Esther Castle: Abundant Parts art review – A playful work of sculpture
Castle’s exploration of childhood illness manages to be thoughtful without losing its sense of fun
Approaching Edinburgh Sculpture Workshop, a concrete building tucked beside Newhaven’s busy cycle path and surrounded by nettles and scratchy brambles, visitors are met by Esther Castle’s Abundant Parts, visible through the building’s frontage. It’s a fitting introduction. Beyond the glass, Castle has created a space where glossy ceramics, oversized forms and branching sculptures seem to multiply like weeds in an unloved garden; their palette of fleshy pinks, deep reds and verdant greens slipping between the botanical and the bodily. Cartoonish, childlike faces sit strangely among the unruly landscape.
Drawing on her experience of childhood illness, Castle explores the ways society frames non-normative bodies through the language of weeds, growth and control. Viewed through the gallery window, the installation takes on the quality of a museum diorama, inviting close observation while keeping viewers at a distance. The show is playful but absolutely bursting with feeling.
Esther Castle: Abundant Parts, Edinburgh Sculpture Workshop, until 27 September.