Rhythm Without End (Night and Day), 2022, gelatin silver prints (photograms). Photos: Rebecca Mansell

Mobile Composition, 2020, curated by Andrew Renton for New Viewings #27, Galerie Barbara Thumm, Berlin

In 2017-18, Caitlin Yardley undertook a research project in the house Alvar Aalto designed for French gallerist, Louis Carré. Painstakingly researching eighteen paintings which formed one installation amidst a constant flow of paintings in and out of the house (in a particularly well-documented moment in 1962), she remade her own versions of the works according to the scale of the originals and installed them back where the ‘originals’ once had been located. Caitlin’s versions involved sewing quilts pieced out of non-reflective, black goat leather. She calls them ‘quilts’, but here they function in painting’s absence: “I think it is really important that I’m not making new paintings within the frame of works in the original collection. I’m more interested in acknowledging them as objects in the world; objects with a specific material surface.” The works were made to move beyond the house, and this new installation marks a doubled absence – the absent paintings as well as the absent house. They might be seen as echoes, emptied markers, signalled by title and dimension. But they’re handled. They’ve become something else. And in this installation the new works are removed from the context which engendered them, to a space detached from this history and point of origin. The renegotiation of a new space by means of these works is a highly materialised prospect. Andrew Renton, 2020

Eclipse Sequence (Diagram), 2019, HD video, 6’38” (loop)

Eclipse Sequence, 2019, HIAP, Helsinki. Aniline goatskin, HD video, mirrors, bookplates from Josef Sudek: The Commercial Photography of Družstevní Práce. Photos: Sheung Yiu

Mobile Composition, 2017-18, Maison Louis Carré, Bazoches-sur-guyonne, with Association Alvar Aalto en France. Aniline goatskin quilts, installed and documented to replicate archival photographs depicting eighteen paintings which formed one installation amidst a constant flow of paintings in and out of the house (in a particularly well-documented moment in 1962), within the Alvar Aalto-designed house of Louis Carré, the Paris art dealer for whom the house was built. Photos: Lucy Dawkins

Archival Impulse (Personnel); Archival Impulse (Salon), 2017, aniline goatskin and thread on pigment print, 51 x 57cm each. Photos: Rebecca Mansell

Archival Impulse is a series of collages—or automatic drawings—developed alongside the installation and publication Mobile Composition (2017–18). The works emerged as an experiment in forcing an archive and its material evidence into contact with a new materiality. Each piece incorporates photographs drawn from the archives of Aalto-designed Maison Louis Carré, where significant modernist artworks are redacted or obscured by remnants of goat leather and traces of studio industry.

Deux Lumières, 2017. HD video, 7’19. Filmed at Maison Louis Carré, Bazoches-sur-Guyonne with permission from Association Alvar Aalto en France

Exterior A, 2016. HD video, 6’28. Filmed at Maison Louis Carré, with permission from Association Alvar Aalto en France. Published by the Oxford Artistic and Practice Based Research Platform, Issue 1: Sites of Research http://www.oarplatform.com/the-surface-as-site-exterior-a/

A vase rests on a table, 2016. Bookplates depicting Case Study House #9 designed by Charles Eames and Eero Saarinen for John Entenza, goatskin, gouache on paper

XYZ (A Chronology), 2015. Curated by Leigh Robb for Perth Institute of Contemporary Art (PICA)
remnant of Artek wool upholstery, silkscreen on perspex, galvanised steel, goatskin, gouache painting on pigment prints.
Photos: Ben Westoby

A Sudden Extinction of Light, 2014, silkscreen on aniline goat leather, acrylic, galvanised steel, 202 x 500 cm. Photos: Sam Drake

This work draws together the 19th-century photographic iconography of hysteria with the lighting designs of Finnish architect Alvar Aalto, following the discovery of Aalto-designed objects in the archives of the Freud Museum in London. The title of the work is derived from a photo caption used by Jean-Martin Charcot—neurologist and mentor to Sigmund Freud—in his staged demonstrations of hysteria. The referenced image illustrates how a hysterical woman might be induced into a cataleptic or lethargic state via exposure to a bright light. Displaying five of Aalto’s iconic light designs: A338 (Bilberry), A881 (Snow Bell), A805 (Angel Wing), A110 (Hand Grenade), A331 (Beehive), the silkscreens merge the abstract designs and their colloquial names with the materiality of goat leather—a material I use often for its association with both sharp peripheral vision and erratic behaviour. The lights are brought into contact with the dark fields they inhabit through the illusion that they, too, are constructed from leather.

Tavern with Pendant A110, 2014. HD video loop. Filmed at Studio Aalto with the permission of the Alvar Aalto Foundation, Helsinki

Studio A (from a Stool 60), 2014. HD video, 10’26. Filmed at Studio Aalto with permission of the Alvar Aalto Foundation, Helsinki

Forum Sequence, 2014. Curated by Gemma Weston for Medium, Moana Project Space, Perth
Polypropylene carpet, yoga mat, reconstituted stone interpretation of Edouard Marcel Sandoz’s Lapin Une Oreille Levée by Sue Dawes for ARTFORUM.
Photos: Casey Ayres

Open Cube, 2013. Curated by Adriano Pedrosa for White Cube, Mason’s Yard, London. Amish quilt c. 1920, quilted goatskin rug, mild steel. Photos: Ben Westoby

Peripheral Orbit, 2013. Goatskin rug, steel, silkscreen and oil on canvas, concrete, tuning fork, toy ball, fashion journal, inkjet transparency prints, stained timber, images from the archives of Freud Museum, London. Photos: Sam Drake

History Painting (Modern Melancholy), 2012, oil on canvas, pigment print, tuning fork, stained timber, concrete, Amish quilt c. 1920, mild steel, medical appointment notice. Photos: Joe Clark