Ruth Claxton
Ikon Gallery
Ruth Claxton’s installation Lands End, 2008, sneaks up on you. Initially it doesn’t look like an installation at all but like a group of discrete (though closely related) sculptures, some freestanding, others wall-mounted. The site-specific work was disposed across three of Ikon’s rooms, the first so densely installed that you could enter it just partway, the second moderately so, and the third fairly sparsely. Likewise, the floor-based elements themselves went, as the rooms progressed, from being nearly as high as the ceiling to being, in the last room, relatively low (around coffee-table