Articles Available Online

In a public conversation between Park McArthur and Isla Leaver Yap that accompanied the former’s exhibition Poly at the Chisenhale Gallery, London, a member of the audience shared her experience of the show The feeling that arose when she approached the installation was similar, she said, to that of making eye contact with an acquaintance as you approach each other across a room There is an awkward gap that arises when the walk becomes too long to hold the gaze, and you are forced to look away Her comment suggests that we experience McArthur’s work as a social encounter, and speaks to an important objective of the artist’s practice – to reveal and work with the larger social structures in which the work is being made, exhibited and cared for McArthur attends to the infrastructures which organise our personal and professional lives, infusing her work with complex social dynamics, social anxieties and authorial hierarchies   The exhibition is hot Dotted around the gallery space, like spotlights, are small red heaters The temperature in here has surpassed the comfortable, it’s almost sweat-inducing It’s the kind of heat that makes you think twice about the blouse you chose to wear, which is now clinging to your body   One of the pieces, ‘Contact’ (2016), is presented on low plinths, with six stainless-steel trays overflowing with single-use items like condoms, dental dams and finger condoms, moisturizers and lubricantsThey are branded – ‘Allevyn’, ‘Glad’, ‘Durex’, ‘Sudocrem’, ‘Dr Selby’ – and free for the audience to take away They come with the instruction to be kept well stocked and within their expiry date by the host organisation They are extensions of the body, made to prevent infection, lubricate, soak up fluids, cushion and sanitise Made from polymers and designed for intimate, physical contact – repeated encounters – these items signify the exchange between materials and the body, and involve a dialectic of caring and being cared-for   McArthur explored this interest in repeated acts of physical care and intimacy also in her collaboration with Constantina Zavitsanos, which produced a series of text-based works that responded to McArthur’s ‘care collective’ The