Jill McKnight

In Jill McKnight’s debut exhibition in London, “A room in which many of the parts of our lives were placed,” the artist, who hails from the port city of Sunderland in the north of England, draws on the personal histories of her working-class lineage. The exhibition feels loose and informal, consisting of a series of unruly sculptures and drawings populating a glass storefront that can only be viewed from outside. A multitasking housekeeper, Vacuum Cleaner Hydra (all works 2021), boasts six tubular appendages, each holding an everyday object: a cake tin, a mobile phone, a mug of tea, a vacuum floor nozzle, a spray cleaning bottle, and a packet of cigarettes. Together, these tangled limbs embody the balancing act of domestic work, a through line of McKnight’s practice. A large drying rack, Ladder Clotheshorse, merges McKnight’s father’s occupation, building ladders for the Sunderland shipyards, with the “women’s” labor of domestic chores. Here, one fully appreciates the significance of the artist’s choice of materials—chicken wire, polyurethane foam, hessian, plaster, and ship primer paint—which speak to industrial trade and the socioeconomic underpinnings of the show.

Many of the works evoke a sense of the human body, while others directly quote it: In Foot (After Guernica), an upside-down appendage sprouts from the floor, while Storyteller Crone and Storyteller Mother present partial faces crudely modeled in white plaster bandages. Drawing on the artist’s female forebears, this disembodiment speaks to a negotiation of one’s identity. Pulling together McKnight’s autobiographical reflections and genealogy, what emerges is a personalized panorama of the multifarious states of existence within class, family, and the home.