Great work and a whole load of creative energy!
I have just returned home after going to the private view of a student lead exhibition in a place previously filled with rubbish. The unused car park below Wilkinson, on Bournemouth’s Winton High Street, and what a wonderful encounter it was.
Walking along the busy street today, I disregarded my usual surroundings of shops, pubs and supermarkets and was excited when I saw a sign pointing to a gated doorway that I never knew existed. Down a few steps and I was in the world of concrete, bricks and tarmac, your standard basement car park. However, thankfully for myself and the rest of the curious visitors it was filled with intriguing works of art and various things taking place.
The show featured work by 34 different students from the Arts University College at Bournemouth. Some have recently graduated and others are just about to start their final year. As you would expect from AUCB students, it was a varied and eclectic mix of work, from painting, sculpture and installation to video, performance and participatory pieces.
In a corner behind an office desk sat a young women frantically hitting the keys of an old typewriter, as it clicked and clunked back and forth a reel of paper cascaded down to the ground. What was this person writing about? I had to have a closer look at it. Still confused I asked her what she was typing about and she replied, ‘I’m the brain, I’m writing down everything I see happening in here’. With this knowledge I was ready to move on, I took a scatter brain approach to the exhibition, walking across this large space at random towards anything that caught my eye.
Hollie Mackenzie‘s ‘Meltdown’ looked like something right out of a science fiction movie. Large blobs and droplets of mercury coming through the ceiling have been frozen in time and now endlessly float in this space. There is no illusion, you know they are held up by wire but from a distance it’s just as awesome as if the rules of physics had been turned off.
Michael Compton‘s piece titled ‘Aware’, is almost unnoticeable in the space. Without the handout and its helpful map I doubt many would even notice it. Peering at the wall you are confronted by the very illogical manner in which a bright red fire escape door is positioned behind 3 large pipes, which in the event of an emergency it would be impossible to open. On close inspection I came to the realisation that this is a perfectly crafted work of art. It mirrored all the other genuine doors precisely but having come into contact with this piece, it alters the way you think about the space. I really began to consider the actual place, what else is going, how else has the space been subverted, and how have the other artists responded to this specific location.
I think the paintings by Joella Wheatley really worked well in this cold subterranean place. I’m really fascinated by these humanoid figures with animal heads. It’s as if these animals hold within them different archetypical characters. That maybe, through myths, story and personification, we have a collective unconscious understanding of who they are. There is a real sense of narrative in the work, like events have or are just about to unfold. Having spoken to the artist I know we can expect more from these characters, and I’m interested in seeing if they act as I think would. They’re a bit kitsch and remind me of pseudo native North American Indian paintings, but that connection doesn’t detract anything for me. I enjoyed t-shirt prints of wolves and bears.
Whilst looking at a fairly dull video piece I glimpsed in the corner of my eye a shiny silver face looking at me. Quickly I looked up to see someone staring at me from behind a grate in the wall. Then suddenly the unknown individual disappeared. It was creepy, like a horror film watched late at night but there was no TV screen containing it.
After the shock it was less unnerving, so I waited to see if the masked figure would return, and it did briefly before disappearing again amongst the shadows. It reminded me of something by the pioneering performance artist Vito Acconci. Once I knew it was Ashley Peevor, an artist I know, it become more funny than disturbing. Every once in a while I’d look to see if I could see him. It felt like after noticing him I become complicit in the performance because I knew he could see and hear everyone who went near that wall. He was voyeuristically watching them, and I wasn’t letting them in on it.
In bold contrast to Ashley Peevor’s quite unpleasant and uneasy experience, Alice William‘s piece induced a really sociable interaction. It was a light and playful experience. What looked like drainage pipes were actually sound producing sculptures. Audience members were needed to complete the work, by rotating the pipes and creating the loud rain-like sounds. This generated a really fun atmosphere amongst the audience and having two side by side meant that you could interact not only with the work but, crucially for the success of the piece, another person.
A much more traditional piece, in medium at least, were the exquisite drawings of artist Laura Banks. Two large life-size studies of traffic light crossing posts. Viewing them, you’re taken on a journey from the mundane subject matter of the high street, into something almost sublime. Then you are returned to really thinking about the location you are at, and which of the many traffic light posts in Winton are these two. I think there will always be a place for the dedication and skill shown in these drawings. You could spend a lot of time around this work. It really provokes you to look, not only at each mark and line on the paper but also the environment surrounding it. For me, this type of work carries within it an ideological statement about the value of spending time looking and actually seeing; building images with your eyes rather than the assumptions of your mind.
