the work: "While navigating a city like London, prized for its public parks and open green spaces, one is not necessarily conscious of the layers of contaminating matter that has accumulated over centuries but remains hidden beneath the grassy surface" - Grad.
Cabbage Patch Kids expands on Grad’s ongoing interest in excavating urban surfaces, metaphorically unearthing the city’s industrial past by creating an otherworldly space in which sculpted fabric cabbages, symbolising children, grow out of pure, clean soil, where “luminous blue ar-teries run through the leaves, pulsating to and from the earth source, nurturing it, making plant and human one” - Grad. This reparative gesture is disrupted by a dystopian vision: “for the final work, I imagine that the cabbages have been violently plucked from the earth and placed onto the ground, their budding bodies nestled in an unnatural clay-like soil which has become barren, stripped over centuries of its nutritional, nurturing traits” - Grad.
The exhibition will be accompanied by a series of public interventions, described by the artist as fleeting street sculptures, taking place without prior warning to the general public across central London. This involves a process described by the artist as “corseting concrete”, which requires hours of repetitive physical movement across a public space as the artist threads soft brightly coloured recycled fabrics through the crevices of neglected urban environments - a gesture in-tended to insist on visibility and to act as a catalyst for creating greater social awareness for society's so called invisibles, from mothers to construction workers. Through the process of creating the temporary work, Grad comes into contact with members of the public, prompting organic conversations about consumer culture, identity and visibility:
"My fleeting street sculptures are an attempt to confront collective trauma within the urban environment through a labour-intensive weaving process to ask questions about visibility and our loss of empathy for the other. I am drawn to spaces in a city which have been edited out of our vision for some reason, from transitional spaces like car parks to towering council estates and hidden corners of bustling city centres. I use velvet to recall restrictive corsetry ribbons from a previous era. The act of binding this material is intended as a subversive and reparative gesture in an effort to connect with communities and contribute to social repair" - Grad
About the Artist:
Molly Grad completed a Master of Research with Practice from the Royal College of Art in 2023. In
2001 and 2006, she graduated with first class degrees, BA and MA, in Fashion Design (Womenswear) from Central Saint Martins. Previous solo exhibitions include: The yellow mulberry tree, curated by Huma Kabakci, at 10 Greatorex Street (London) in 2023, Barricades staged in an ex-retail space that has since been demolished on Finchley Road (London). Notable group exhibi-tions include Inspirational women at aspacearts gallery (Southampton) in March 2023, Naturally not binary, curated by Anett Kiss and Cas Bradbeer at IMT gallery (London) and Reduction to satire, an online exhibition curated by Fatoş Üstek in 2022.
www.mollygrad.com & instagram.com/mollygrad
Friend of the Gallery interview by London Art Roundup
Find interview with the artist and about the show via this link https://www.londonartroundup.com/reviews/artist-interview-molly-grad
As a Friend of the Gallery, London Art Roundup is provided with advance and behind-the-scenes access to interview the artists that exhibit at The Smallest Gallery in Soho. All contributions are voluntary. Neither the artist, gallery or London Art Roundup received any financial compensation for this interview.
