What Shall We Do Now?
June 25th to July 20th 2007
Surface Gallery is proud to present its first professional development residency programme. What Shall We Do Now? comprises eight recent graduates, from Lincoln, Loughborough and Sheffield Hallam University. The gallery will first be used as a working studio space for the artists to create their works and then as an exhibition space in which to showcase their final pieces.
This new programme is designed to support recent graduates develop new ideas alongside the curatorial, technical and marketing assistance of the gallery staff. It also allows the public a chance to see behind the scenes of the making of an exhibition in order to maintain that essential dialogue between artist and audience.
The exhibition is diverse and displays the dexterity and dynamism of the artists’ individual work. Jack Fabian’s ‘480 Mansfield Road No Longer Exists’, explores the degradation of memory over the passing of time. Fabian translates the decayed and deteriorated architectural plans of the now non-existent building onto the gallery wall. The diaphanous pencil lines transposed upon the wall using an over-head projector represent the erosion of memory and a gradual forgetting of the buildings original form. Fabian plays the role of Orpheus. In his attempt to grasp the intangible in the very process of translation, the beauty and integrity of the building itself is lost forever.
George Hardy maps the experience of everyday life in the city. By collecting found objects and materials, he represents a dream-like montage of one’s daily experience of the city. Intrigued also with the possession of the material object, his accompanying piece exhibited at The Ropewalk explores the custody of original pieces of art as he offers his myriad cartoons to his audience.
Michelle Vesey’s ‘Foot Drawing 2007’, engages in the process of drawing as a medium of recording the real world. Drawn lines emerge upon a screen until the shape of a foot gradually becomes evident. Her work investigates ideas of truth and authenticity when the material is ordered and made rational in the pursuit knowledge. Andrew Tebbs’ animation of three legged dog also evokes the process of illustration and documentation. The simplicity of the piece; a dog moving from A to B, engenders an innocent sense of empathy for the poor creature’s infirmity.
The rapidly increasing movement of digital information is the subject of Steven Bradley and Beth Pearson’s collaborative piece. Using passport pages, lasers and wires, they have constructed a network visually composed around major countries of the world. With supplemented vocals from internet translation sites, viewers are asked to consider the omnipresent nature of modern media information when time, location and identity are all rendered obsolete.
Sheffield-based artist Cynthia Harrison could not have foreseen the events which overshadowed her month’s residence at Surface Gallery. The death of a close relative and the flooding of her mother’s home had an immediate affect upon her emergent piece over the four week period. Her artwork thus became a direct response to what was happening in the outside world. Previously made monoprint portraits are placed in new positions such as in rooms where they should not belong. Photographed to create a novel piece, new piece, they become signifiers of new meanings and understandings. To Harrison, the monoprints become a metaphor for a group of people; the resident artists, the people displaced during the flood, any group thrown haphazardly together. Hung on the gothic banisters of The Ropewalk for the after-party event, the portraits take on yet another identity.
Alan Armstrong explores our rancorous will to document nature through the chintzy medium of the porcelain ornament. His playful piece; a collection of clumsily produced ornamental birds on a flimsy piece of wood, hung from the ceiling, attributes the mundane object a whole new sense of value.
It has to be said that What Shall We Do Now? has been born of the new networks formed between artists and their pieces in the subterranean microcosm of the Surface Gallery, during their four week residency. The pieces were initially designed to be viewed individually and associated theories to be considered alone, yet throughout they have maintained an inaudible exchange across the space of the gallery and collectively, whether deliberate or accidental, champion a rather potent statement. Each piece communicates to the viewer something about the construction, the transmission and the receiving of knowledge and understanding of the world around us. Furthermore what the artists wish to advocate is that the more we try to explain these processes and make tangible these subjectivities, the more knowledge eludes interpretation and understanding.
As we try to grasp art, to document and to reify it, the more slippery it becomes. What Shall We Do Now? espouses that we relish this challenge and rejoice the infinite capacities of art. Though the representation of art is boundless, intangible and infinite, we continue our mission to convey and to consume, to portray and perceive, in a somewhat gratuitous pursuit of knowledge. Artists keep transmitting and audiences keep translating and all in the pursuit of nothing in particular. But isn’t that the fun of it?
Take from it what you like. All we ask is for you to help us celebrate the recent successes of these eight artistic talents and to help give them the send off into graduate life they truly deserve.
Cheers!
Events
As part of 'What Shall We Do Now?', we held several events over the course of the exhibition. See below for further details.
Unique after-party event hosted by The Ropewalk, 8pm-1am.
One off live event featuring DJ set by The Mighty Funk Collective and visuals Futureproof Image System, featuring undergraduate work from the What Shall We Do Now? artists.
On Thursday 19 July there will also be a Q & A session with the artists, public and gallery staff. Admission is free and refreshments will be provided.
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