Penny Goring
Chronic Forevers
Gallery Openings—15 Sep 2023, 6 to 9 PM
“I have always lived under the rule of men and money, and right now, I am angry at the ways it hobbles my life and my body. I find the future we are in to be terrifying. Also, ridiculous, in the way of a murderous clown. And I hate that it somehow feels inevitable, relentless, like a speeding juggernaut.”
Penny Goring
Penny Goring holding Anxiety Object, Courtesy of the artist and Arcadia Missa, London, Photo: Tim Bowditch
Penny Goring, Chronic Forevers, Installation View at Galerie Molitor, Berlin, 2023, Courtesy the gallery
Penny Goring, Chronic Forevers, Installation View at Galerie Molitor, Berlin, 2023, Courtesy the gallery
Penny Goring, Chronic Forevers, Installation View at Galerie Molitor, Berlin, 2023, Courtesy the gallery
Penny Goring, Chronic Forevers, Installation View at Galerie Molitor, Berlin, 2023, Courtesy the gallery
Penny Goring, Chronic Forevers, Installation View at Galerie Molitor, Berlin, 2023, Courtesy the gallery
Chronic Forevers marks the first exhibition of London-based artist and poet Penny Goring (b. 1962, London) in Germany. Goring’s work stems from processing trauma and conveying emotions associated with states of grief, fear, loss, panic, and powerlessness. Making art compulsively and working freely across mediums, Goring’s repeated images and words detail invented mythologies and personal experiences. The exhibition comprises a group of new fabric sculptures titled Forever Dolls embellished with flourishes like tassels and rhinestones and a selection of new paintings on paper from her ongoing Amelia series. Goring’s relentlessly direct poetry is entangled throughout, appearing in titles and stitched onto her fabric sculptures. Working from home using modest materials like ballpoint pens, fabric and food dye, her practice has been shaped by restrictive housing conditions, lack of funds and inadequate therapeutic support.
Viewed in the context of the UK’s cost-of-living crisis, Goring’s oeuvre attests to the long-term effects of financial precarity and asserts the power of creativity in the face of austerity. Goring’s work was the subject of a major survey at the ICA London in 2022 and will be included in the upcoming group exhibition Women in Revolt! at Tate Britain. Two of Goring’s films Fear (2013) and Please Make Me Love You (2014) will be screened at Studio Mondiale as part of the Gallery Weekend Festival.