This essay was written in response to the artist Lauren Hall’s solo exhibition ‘Private Secretaries’ at David Dale Gallery, Glasgow. Using a conversation with the artist as its starting point, the essay connects a series of diverse reference points, including an apparition of the Virgin Mary on an office building in Florida, recurring character types in murder mystery novels, the Myers Briggs Personality Indicator test and the surrealist artist Elsa Von Frytag. The text serves not as a descriptive interpretation of the exhibition, but uses a series of associations to reflect the complex web of interactions between forms and materials within Halls works. Expanding out from these various references to consider the embodied experience of engaging with art and making meaning within a gallery context.

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