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If you're planning bathroom renovations, it might be wise not to choose employing Lisa Herfeldt to handle it.

Truly, Herfeldt is an expert using sealant applicators, producing intriguing creations with a surprising art material. But the more look at the artworks, the clearer one notices that an element is a little strange.

The dense tubes from the foam Herfeldt forms stretch over the shelves supporting them, hanging over the sides to the ground. Those twisted foam pipes expand until they split. A few artworks break free from their transparent enclosures entirely, evolving into an attractor of debris and fibers. Let's just say the feedback would not be positive.

There are moments I feel an impression that objects are alive within a space,” says Herfeldt. This is why I came to use silicone sealant because it has this very bodily feel and appearance.”

Certainly one can detect almost visceral regarding the artist's creations, including the suggestive swelling jutting out, similar to a rupture, from its cylindrical stand at the exhibition's heart, and the winding tubes of foam that burst resembling bodily failures. Along a surface, the artist presents images of the works seen from various perspectives: they look like squirming organisms picked up on a microscope, or colonies in a lab setting.

“It interests me is how certain elements in our bodies happening which possess independent existence,” Herfeldt explains. “Things that are invisible or control.”

Talking of elements beyond her influence, the promotional image for the show features a picture of water damage overhead at her creative space in the German capital. It was made in the seventies as she explains, faced immediate dislike among the community as numerous older edifices got demolished in order to make way for it. By the time dilapidated upon her – a native of that city yet raised north of Hamburg prior to moving to the capital in her youth – began using the space.

This decrepit property caused issues for the artist – placing artworks was difficult her art works without fearing they might be damaged – but it was also intriguing. Without any blueprints accessible, no one knew methods to address the problems that developed. Once an overhead section in Herfeldt’s studio was saturated enough it gave way completely, the single remedy involved installing it with another – and so the cycle continued.

Elsewhere on the property, she describes the water intrusion was severe that several shower basins were set up above the false roof in order to redirect the water to a different sink.

“I realised that the structure resembled an organism, a completely flawed entity,” Herfeldt states.

The situation brought to mind the sci-fi movie, the director's first cinematic piece about an AI-powered spacecraft that takes on a life of its own. Additionally, observers may note from the show’s title – Alice, Laurie & Ripley – that’s not the only film shaping the artist's presentation. The three names point to the female protagonists from a horror classic, the iconic thriller and Alien in that order. Herfeldt cites a 1987 essay by the American professor, outlining these surviving characters as a unique film trope – women left alone to overcome.

These figures are somewhat masculine, reserved in nature and they endure because she’s quite clever,” says Herfeldt about such characters. “They don’t take drugs or have sex. It is irrelevant the viewer’s gender, we can all identify with the survivor.”

Herfeldt sees a parallel between these characters with her creations – things that are just about holding in place under strain they’re under. So is her work more about social breakdown beyond merely water damage? Because like so many institutions, substances like silicone intended to secure and shield against harm in fact are decaying around us.

“Completely,” she confirms.

Prior to discovering her medium with sealant applicators, the artist worked with alternative odd mediums. Recent shows have involved organic-looking pieces using fabric similar to typical for within outdoor gear or inside a jacket. Similarly, one finds the feeling such unusual creations could come alive – some are concertinaed resembling moving larvae, pieces hang loosely off surfaces or spill across doorways attracting dirt from footprints (She prompts people to handle leaving marks on pieces). Similar to the foam artworks, the textile works also occupy – and breaking out of – inexpensive-seeming acrylic glass boxes. The pieces are deliberately unappealing, and really that’s the point.

“These works possess a certain aesthetic that somehow you feel highly drawn to, while also they’re very disgusting,” Herfeldt remarks amusedly. “The art aims for absent, but it’s actually highly noticeable.”

The artist does not create work to make you feel comfortable or beauty. Conversely, she aims for discomfort, strange, perhaps entertained. However, should you notice a moist sensation overhead too, consider yourself the alert was given.