Kelly Limerick: Unbecoming Solo Show

Cuturi Gallery is honoured to present a solo exhibition by Singaporean artist Kelly Limerick: Unbecoming. Self-taught crochet artist Kelly Limerick is known for her large-scale installations and collaborations with global brands the likes of Disney and Gucci. While she is no stranger to the contemporary art scene through her projects with Esplanade – Theatres on the Bay and OH! Open House, Unbecoming is the first time that she is putting out a corpus of new personal work in a solo presentation with an art gallery.

Unbecoming takes her exploration of the crochet medium to another level, centering the focus on the process of the craft – ironically, through the reverse gesture of destruction. In the titular series, the artist torches five vases that she had meticulously crocheted.

This exhibition features works that emerge from this process, as well as an accompanying video installation that documents the unmaking process and a series of photographs that memorialise the vessels as they had once been. To execute her vision, Limerick brings on board Singaporean photographer Clarence Aw and Berlin-based film director Joy Song.

Viewers are invited to bear witness to her works’ process of unbecoming, and in doing so, ponder the fraught relations between value, worth, labour and craft.  

In a time when to live means to contend with the various global crises – ecological, humanitarian, economic – of our times, Unbecoming embodies the discordant truth of living life. At the same time, they are the fruits of the artist’s intensely personal creative tribulations and mark a breakthrough in her creative practice.

While Limerick’s previous works have often turned heads due to their intricate construction and visual appeal, it is here that she tears apart the crochet medium, and through this paradox of unmaking generates new conversations about an art form that she has been exploring for more than two decades.

A two-day multi-session Live Crochet Performance and an Artist’s Talk moderated by artist-educator Adeline Kueh will be held at the gallery. Additionally, a Masterclass workshop in collaboration with ArtScience Museum conducted by Kelly Limerick will be running concurrently at the Museum. Detailed information on events and programmes can be found on the Gallery’s website.

Unbecoming exhibition will be on view from April 23, 2022 to May 8, 2022, at 61 Aliwal Street, Singapore 199937. Admission is free.