Extending her investigations into architecture’s impact on the way we understand, imagine and move through the world, Andrea Ferrero’s ‘The suspense is terrible, I hope it will last’ considers our first encounters with the spatial logics of power. Here, childhood play is cast as a site where discipline and social norms are first encountered and rehearsed through fantasy and play pretend within miniature worlds, toy castles and Polly Pocket universes.
At the centre of the gallery, a dog cage sits on a beige carpet recalling the pervasive fitted carpets of domestic interiors. A series of oversized padlocks hang from it, splicing the aesthetics of giant lollipops, collectible keepsakes and security devices. Some cast in glass and others in sugar, they translate decorative fragments drawn from London’s gates, thresholds, gardens and other mechanisms of enclosure into the soft, inflated visual vocabulary of mass-produced fantasy toys.
The familiar architecture of pet ownership becomes a way of thinking through the unstable relationship between care and control, while the fragility of the objects highlights this precarity. Throughout the exhibition devices of seduction and deception reflect, as in fairy tales, that reward and pleasure rarely come without consequence.
Aluminium moths, long associated with misfortune appear on the gallery walls, adding to the hallucinatory feel of the presentation, while flies settle throughout the gallery appearing to encroach on the scene —perhaps responding to the smell of chocolate emanating from the candied form of a forlorn poodle.
Unlike us, the dog does not render to restraint but to temperature, time and gluttony. To fully explore the exhibition, we must enter the cage on our hands and knees, breathing in the sweet scent of childhood memories that in this disquieting environment might shatter at any moment like the fragile shackles that hang from it.
Ferrero (Lima, 1991) explores how architectures of power shape the way we imagine, understand and move through the world. Weaving political history with personal memory, she creates immersive installations, playscapes, and edible banquets that invite desire, gluttony, mischief, and trespass.
Copperfield, 6 Copperfield Street, London, SE1 0EP from 3 September – 3 October 2026
Open Wed – Sat, 12 – 6 pm during exhibitions.
