Elaine Cameron-Weir’s Doomsday Delight at Lisson Gallery

With its assemblages of repurposed part-objects and handmade elements like metalworking and leather tooling suspended from the ceiling, Elaine Cameron-Weir‘s exhibition A WAY OF LIFE (7 March–13 April 2024) at Lisson Gallery in New York, is a perplexing walkthrough exploring the concept of end times.

After encountering the Canadian-born, New York-based artist’s work in Sadie Coles HQ‘s provocative group show, Hardcore, last year, Ocula Advisors were eager to see the artist’s debut with Lisson Gallery.

In her latest work, Cameron-Weir reimagines and rearranges various objects and materials to explore themes of personal mortality, conformity, revelation, and the end of the world.

Inside the gallery are objects from horseshoe nails and metal drums to horsehide jackets and studded leather sacks. Accompanying this amalgamation of found fragments, a conveyor belt decorated with rows of old aluminium horseshoes weaves through the gallery, forming a ribbon-like structure that divides the space.

Included in the exhibition is pupil of couture / 4horsemen hairshirt (SS 2024 apocalypse collection) (2023). The sculpture features four jackets layered on top of each other, reminiscent of trench coats worn by soldiers in World War II trenches. The jackets are arranged in a crucifix-like formation and suspended by chains above studded leather sacks.

It’s a disconcerting scene. The way the jackets hang invites the unsettling notion of a body suspended in the air, despite the absence of an actual body.

In this piece, Cameron-Weir draws inspiration from the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, where each jacket symbolises war, famine, plague, and death. Further influences from punk and cowboy subcultures are noted in details such as sacks resembling saddlebags and studs reminiscent of spiked jackets.

With plenty of studs, chains, hooks, and leather on display, navigating through Cameron-Weir’s exhibition feels somewhat discomfiting. Though with morbid fascination, you keep looking to decipher the meaning behind it all.

A WAY OF LIFE is on view at Lisson Gallery in New York until 13 April 2024.