Keeping Up With The Kapulets: Sarah Maple

Kim Kardashian and ‘The Daily Mail’ headlines have become immortalised as artworks in a public Gogglebox experience by Sarah Maple in her latest solo exhibition, held this June at London’s Cob Gallery. Sarah Maple will wire up the gallery space to capture the reactions to her work, which includes her new film, ‘Keeping Up With The Kapulets’, creating a ‘Googlebox’ inspired installation.

 

The new film work, ‘Keeping Up With The Kapulets’, sees actors in full period costume recreate an episode of ‘Keeping up with the Kardashians’, word for word, in the context of a classic Shakespearean theatre production. Additional works in the exhibition include a copy of ‘Doll House’, the Kardashians’ novel, signed by the three Kardashian sisters and presented in a glass box, and stills of Kim Kardashian. Sarah Maple will also teach viewers how to contour their make up like Kim Kardashian through a YouTube tutorial.

 

Also included are sculptural pieces that are text based works carved in marble taken from Daily Mail headlines of celebrities’ lives. Works include ‘Kelly Brook Looks Down Cast’, ‘Cara Delevingne Wears Positive T Shirt’ and ‘Eminem’s Daughter Updates Twitter Profile Pic’. The ‘Celebrities In Stone’ series offer a unique and affordable opportunity to collect Maple’s work at such an exciting point in her artistic career.

 

This current series of works by Maple explore the impact Reality TV and its stars have on popular culture, and the relentless turnover and quality of content. There is a current culture of ‘The Self ’ that has emerged in the past decade, a by-product of the change in programming, technology and immediate access to the daily, even to the minute, lives of celebrities. The boundaries and distance have become blurred. In copying the celebrity Instagram style of self-documentation, can the public achieve the same status?

 

Sarah Maple was born in 1985. She completed a BA in Fine Art from Kingston University in 2007 and in the same year won the ‘4 New Sensations’ award for emerging artists, run by The Saatchi Gallery. Sarah’s artwork, film and performances have been exhibited internationally at galleries and institutions including A.I.R Gallery (NY), AGO (Canada), the Southbank Centre (London), The New Art Exchange (Nottingham), Golden Thread Gallery (Belfast) and Kunisthoone (Estonia). Her exhibition at Kunstihoone broke the museum’s record for visitor numbers in a single day, first weekend and overall duration.

 

Maple’s work has been the subject of documentaries including ARTE and VPRO. She has also been invited to speak at an Amnesty International event, as well as events at Birmingham and Warwick universities, and the LSE. Sarah has worked collaboratively on film projects with Nick Knight and the Southbank Centre and her work has also been included in publications by the Whitechapel Gallery, Phaidon and Gestalten. In 2015 she released her first book ‘You Could Have Done This’, a hardback art book of selected works with contributions from Beverley Knowles (curator and writer), Margaret Harrison (artist), Oreet Ashery (artist) and Anne Swartz (professor Art History). Maple now lives and works in Sussex.