Sophie Mallett

For Deptford X 2019, Sophie Mallett is exhibiting Lol, sploot, blep, blop, bork for the first time in the UK. The two screen video is set in a seemingly abandoned park (Parque de Enrique Tierno Galván, Madrid) where grand spaces built for communal interaction are left unoccupied. This park becomes the setting for a different kind of communality. Doggos, the only frequent visitors to the park, come together to help us understand the subtle and explicit ways that we avoid acknowledging our own complicity in structural violence and inequalities. In this alternate world, dog blop and mlem while they philosophise on the systems of control that engender exploitation. Their dialogue is adapted from writings on whiteness by Houria Bouteldja and Robin DiAngelo. The doggos open up the space between ideology and action entrenched in white liberalism.

The video is Mallett’s personal reflection on exploitation and inadequacy that uses our dearest friends, and an aesthetic of cuteness and anthropomorphic attraction, to confront uncomfortable hypocrisies. If we refuse to escape the daily routine of entertainment, exhaustion and clickbait to understand our complicity in interdependent systems of authority, power and violence; the dog will do it for us.

Sophie Mallett is an artist and filmmaker working in London. Her practice concentrates on how financial, architectural and social worlds are constructed and controlled, and in turn affect our ability to co-exist. Mallett was educated at Open School East, London College of Communication and Sydney Conservatorium of Music.

Lol, sploot, blep, blop, bork was commissioned by E.M.M.A