Award-winning artist shows new sculpture and performance works

Installed across a floor of vinyl collages, Anna Reading’s The Pothole presents a series of new sculpture and performance works developed over the past year as the 16th recipient of the major UK award.

Combining layers of surplus commodity materials, including shredded foam, gravel, oyster shells, bitumen, chip forks and cardboard, Anna creates a highly tactile and fragmented environment. Her sculptures appear familiar and puzzling at once, existing between life form and architecture, ancient and futuristic and decay and regeneration.

Running at the Kendal art house until December 14, the new body of work continues the artist’s exploration into the absurd relationship between the organic and the synthetic. The work is installed across a digitally-collaged vinyl floor composed of the artist's photographs of the Scottish Isle of Staffa, layering its hexagonal black basalt columns and colonies of white limpets in a disorientating camouflage. The island, for Anna, is at once an ancient sculptural outcrop as well as a host for organic growth.

A limited edition publication entitled The Pothole accompanies the exhibition and features writing by Anna, London-based artist and writer, Hannah Regel, and another writer, Carey Lifschultz, from San Francisco. The texts are layered with images of Anna's highly textural sculptures and vibrant digital collages.

The MTSA is one of the most significant awards for emerging UK artists working in the field of sculpture. Offering £8,000 towards the making of new work, it rewards outstanding and innovative practice, with a particular interest in work that demonstrates a commitment to the process, or sensitivity to material.

The Pothole tours to Cross Lane Projects from Standpoint Gallery, London and moves on to Bury Art Museum and Sculpture Centre in spring.

Cross Lane Projects is located at Cross Lane, Kendal, LA9 5LB, and open Wednesday until Saturday, noon-5pm.