Gallery S O is very pleased to announce a solo-exhibition by Scottish artist and metalworker Kathleen Reilly. She presents an installation of new and existing work. The exhibition will include for the first-time a series of Reilly’s poetic writings following the theme of As Above, So Below. With this new exhibition, the audience is invited to draw parallels between her writings and the tangible outcomes, creating contemplative and subtle connections between these two facets of her practice.

By writing poetry she observes and absorbs fleeting moments and unconscious actions within her every day. Key texts are chosen and abstracted to form tangible outcomes. As she associates her writings with the physical world, memories are awoken and juxtapositions formed. Reilly plays with the semiotic qualities of her objects that seemingly flux between circumstance. Emotional texts about her grandfather are brought to life in The Last Drop, a glass drop full of Glenfiddich whisky encased in cast acrylic. Humorous and philosophical questions such as What Came First? (the chicken or the egg) is proposed in the form of a leather book, bound with two spines and no discernible front or back. Fleeting moments that draw the line between above and below are held static in Golden Ratio, a perfectly balanced knife. While a cream cracker de-bossed with Life Vest Under Your Seat reminds us of the fragility of human life.

Her work encompasses a broad range of technical and industrial processes, including electroforming, moulding making and die cutting, with a focus on the power of material and composition to shift entrenched understandings. Reilly reinvents the common place with elegant and often witty outcomes that can carry ambiguous functions.

Kathleen Reilly lives and works between Glasgow and London. She graduated from the Glasgow School of Art Silversmithing & Jewellery department in 2015 and completed her Masters in Jewellery & Metal at the Royal College of Art in 2018. She has undertaken residencies in both Denmark and Japan and was a visiting lecturer at The Glasgow School of Art in 2019.