Ann Gillespie: Unseen/Undone

Ann Gillespie, Unseen/Undone, 2025, ceramic basket, oxide wash, glaze, varnish, 45cm W x 52cm L x 40cm H. Courtesy of MARS Gallery.

MARS presents Ann Gillespie‘s exhibition titled Unseen/Undone.

Following a period of caring for her uncle, who accessed voluntary assisted dying last year, Unseen/Undone explores the realities of unpaid care and the feminised domestic labour that sustains life yet remains unseen. Using raw clay as a proxy for the body, the material performs durational cycles without resolution. Visitors are invited to participate by removing a piece of clay clothing and placing it into the laundry bucket to soak. This simple gesture implicates the audience in the ongoing cycle of care, mirroring the quiet, repetitive acts that structure everyday life yet so often remain unnoticed.

Throughout the exhibition, the clay gathered in the bucket is continuously reworked by the artist into new clay garments. This ongoing transformation reflects the relentless, cumulative nature of unpaid care, labour that renews itself even as it exhausts. The basket is never empty, embodying the perpetual return of tasks that sustain others while remaining largely unseen.

Through participatory approaches, Ann’s work foregrounds interdependence and porous boundaries, inviting audiences into relational states where witnessing and acting coexist and ethical tensions surface.