Co-lack-ting – Despoina Isaia and Salli Yule-Tsingas

Opening this January 2024, Co-lack-ting is a multi-disciplinary exhibition by visual artists Despoina Isaia and Salli Yule Tsingas, which portrays the duo’s contrasting habits of collecting and assembling in all its forms. Spanning two gallery spaces, Co-lack-ting presents an immersive experience featuring sculpture, collage, painting, and print. It delves into the realm of memory, weaving together elements of fantasy, reality, trauma, and joy.

Isaia and Yule-Tsingas, both established artists with over fifteen years of individual artistic exploration, converge their distinct artistic practices at The Briggait as part of Wasps Studios’ arts programme. Their joint artistic endeavours explore a world of child-like objects and structures, each existing independently yet coalescing to evoke a profound sense of redemption amidst perpetual crisis.

At the core of their work lies the essence of the inner child, resonating with the maternal connection, remaining in a state of flux—a slightly chaotic fantasy allowing for potential metamorphosis.

Isaia shapes her work through traditional female skills of domestic life, the process of making, from hair, skin, to blankets, satin, leather, the cutting, suturing, filling and manipulating of hanging complex organic soft sculptures, shows its value through hardship. The passing of time is laborious and gives satisfaction.  Repetition becomes a way in which to process the past, the present and a redemptive future. The evolving result of covering over, bandaging, suturing is healing.

Yule-Tsingas’ approach involves engagement with neglected objects, transforming the unwanted and abject into cherished embodiments of life. Her collection comprises diverse artifacts, from ancient feet to industrial remnants, all speaking eloquently about intricate personal and societal narratives. Through her artistry, she breathes new life into discarded entities, uncovering their hidden voices, charm, and beauty while resonating with the past, present, and an envisaged future.

Co-lack-ting promises a captivating exploration of transformation, resonating with the inner child, embracing the discarded, and redefining the narratives of objects. This exhibition invites art enthusiasts, collectors, and all those seeking an immersive artistic experience to The Briggait, where Isaia and Yule-Tsingas’ visionary collaboration awaits.

Born in Athens, Greece, Despoina Isaia graduated with a BA from the Athens School of Fine Art, with her final work shortlisted for the first Metro Prize (1999) awarded by The DESTE Foundation. Isaia shapes her work through traditional female skills of domestic life, with a distinct duality, which a soft passive outer shell covers a detachment from self which allows the distance that is needed to process the unsaid, “an unknown proximity to trauma”. 

Isaia’s work has been shown by Els Hanappe Underground, Athens at the Armory, New York, and chosen by collector D. Daskapopoulous to feature alongside artworks by Lynda Benglis, Marina Abramovic and Louise Bourgeois at Whitechapel Gallery. 

Salli Yule-Tsingas is a British/Canadian artist awarded an MA from The School of Art, Architecture and Design, in London (2014) and was awarded the Owen Rowley Award (2009). Her expansive multidisciplinary practice evolves across painting, collage, sculpture, found objects and installation, united by a consistent playful visual language, seeking redemptive possibilities.  

The work is comprised of three strands, the complete, the unfinished/finished and the in-flux: an evolving body of work as a metaphor of a human body in relation to other bodies and places. It refers to far reaching vernaculars of psychology, popular science, momentous displacements, DIY, psycho-geography and anthropology, commingling with joy and desire for a shared life. References include Ilya Kabakov, Isa Genzken, Bill Woodrow, Anna Maria Maiolino and Sarah Lucas amongst others. 

Yule-Tsingas is working on her upcoming solo exhibition in Athens in 2024. Recent solo exhibitions include Decoys +, South Block, Glasgow (2023); Gesture Survival, Mt. Florida Studios, Glasgow (2021); Hito’s Forest ‘A Thing like You and Me’ ,101 Gallery, Edinburgh Art Festival (2018) and Circus of Events, Ex Parliament of Modern Greece, Nafplio, (2017). Recent group exhibitions include 1876, The Briggait, Glasgow (2023); Your Safety Our Concern, Morley Gallery, London, (2022) and gefühlt-gesehen-gefunden, The Orangerie, Munich, (2020).