Bianca Hlwya: Residual Yeast

Gossamer Fog, London

3 September – 3 October 2022

Bianca Hlwya, Thermaloop, 2022, detail. Image courtesy the artist and Gossamer Fog.

The whiff hits you before anything else, on the way down the stairs into the gallery: sharp, vinegary, suggestively pungent like rotting fruit. An insistent low, whining hum can be heard. Fruit flies fill the air. The source of all of these, and the monumental centrepiece of Bianca Hlywa’s exhibition ‘Residual Yeast’, is Thermaloop, 2022: a large, clear plastic vat on the floor, partially filled with a murky, deep amber-coloured liquid, and floating within it a fleshy, gelatinous mass. The mass, a similarly muddy shade of yellowed-brown, is perfectly rectangular, fitting exactly to the vat, while its surface is a terrain of endless wrinkles and patches of dark mould. Perched over the vat at the far end is a metal frame with a motor that winds up cloth straps to which the mass is stitched. The mass is slowly pulled up, dragged dripping out of the water and rolled into a sopping mess over a period of seven minutes, before rolling it back down again.