© Jorge das Neves

© Jorge das Neves

Jessica Warboys

This Tail Grows Among Ruins, 2022
16 mm film transfer to digital video & digital video, colour, sound, 10’, loop
Performer: Ieva Kabašinskaitė
Sound: Morten Norbye Halvorsen
Camera: Aline Belfort & Ville Piipp
Courtesy of the artist

THIS TAIL GROWS AMONG RUINS is an installation including a film of the same name shot this winter in Coimbra, a diptych River Painting, Worm Moon, Fossbekken, 2022 and the sculpture TAIL (2022). Locations in the film include the Mondego River, the Biblioteca Joanina, the subterranean Cryptoportico built as part of the old Roman city of Aeminium (now Coimbra) and the Convent Santa Clara-a-Nova. Recalling the filmed scene of the Mondego River the River Paintings move from the river to the river bank; these raw canvases painted with beeswax have been submerged in the river Fossbekken, Norway before being pulled to the bank where mineral pigments have been applied directly onto the wet canvas. TAIL (2022) a cast beeswax candle doubles as a prop in the film and a sculpture, installed as if born from the Convent walls, it will be lit at night. This group of works is a crystallisation of thoughts and forms circling bodies: object, human and animal and their potential for growth and transformation. Jessica Warboys (1977, UK) lives and works in Berlin, DE and Stavanger, NO. Solo and group exhibitions, including The Ghost Ship and the Sea Change Göteborg International Biennial for Contemporary Art, (2021) Hill of Dreams Tate St Ives, UK (2017) The British Art Show (2015) and Documenta 13 (2012).