We're delighted to present the second guest edit of our winter fundraiser Pending by Leonie Summers, Head of PSSA Contemporary and Co-Director PSSA sculpture residency @pssa_sculpture.

Leonie has selected 10 works from the 60+ works we have available that she felt had strong titles. Below we have quotes from each of these artists focussing on the relationship between the work and their titles.

All sales help us fundraise towards the costs of our 2021-22 exhibitions and the education projects with our local Lambeth communities that run alongside them. Profits are split 50/50 between the artists and this fundraising initiative. All purchases will support emerging artists, new projects and community outreach.

Pending continues online and on display in our windows until 31 December.

“The title of this piece is taken from Ursula K le Guin's, The Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction. This small work exists in the unrest of time, whilst carrying amulets in hand for protection. It sits comfortably with uncertainty. It is a temporal feeling of promise within this new world and harnesses the imminent glimpse of hope on it's own horizon line.”

- Sophie Goodchild

“Unlike architecture's purpose of longevity, the scaffold is a temporary space that moulds its structure into being; it constructs something through its own eventual deconstruction, existing within its own temporality, just like a home and the objects that inhabit it.”

- Nour Jaouda

“My own sculpture borrows its title fromThe Calming Hand, a ‘tool’ used in cognitive behavioural therapy to tackle anxiety, panic attacks and breathlessness. It’s a very simple technique that guides the individual through key points to remember when experiencing an anxiety episode (or similar). The idea is that one’s hand serves as the “background” on which to project a mental diagram of sorts - outlining the technique’s five steps.”

- Irini Bachlitzanaki

“My Head Hurts, My Feet Stink And I Don’t Love Jesus (2017) was an ode to ‘uncertainty’; of one’s positionality in the ‘white-cube’ artworld; of unconfidence; of anticipation of conflict. To abstract any section of the body becomes a political act; in this instance, in working to (re)articulates the black body a strict contextual and aesthetic change occurs, navigating questions surrounding sculptures symbiotic relationship with space and notions surrounding 'presence'.”

- Rayvenn Shaleigha D’Clark

“I title my work like how I would title a chapter in a story. Almost always the work is part of a larger scenario and so the title is a little snippet to let you know where you are in the ‘book’. “My Best Bathing Experience” is an anecdote from the two or three hours I spent at a public bath in Beijing after a period of loneliness. It really was the best!”

- Eleanor Wang

“Titles are hard. In the case of the piece in Pending the work was taken from a half remembered, rather kitsch, painting called the 'Aviators Dream' (or something to that effect), nestled in a quiet corner of the Museum of Modern Art in Lithuania. I experienced this painting a while ago so the image of winged eggs (which I think in the painting are closer to 'sputnik') have come and gone from my consciousness and returned again, mixing with other life experiences and late night thoughts.”

- Benjamin Arthur Brown

“Cocoon for me references the state I was in during the second lockdown. This piece is very playful and is a reference to my favourite story as a child ‘The very Hungry Caterpillar’ by Eric Carle.The cocoon is made from materials like yarn, canvas and wire which I feel reflects my practice.”

- Emily Moore

“The ‘Woodcutter Bell’ refers to a fable about a woodcutter who discovers that they can only perform to their maximum potential if they rest and sharpen their axe. For me, the act of chopping wood is as pure and meditative as the sound of a bell slowly chiming on each beat. If we slow down and pause we become more adept to our sensory surroundings.”

- Camilla Bliss

“On boths sides of my snowflake sculpture is written ‘What’s on the other side?’: just imagine for a second a double-headed coin where each side simultaneously represents the end and a new beginning, yes or no, right or wrong. In my current body of work I explore paradoxes, concepts of the opposites and full circles as well as dualism's buffer zones, showing an eternal battle between evil and good, dark and light, death and life, dream and reality, and striving to destabilise those binaries and blur the existing borders.”

- Valerie Savichts

“A Pending Constellation forms a recognizable pattern that is awaiting decision or settlement”

- Milan Tarascas