Bears Who Care: Dean JF Hoy at The Sarabande Foundation

 Dean JF Hoy presents at The Sarabande Foundation: ‘The Vigil of Julien, a loved member of Hope Creek, son to Dope, and child of the land. May the candlelight and the crowd guide him home. His last sightings were in Nashville, Tennessee this February. We pray for his soft & safe return.’

Image courtesy of The Sarabande Foundation.

Immersed in the hub of East London’s rich creative scene, stands The Sarabande Foundation. Established by Lee Alexander McQueen in 2006, the charitable foundation aims to support the most ‘creatively fearless minds of the future’, nurturing, to date, more than 200 artists and designers. Marking the end of his residency at Sarabande, Dean JF Hoy presents The Vigil - a gathering of 27 soft sculptures. Taking discarded and hand-me-down soft toys - symbols of neglect found at the roadside or bins - he remodels and re-stuffs them in a metamorphic process, by which the artist breathes life back into them. Restored once more to their treasured status, Hoy’s Bears Who Care are eerie, eclectic and yet endearing in appearance; they display the marks of their construction and the scars of time. To each one he lends its own narrative, endowing them with a distinct poeticism: Dope, ‘a piece of me - a well-worn bunny stitched with all I love and hate’; Bluth, who ‘wraps himself in love and loss in equal measure’; Ribs, ‘my friend Chelsea … who unlocked the world that I’ve lived in since’ - to name but a few. In each instance, Hoy blurs the boundaries between the real and imagined, intertwining personal histories with fiction and fairy-tale. Together they form the Bears of Hope Creek, a commune of strays, united despite abandonment - their motto: ‘no one gets left behind’.

Image courtesy of The Sarabande Foundation.

The toys congregate in a makeshift village hall, longing for the safe return of their companion, Julien. Left at the roadside in Nashville, accompanied by a note tracing her to Hoy, Julien’s story transcends their realm becoming an ongoing experiment and broader comment on the human spirit. Guided to the space by Julien’s MISSING posters and presented with an ‘Order of Service’, viewers light candles around the room. In the centre, separated by a carpet, stand Hoy’s soft sculptures: some play, suspended in mid-air, and others hold each other in tender embraces. The candlelight sets a mnemonic tone, and it is in that candlelight that I am reminded of my own lost toys, once cherished, the ones held as I cried, or carried with me on every adventure. It is with that creeping pang of nostalgia that The Vigil transcends itself - an act of remembrance for childhood lost. Attendees are invited to donate to the children’s bereavement charity 'Holding on Letting Go', further connecting Hoy’s fictional tale to the real world.

Chloe Redston

Tuesday, December 3rd 2024