Louise Oates | Drained

£750.00

Pewter, drain chain and found plastic

170 x 25 x 10 cm

2024

£750 / €900

Enquire here

Drained is part of an ongoing body of work where Louise Oates situates the thawing ice of permafrost in dialogue with ideas of flow, archive, and nonlinear time. She works to overcome the flatness created by the extraction of data sets, shaping them back into physical forms where transformations become tangible again. She explores how the forming and deforming ice collapses any distinct sedimentary records of the past, offering a lens through which to speculate on possible futures. In these shifting landscapes, dormant microbes, porous bones and leathered skins are liminally suspended in contorted strata. Here the pewter pieces are displayed on the wall as though artefacts pulled from the ice and put out to thaw, the drain chain dripping from the unknown bodies still tenuously connects the two, slowly becoming loose from the grip of their deep time resting place into a new realm of objects to be studied.

Pewter, drain chain and found plastic

170 x 25 x 10 cm

2024

£750 / €900

Enquire here

Drained is part of an ongoing body of work where Louise Oates situates the thawing ice of permafrost in dialogue with ideas of flow, archive, and nonlinear time. She works to overcome the flatness created by the extraction of data sets, shaping them back into physical forms where transformations become tangible again. She explores how the forming and deforming ice collapses any distinct sedimentary records of the past, offering a lens through which to speculate on possible futures. In these shifting landscapes, dormant microbes, porous bones and leathered skins are liminally suspended in contorted strata. Here the pewter pieces are displayed on the wall as though artefacts pulled from the ice and put out to thaw, the drain chain dripping from the unknown bodies still tenuously connects the two, slowly becoming loose from the grip of their deep time resting place into a new realm of objects to be studied.

Enquire

Louise Oates is a visual artist working in installation, sculpture and photography. Her research led practice works towards entwining industries, bodies, and planetary processes, whereby metabolisms coalesce into material narratives.
Oates’ work unfolds through systems and assemblages that allow matter to perform or reveal its own innate tendencies - an exercise in relinquishing control. Her practice navigates the tension between movement and stillness, chaos and stasis, by which things are changed and sustained through time; incorporating live growth, peristaltic pumps, and moving images alongside processes that attempt to fix or preserve through firing, curing, and photography.

By probing at what can be controlled and what remains unsettlingly beyond our grasp - both physically and epistemologically - the work aims to engage with the complex interplay of agencies, spanning the human, animal, and mineral realms at a time when accelerated environmental change and uncertainty challenge our preconceptions about stability and what we can predict.
Louise Oates is a visual artist working in South East London.

Education:
2018/21 - Slade School of Art, University College London - MA Fine Art Media + Contemporary Art Theory - Supported by the Felix Grant
2010/13 - London College of Communication - BA [Hons] Photography

Selected Group Exhibitions:
2025 - Standpoint Gallery, London - Spillâge [Curated by Haze Projects]
2025 - Salon Ac me, Mexico City
2024 - Generatio n and display, London - Ice Blink Luck [Curated by Kollektiv Collective]
2024 - GPS, London - It felt like dawn [Curated by myself, Emma Papworth and Yasmin Vardi]
2024 - Samford Vitrine, London
2023/5 - The Victoria and Albert Museum - Energy: Sparks from the Collection
2023 - The Crypt Gallery, London - Acoustic Tunnel
2022 - Xxijrah hii Gallery, London - Cosmoses
Full CV here.