The Treasure Inside Your Chest

The Treasure Inside Your Chest, Lily Bloom
13th September - 5rd October 2024

Lily Bloom (b. 1993, London, UK) is a transformative artist who uses self-portraiture and sculpture to explore themes of souvenir, memory & horror.

“But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where moth and rust do not destroy, and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.” - Matthew 6:19-24

In her own writing about the work that would become The Treasure Inside Your Chest, artist Lily Bloom retells the myth of Orpheus; who follows his dead lover Eurydice into the Underworld and pleads with Hades to return her to the land of the living. His wish was granted, on the condition he not turn around to see if Eurydice is indeed following close behind him. Not content to rely on faith, he disobeys this order and his need for proof sends Eurydice back to eternal darkness for the second time.

The sculptures on view are products of a type of spiritual alchemy, wherein memories and wishes are transformed into tangible and tactile objects. Whether bleeding and fleshy or sharp and shiny, they are in the room with us now. No need to hold a seance and ask the past to flicker a candle or knock twice, for these totems of grief are not amorphous, but a haunting taking physical form.

Lily Bloom’s alchemical practice echoes Victorian Spiritualists discovery of ectoplasm; a viscous organic substance which is miraculously produced by someone, usually a woman, in contact with the dead. In some Occultist circles, the process of producing ectoplasm has been dubbed “mediumistic labor”, and unlike more common symptoms of hauntings like inanimate objects moved by ghost, ectoplasm is a form unto itself, brought forth by the body of a medium. The photographs of these sessions are now viewed more so as performance art documentation or early surrealist collage rather than empirical evidence of a spirit world.

The veracity of spontaneous ectoplasmic claims is irrelevant when viewed less literally, as metaphor. Whether residua of the dead was in fact birthed by these spirit workers, the images created made them mothers regardless. Mothers of new schools of thought regarding that which comes after death, how we conceptualise hauntings, where our memories go and what they want from us, and the possibility for the past to render itself material, to appear in front of you at a moment’s notice.

In mourning, the souvenirs of our past can cast a warm glow on our day. We can smile and tell the story to a crowd and feel bolstered by our ability to remember, feel blessed to have a story to tell at all. Moments later the very same recollection can feel sharp, barbed, it can rip open the sutures of time and blood of anguish and heartbreak flow freely and pool at your feet.

Lily Bloom’s sculptures are anthro-pomorphic manifestations of these mementos which both comfort and wound us. They assume the shape of familiar forms and recall media that may hold a nostalgic charge for many viewers: characters from Disney movies and Lord of the Rings, childhood toys, musicals, Greek mythology, video games and so on. It is no mistake that her references are expansive stories and sprawling worlds in their own right, as the sculptures which populate the gallery act as portals into the artist’s personal mythos, or perhaps souvenirs from a trip to this otherworld. She explores the terrain of time, memory, faith, past and present as they are depicted in reality and fiction, pop culture and folklore.

Death is ever present in Disney cartoons; the film Bambi opens with the death of his mother. Memory works differently in Middle Earth and its inhabitants rely on songs and poems to embalm the past. Time is a flat circle and Count Dracula crossed oceans of it to find his soulmate. In the world Bloom manifests, heaven isn’t just a place to stay dead for a long time but a place to be made whole again.

The electric current which courses through this meticulous sculptural practice is one of keeping the faith. By way of her own form of mediumistic labor, she creates work which tenderly reaches out to its viewer, offering us recognisable signifiers accompanied by a blunt reminder of the enduring wound of grief awaiting us all. She squeezes our hand and reminds us that doubt kills us twice.

Exhibition text by Maggie Dunlap (b. 1995, Washington, D.C.) a visual artist and writer based in Brooklyn, New York.

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For all enquiries, please email info@shipton.gallery

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Image 1:

Lily Bloom
The Marriage of the Lamb, 2024
Plaster, Solder,
9 x 9 x 3 cm / 7 x 12 x 3 cm

Image 2:

Lily Bloom
Gypsy Rose, 2024
Aluminum, Solder,
58.5 x 40 x 30 cm

Image 3:

Lily Bloom
Orpheus, 2024
Porcelain, Solder,
31 x 21 x 10 cm

Image 4:

Lily Bloom
Faline (1.2), 2024
Brass, Solder, Barrel
19 x 12 x 3.5 cm

Image 5:

Lily Bloom
Faline (1.3), 2024
Brass, Solder, Barrel
16 x 15 x 4.5 cm

Image 6:

Lily Bloom
Helms Deep, 2024
Barrel, Well Water, Brass, Solder,
13.5 x 6.5 x 3.5 cm (Axe)

Image 7:

Lily Bloom
Lampwick, 2024
Rope, Brass, Solder, Bucket, Feathers, Coins,
13 x 11 x 3.5 cm (Lamb)

Image 8:

Lily Bloom,
Shadowfax, 2024
Horse Hoof, Horse Shoe, Solder,
23 x 12 x 6 cm

Image 9:

Lily Bloom
Faline (1.1), 2024
Brass, Solder, Barrel
11 x 9 cm
15 cm x 18 cm
22 x 13 x 15 cm

Image 10:

Lily Bloom
Faline (1.1), 2024
Brass, Solder, Barrel
22 x 13 x 15 cm