Connie Wilson
Liste Art Fair Basel
16–22 June 2025

Booth 1, Messe Basel, Hall 1.1
Maulbeerstrasse / Riehenring 113
4058 Basel, Switzerland

Artribune

For Liste, Connie Wilson presents a suite of new sculptural works concerning the boundaries of interior and exterior space — creating a dialogue between seemingly disparate vessels that share connections to global systems of consumption and trade.

Popularized during wartime construction, heating oil used in domestic spaces was often stored in above-ground tanks. Painting the oil tanks to look like cows, sheep, or pigs became a popular folk art tradition — their rounded torsos and four pipe legs with flange hoofs starting to resemble grazing mammals. Wilson adopts these forms in her series of replica oil tanks, first started in 2022. The fossil fuels typically contained within the bovine-like forms (themselves derived from plant and animal remains) are replaced with scale reproductions of airport hotel rooms, deposited in the bellies of the drums and viewable through peephole doorways punctured in their exteriors. Installed at eye level, one is left to negotiate with another somatic presence generously revealing its core.

These are accompanied by a selection of box-like forms, based on various cuts of pork, which sparsely line the booth's floor. The loin, the ear, the shoulder, the tenderloin, the belly and the snout are abstracted as geometric volumes and wrapped in colourful sleeves of vinyl, fabric, and reclaimed leather. In the artist's practice, these studies in pig flesh interpretations began with representational sculptures of the bodies of wild boar. Struck by their exceptional bodies, Wilson pays homage to their toned conic legs, slabbed torsos, and triangle ears that resemble twice-folded napkins.

Collectively, these works point to a kinship between bovines and humans, situating the viewer both within and in contrast to the forms. Through this, Wilson expresses an interest in the reorganisation of agency and hierarchical structures.

Connie Wilson (b. 1993, Belfast, Northern Ireland) received her BFA from NSCAD University in 2016 and an MFA from the University of Guelph in 2021. Recent solo and two-person exhibitions include Chris Andrews, Montréal (2024); dacodac, Zürich (2024); Pumice Raft, Toronto (2023); and Franz Kaka, Toronto (2022). Recent group exhibitions include Therapy Press, Vienna (2025); and Chris Andrews, Montréal (2023). Wilson is currently based in Athens, Greece.