Black Wardrobe is a bureau wrapped seamlessly in tape, pressed with obsessive determination to form a second skin revealing the dresser's most enigmatic crevasses. Suffocated in black, the cupboard looses its recognisable physicality, becoming a monumental void connoting absence and memory. Through prolonged physical connection with the object, Barriball unveils a mystery in the too-familiar: a synesthesia of sight and touch, where senses merge and become heightened in an elevated pursuit of beauty.

Anna Barriball's works convey an intimacy with the overly familiar. Her everyday objects are 'gagged' by smothering surfaces, becoming seductively sinister husks of their former selves. Made by placing a large piece of paper over a door, and rubbing it with a pencil, Door is a drawing that assumes the qualities of a sculpture. Its metallic, burnished surface captures every subtle detail of the original object, while the paper warps and fluxes through repetitive handling to gain a solidity of its own. Central to Barriball’s practice is the time and effort involved in the making; her process formulates as poetic meditation, finding a delicate fascination in the mundane and overlooked.