Organic Behaviours by Clara Hastrup

26 January - 10 March 2023
Lamb Gallery is pleased to present Clara Hastrup’s solo exhibition Organic Behaviour. Through a humorous standpoint and using the absurd as her visual language, Hastrup’s practice revolves around the ever-changing relationship between society and objects of consumption. 
 
Inspired by the Fibonacci sequence, Hastrup has developed Prickly Tunes, an installation of four hundred small cacti mounted on individual motors alongside a suspended set of acoustic instrument strings. Hastrup has programmed the motors to start spinning at different times to create an acoustic polyphony of sounds. The intricate arrangement of spines on the spherical cacti is formed by the Fibonacci sequence creating a spiral pattern that is constantly reproduced in elements found in nature. Hastrup is then conducting the cacti to literally play the Fibonacci sequence as they spin. 
 
Walking through the gallery space, we encounter Do-Re-Mi-Fa-Ce-Re-Al, a wall-mounted installation made of cereal boxes and xylophones. A mechanism attached to the cereal box stirs the cereals and enables a mechanism that opens a small hole in the bottom of the box. This will allow a few portions of cereal to drop onto the xylophone below, which results in a brief random tinkling sound as the cereal hits the tuned metal notes. Part of Hastrup’s practice consists in bringing inanimate objects to life. To do so, she placed some spotlights on the cereal boxes to maximise their cartoonish aspect and make them look like animated figures.
 
At the back end of the gallery, maintaining a playful tone, the artist has built Fruitplayer (hole 1), an unusual mini golf hole. On top of a ramp covered with a bright blue carpet sits a small citrus tree. Due to the perishable nature of the fruit, there is a chance that once the fruit is ripe it will drop off and roll down the ramp into the hole. To facilitate this process, Hastrup has placed a small wind sensor outside that sends data to a microcontroller inside the gallery. Once the wind reaches enough speed, the microcontroller will turn on a vibration motor attached to the tree stem, shaking it to make the ripe fruits fall off.
 
Through these installations, Clara Hastrup elevates ordinary objects transforming them into humorous characters. She explores the notion of consumption through humour, enhancing the perishable nature of certain elements and conveying an ever-existing playfulness in every inanimate object that surrounds us.