Molly Grad ‘California Snow’, 2024. Image courtesy of the artist.

What are the systems of operation and actuality, the items and conditions, that are not seen, concealed? Fantasmic, ostracised – our eyes, beings and minds are programmed to ignore, consciously or unconsciously, certain everyday realities. From the manhole covers we step on and over, to the workers on our streets, roads and buildings – there is an innate verticality to what we assimilate and ingest, a pitted prioritisation of knowledge, information and experience. ‘Invisible modes’, a solo show by Molly Grad at the Florence Trust, curated by Jenn Ellis and presented by Apsara Studio, addresses across multiple mediums in various rooms of a converted grade-listed church in Islington, these edited perceptions. Across documented performance, installation, sculpture and painting, Grad poses an engaging and subtly affronting questioning of the ‘high-low’ paradigm, shifting sight, observation and experience to reflect on architectural and societal structures. 

At the root of Grad’s practice is an emphasis on performance in a manner that is deeply personal versus audience-led. In her research and writing, she’s turned to the unheard stories of ballet dancers, such as Balanchine’s manipulated entourage, over to the physical conditions of past family members to extract considerations of what is seen, held, applauded. There is a profound sense of the “concealed” body, how it moves, what it holds. Equally, as a woman and mother: the added complexities of internal systems, childbirth, the ways in which what we’ve been biologically given are meant to serve society. Flanked on either side of the first room in ‘Invisible modes’ are a series of ten steel plates, five on each side – each capture an intervention, by Grad, into an urban construction site. Banal, everyday sites for city dwellers, Grad dons a high-visibility suit and takes to their ranks, at times alone, on other occasions with her young child. Documented photographically, she prints these onto steel plates, the materials of such locations, and accompanies them with notes of observation. As visitors, Grad invites us to pick up these plates, handle them, as if they were portals or part of an urban visual library, and discover the where, when, how and what – diaristic remarks surrounding the irony of tonal visibility shielded with prejudiced concealment. 

In conversation with these documental portals is a singular painting, at the centre, of a manhole cover. A recurring thematic focus in Grad’s work, these dark entities, vertically hung as opposed to horizontally encountered, painted on steel, are systematically transformed by virtue of Grad’s detailed strokes. The first of several works from this series encountered in ‘Invisible modes’, California Snow, 2024 shows a quadrangular cover, partially concealed by white elements. Snow akin to smeared paint, there is an abstract quality to the painting, as if Grad is highlighting the aesthetic possibilities of an otherwise overlooked and trodden upon quotidian element. Described by Grad as “sites of occurrence”, there is equally a personal association with these depictions. Grad reflects on the parallels that can be drawn between these civic incursions and womanhood as well as other communities across gender, ethnicity, and orientation, probing the tropes of what is visible, what is seen, what is acknowledged and what is valued. In the centre of the first room is additionally a sculpture, Coffee Table I, 2025 made of marble, concrete, wood and pavement-like, canvas patchwork back. A mix of societally-regarded high to low elements, conjured into a form with a title that references an everyday domestic object, Grad extends the questioning of what in our immediate surroundings is used and relied upon without being necessarily acknowledged or credited.

Transitioning to the second main space, visitors encounter a passage area – an in-between – which in a way evokes those non-places that Grad is highlighting, investigating and even collaborating with. Here we encounter a knotted ribbon, Gros-Grain, 2025, looped in itself, hanging from a back wall. With a background in fashion design, Grad previously used Gros-Grain in luxury garments; here, however, it is a fragment, frozen in time. Patinated black, and brushed subtly to expose the gold beneath the surface, the idiosyncratic tonal language of building sites is appropriated and highlighted, subverting its original use. In tandem, visitors start to hear the sound of a track: recordings that Grad has been collecting, emanating from gallery two. Stepping into this voluminous space, visitors are invited to ambulate amid a selection of sculptures with incorporated plinths and paintings; elevated on MDF and brick platforms, there is a nod and reminiscence of site work. Several paintings from Grad’s manhole series populate the walls, striking conversations with several plinth and wall-based sculptures across an array of mediums from cast bronze to found metal to stitched cloth. 

Casting a particular focus on the body is a series of bronze and cast sculptures such as Aerobic Digestion I & II, 2022, Gladiators, 2023 and Phantom Limbs, 2025. Introducing the recurring motif of shoewear in Gladiators, Grad investigates their reading as a form of armour and armature. Equally though, she contemplates how they carry us and hold us, acting as forms of protection but also contact with the trodden ground. These objects relate on the one hand to Grad’s past professional life but also defy it – subverting an item of embellishment as one of strength and resistance. Made of bronze and at times marble, in the case of Footlocker, 2025, their materiality speaks to enduring tenacity. This is balanced with a certain delicacy, as in the case of Phantom Limbs, 2025 where the finish, in a near terracotta, makes us think of centuries-old traditions of excavated vessels, clayware, holding, nurturing. 

Oscillating over to the natural world, but also that of found elements and integrated debris, are works such as The yellow mulberry tree, 2023, Architrave, 2024, and Acacia, 2024. Made of found concrete, metal rods and delicately stitched silk leaves and crystal, embellished fruit, there is a nod to growth and creation amidst the urban detritus. Grad as such creates a sensitive nod to the shared properties between elements we pass by and over everyday, contrasting a manhole cover or discarded trash on the side of the streets, with delicate growth – are those desolate or hold a new beginning?

Ultimately, ‘Invisible modes’ is an exhibition but also an act of paying attention. Telling the stories that are hidden and inverting them. A moment to have them air, and by doing so, enact change.

Stay tuned!