At the centre of the show stood a hexagon structure crudely made from gazebo polls and white sheets. Projecting outwards onto this were various lights and video feeds, but despite these it felt dormant. It was silent and fairly inactive, just another strange thing in a room of things. That is, until 3 artists entered it and the live performance began. Once they were enclosed inside it, and lights switch on you could see outlines and silhouettes of them setting up microphones, keyboards and other instruments and equipment. A live video feed started and sound began.
Artists: Ka Vi, Tom Daniel-Moon, Kieran Leonard
This work become the heart of the exhibition, an entrancing sound-scape being shaped and formed in the moment. As the light show permeated outwards from this curtained off stage, so did the build up of sound. It travelled out, met every other piece of artwork and audience member and continued up the few stairs and spilled out on the street.
A crowd gathered around the work and stared at the visual display, which flowed and cut between abstract patterns of colour and live views of the performers experimenting inside. This evolving sound-scape and imagery created a real presentness to the experience; moment to moment things happened and changed. The audience stood staring in at the DIY structure, captivated and immersed.
As a work of art it’s not one you can intellectualize. I think you might try to, I know I did. I considered various frames of reference to pin it down but gave this up when I realised it served no purpose and was detracting from actually enjoying the show. A friend asked what ‘it’ was, like I must had known because I was spending a long time walking around it. I replied ‘It’s a few lights, some projections and weird eerie sound’, and then shrugged my shoulders. Some experiences don’t translate well into words. Sound art maybe one of them. Like renowned art critic Clement Greenberg’s concept of medium specificity, if paintings should be flat and sculptures should fill 3 dimensional space, sound art should be loud and enveloping and this definitely was.
I think it was a really well balanced and considered exhibition. There were a few really poor pieces that could have been left out but, being badly made and uninteresting, they were very easy to ignore. There was only one thing I really disliked and that was the very few areas where white boards had been installed to show flat work. I think those should be left for the white cube. If the works couldn’t hang in the space then maybe they shouldn’t have been there, or if boards had to be used, why did they have to be white, why paint them at all?
As a whole, the show had a mixed feel. It felt radically different at different points, not quite one thing or the other. The exhibition somehow lives between being an edgy, subversive contemporary art show and a really nice community event full of people and interactions. In many ways the experience shared similarities to that of a concert, uniting people in common interest. However, on the other hand it was an experience full of art objects, strange ‘things’ and challenging encounters, a cold place where some humanity and feeling seems removed, but maybe that’s the context. After all, it is a space illuminated by strip lights and designed to store metal machines in.
Art in Bournemouth
It is definitely true to say Bournemouth has a strong community of young and talented creative people. I mean there’s the University and the Arts University College side by side, and this show features a tiny part of that group. However, its also true that there’s not really an established local art scene, art galleries or institutions beyond the Uni (excluding ArtSway out in the New Forest). From past experience I know it is an uphill struggle to get hold of space to put these sorts of creative and innovative events on, so hats off to all who worked on OUT OF SIGHT. Well done and may there be many more to come!
Writing this now, my mind is occupied by one clear thought, that in this town that has no visible art scene, things are in fact happening ,even if they are usually not well publicised and just out of sight.
Artist Featured in Out Of Sight:
Oliver Adams
Laura Banks
George Bills
Kate Browne
Kirsty Britten
Louise Byng
Emma Christie
Michael Compton
Tom Daniel-Moon
Jessica Durden
Pearl Fok
Marta Fjellheim
Oliver Flippance
Nathan Hackett
Sojung Kim
Antonios-Alexandros Konstantopoulos
Aditi Kulkarni
Kieran Leonard
Holly Macedo
Hollie Mackenzie
Maria Middtun
Chloe Minihane Slater
Issi Nash
Ashley Peevor
Denise Poote
Laurie Ramsell
Kate Rowland
Fiona Strimer
Alison Summers-Bell
Bana Toutounjee
Elizabeth Vazquez
Ka Vi
Andy Walders
Joella Wheatley
Susan Wicker
Alice Williams
————Related Things——————
