Rhythm Without End, 2021 Design Museum Helsinki. Gelatin silver prints (photograms). Aino Aalto, Bolgeblick, 1932, pressed glass, Manufacturer: Iittala. An Index of Infinite Rotation, 2019-20, the artist’s photographs of material in the Design Museum archive and collection; images from the Design Museum image archive. Photos: Paavo Lehtonen

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. 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

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, 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

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, 2015, fragment 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 goatskin, acrylic, galvanised steel. Photos: Sam Drake

A Sudden Extinction of Light is a drawing together of the nineteenth-century photographic iconography of hysteria and extended research into Alvar Aalto following identification of Aalto furnishings in the archives of the Freud Museum, London. The work’s title is taken from an image caption in Freud’s mentor, Jean-Martin Charcot’s staging and documentation of hysteria. The image illustrates how a hysteric woman might be induced into a cataleptic or lethargic state via a bright light.

The silkscreens depict five of Aalto’s iconic lighting designs; A110 (Hand Grenade), A881 (Snow Bell), A338 (Bilberry), A805 (Angel Wing), A331 (Beehive); and are an attempt to collide these abstract designs and their colloquial names with the materiality of goat – an animal known for its sharp peripheral vision and erratic behaviour. The surface texture of the aniline leather goatskin on which they are printed makes the lights appear to also be made of leather, bringing the designs into contact with the black fields they inhabit.

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. 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

Changing direction after entering at an angle (Modern Melancholy), 2012. Oil on canvas, pigment print, tuning fork, stained timber, concrete, steel, Amish quilt. Photos: Joe Clark