STOREY GALLERY & LITFEST 2010
The writing in this pamphlet is the result of a collaborative project between Storey Gallery and Litfest. The project involved a five week course, Writing from Art led by Elizabeth Burns, in which people specifically responded to Storey Gallery’s exhibition, What happens if …? What happens if ... ? is an exhibition of experimental objects and actions by artists and designers from the UK, Switzerland, Hungary, Israel, and the USA. The exhibition includes work by Simon Blackmore, Attila Csörg, Jerome Harrington, Michael Kontopoulos, Material Beliefs, Ariel Schlesinger, Roman Signer, Thomas Thwaites, Bill Woodrow and Stuart Walker. This exhibition is about experimentation and play. It brings together artists with long-established international reputations, alongside recent graduates. What they have in common is a mischievous curiousity about the world around us, and a do-it-yourself approach. They conduct witty low-tech experiments to uncover the enchantment hidden within everyday utilitarian objects. They play around with cause and effect, finding out what will happen if they subject familiar objects to unexpected treatments. They are speculators, investigators, sorcerers, and jokers. The artwork to which each piece in this booklet relates has not been identified, leaving open how tied the writing is to the visual stimulus. The connections may or may not be obvious, or you may find new connections unforeseen by the authors. Whichever way you read the writing, we hope you enjoy it.
What happens if ... ? is curated by Storey Gallery and presented in collaboration with the Experimentality programme of Lancaster University’s Institute for Advanced Studies.
Poise Grasp the orange, squishy, made of paper, a quasi-spherical polyhedron, a buckyball, a dodecawhatever ... take a knife, cut out a wedge and suck it, it tastes sweet or bitter or has a bland blank taste. Other fruit float in the air above their blowers, they move romantically, in soft oscillations rolling to preserve suspension that lofty feature, oh we have overcome falling; immortal though unbalanced. Place the wounded orange back the missing segment makes it useless it slips against the air-stream drops, bounces, breaks, a citric-Icarus, a pulpy mess, a thought no longer focused on.
David Borrott
Fixture When the world contracts to a vacant warehouse of concrete floors and blank walls, I dress plainly and refuse to wail; it is not my style to sing out sorrow. Unbowed yet uneasy being centre stage, I shift my attention beyond view. Necessity planes my rough edges, sands me smooth and varnishes me to a high gloss finish. Dents once more disguised, I face the other two. They are similarly pale, modestly presented, no visible cracks or joins, all clean lines. In a previous life I would have discounted them, termed their undemanding demeanour dull. Here the lighting is pitiless and they observe, from a kindly distance, my lines like grains of wood demarcating times I want to forget. They want me to learn to accept that while every smack to the small of the back means to topple us, we uphold our positions. Yet still I persist with calculation: measuring seconds, minutes, delays, reckoning the average lapse between each shadowy attack. My sums are undone by the kiss of catastrophe. With mechanical indifference she unfurls slowly; the gleaming curve of her lightly oiled head obscures the sureness of her tongue with which she urges her devil-clawed lover. Soldier-still, he kills time behind me. Sandie Donnelly
Paper Oranges float above the exhibit. If you hold out your hand it will gag the wind and they’ll crumple on the studio floor. But what if you did and nothing happened – if the fruit just hovered above your knuckles? You’ve been there before dipping your fingers in the air between magnets, struck by the emptiness.
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What Happens When ... the guardians close the gallery, go home and leave the power pulsing in the wires. There’s quiet. Computer-screens turn black, the wall-clock fails to tick, six white oranges stop spinning, fall back on airless fans. But it’s a heldbreath silence: ‘experiments’ begin to feel their freedom to experiment ...
That clever Mr Percy Wood who placed you close – he might have had the wit to let us touch – would you mind I’m older?
First, Signer’s screens light up, play variations on their videos, designed to drive him mad with the range of their invention. Schlesinger’s bicycle shrugs off its block – wobbles, steadies, deliriously weaves between the toaster project and the underfed inflatable, now working all eight pumps to swell its belly-space for Investments, Benefits and Dividends.
Attila Csorgo, father of the bouncing oranges, hears in Budapest, takes pity. He snakes an extra cable up behind the plinth, increases jets of air so that Victoria and Albert’s heads fly off, bounce like the paper fruit that seem their children. Tops blown, they smile, incline toward each other at the edges of their separate air-fountains; Albert lands a kiss on her right eye, Victoria achieves his chin. They subside, settle back on failing air-jets, their expressions subtly changed. The sculptor’s signature approves.
