MAKING LOVE TO THE THINGS I HATE

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ALMOST EMPTY PLASTIC BOTTLES OF WHATEVER

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MAKING

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LOVE               TO            

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I

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MAKING 

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HATE

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HATE

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THE                  THINGS 

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LOVE               TO           

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I

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THE                  THINGS 

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EMPTY PLASTIC BOTTLES OF WHATEVER

Thanks for that apple

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Thanks for that apple

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don't get ill

don't get ill

don't get ill

don't get ill

don't get ill

don't get ill

don't get ill

don't get ill

do

you know what

I

mean?

do

you know what

I

mean?

do you know whatI mean?

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do you know whatI mean?

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do you know whatI mean?

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fuck

t h e m

¡Que se jodan!(fuck them)

¡Que se jodan!(fuck them)

¡Que se jodan!

(fuck them)

don't get ill

don't get ill

Y  O  U    C  A  N ' T    E  S  C  A  P  E

Y  O  U    C  A  N ' T    E  S  C  A  P  E

Making love with the things I hate is the first London solo exhibition of Spanish artist Maria de la O Garrido. The exhibition addresses that feeling of powerlessness and precarity when confronted with an accelerated process of profound political, environmental and technological change. Making love with the things I hate interrogates this paradigm shift and acts as a catalyst of personal resistance. 

Garrido adopts the visual language of both Dadaist and digital collage, which divides the exhibition into three interwoven thematics: the hegemony of masculine power in politics, the inexorable ubiquity of plastics, and exponential advances in technology. The entire gallery becomes a collage, with the sculptural installations as its composite parts. Sculptural details relay Garrido’s personal experience navigating Spanish and British bureaucracy and expose a sense of ambivalence towards events and conditions that seem beyond our control.

The colourful pixelated caricatures of Spanish politicians in Don’t Get Ill dilutes their power to stereotypical personas in a confrontation with demonstrations of state violence and their ability to blame and cause suffering to citizens. These mini-collages sit alongside (Almost Empty) Plastic Bottles of Whatever’s, a series of floral still-lives that penetrate through plastic cleaning products. These objects are translated from physical pieces to digital image; the resulting hybrid figures fuse the natural and industrial. The plexiglass pedestal of Thanks for that Apple places a more ironic question mark behind our dependency on machines despite their rapid obsolescence in an increasingly digitised world.

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Text written by curator Gema Darbo in 2017 for  MLWTTIH solo exhibition at Deptford X

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