Not everything is bliss. Woodrow’s Five are in dispute: four want their robbed parts back, look fit to tear the fifth apart. The sunset glowers, its pistol starts up from the drawer, fires at the chandelier – its spoons spin wild and clatter. Under cover of the din, Mrs Signer’s spirit drifts out from her camera. She’s carrying big bundles of explosive – sick of extreme tedium, the endless repetition of her husband’s humorous ideas, the deafening ‘Eureka!’s in the night. She moves from screen to screen, deposits lethal heaps he’ll never check. She drops the largest on the ‘Punkt!’ sequence she thinks his best, hopes to see his bulk flung forward: a dead black punkt against white canvas. She’s been taught to persevere ... What’s that woman doing, Albert? Victoria’s head swivels on her marble neck. Mrs Signer fades discreetly; noise and all delinquent movement cease. The bicycle’s wheel halts inches from the bouncing oranges that play, radiating out from the royal plinth. Be careful! Three are missing – I don’t want to lose a fourth. She gazes round, asks Albert, Have you ever seen so much junk and clutter? The toaster pops a slice in protest but Victoria rants on. Though, I must commend some elegant exceptions. She smiles on the Bamboo and the Stone that, concentrating on their maintained Light, are unaware. Victoria grows plaintive: If only, Albert, you were really here and not still young as I dream you.
Night wears on for all, without undue controversy. In the morning, sunshine through the skylights dims electric bulbs – no guardian notices at first. The one who does, thinks an early-bird turned the power on before she came. All is as it was, except for faint cracks round the necks of Victoria and Albert. Pauline Keith
The World Beyond the Fairy Lights In the land where you can touch objects In the land where people smile In the land where people are confused In the land where art moves In the land where art makes a noise … bang, puff, ping. In the land of an inflatable that take hours to inflate In the land where videos convey puzzling clips In the land where the fly is the energy source In the land where the toaster is a symbol. In the land of floating oranges In the land of transformations In the land of hot flames In the land of melting rubber In the land of questions. Can you go through the door and into the world beyond the fairy lights and explore?
Closing the Door and Turning the Lights Off The door closes, the energy is disturbed. It lives asleep within the art, trapped within its own body, its own limits confined by the edges, the edges to finding out its true self. The door closes and the energy of the voices emerge. “Help me down” screams the chandelier confined to the ceiling. “Deflate me out of this rubber suit” bursts the tyres. “Put me back together again, I want to be whole” steams the iron. “Turn the air off now it’s getting really drafty” blows the oranges. “Is there a reason why I am made out of melted plastic? I’m no use to anyone!” questions the toaster. “OH YES ...” blows the word who is positioned in the centre of the room. “It is to totally confuse people, to make people smile and to be surreal.”
Anita Chamberlain
Experiment With Incidental Things Driers Light Handles Kettles Bicycle Bushes Strip Lighting Iron Walls Pump. [REORDER] Handles Pump Lighting Driers Bicycle Kettles Iron Bushes Walls Strip Light Lighting Walls. Add punctuation to taste. Is This An Experiment With Incidental Things?
David Riley
Wings Two tiny, papery wings cling to a rotating belt. The wings, two delicate wings of a fly cling to the sticky paper. The wings are so fragile they are barely noticed. Their veins run through glassy film as ink runs through water. The wings disappear as they are swallowed by the belt’s rotation. The wings belonged to the fly sitting in the power cell below. The wings’ journey breathes life into four bright little numbers. Their fly slowly fades into the clock and tells us the time.
Laura Haddick
charming
Carla Scarano
like static down stay still Stone and string
a
stem
the
Wires tying the Nutcracker Ariel and Roman Glass and Batteries Wires tying the Metronome Attila and Jerome Paper and Plastic Wires tying the am Radio Stuart and Bill Stone and Sunset Wires tying the Remote Control Thomas and Michael Copper and Air.
oozes bamboo
Wires
light
The door is shut, the light is off, no power to videos and computers. The watch hanging from the chandelier ticks the time and swings restlessly no more pretending to be a fake. The spoons change their positions, stiff-jointed. The black gun in sunset yawns, tired of being tough. And the TV set shakes its chains off and flaps like a butterfly.
gently casting its rays on my lines so
Sounds in the Gallery
Writing from Art is a collaboration between Storey Gallery and Litfest, and delivered as part of the Experimentality programme of Lancaster University’s Institute for Advanced Studies. Storey Gallery and Litfest are both based in The Storey Creative Industries Centre, Meeting House Lane, Lancaster, LA1 1TH, UK www.storeygallery.org.uk www.litfest.org What happens if ... ? exhibition dates 30 January – 3 April 2010
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