SEIZE catalogue

S

E Z I E

An exhibiton by:

Tom McGinn Lily Ackroyd Willoughby Ned Pooler Daisy Forster Will Turner Sarah Joy Ford Edward Hurst Eleanor Mason

Make/ Work with/ Work against/ Work through/ Provide/ Discuss/ Interrogate/ Challenge/ Inhabit/ Construct/ Deconstruct/ Explore/ Discover/ Manipulate/ Map/ Occupy/ Materialise/ Handle/ Control/ Alter/ Edit/ SEIZE ___ Seize the day. Seize the bull. By the horns. Seize space.

Seize materials. Seize forms.

Seize systems.

Seize the imagination.

Seize power. Seize control.

Take the castle.

Take what’s ours.

|sēz| verb -to take hold of suddenly and forcibly -to take (an opportunity or initiative) eagerly and decisively -to affect (someone) suddenly or acutely -to strongly appeal to or attract the imagination or attention

Contents: Foreword.................17 seize in pictures .......24 seize in words...........48 B/Hollow form............79 zombies and holograms...115 reclining figure........122 b on the brain..........131 making room.............137 ta(l)king images........145 group crit..............157 collection..............168

Foreword

This was an exhibition that embodied ambition. Through a potentially aggressive strategy, using the verb ‘to seize’ as our slogan, we sought to take one of the many abandoned spaces in Leeds city centre and transform it into a vibrant site of artistic exchange. The route was never going to be smooth, and we were met with challenges at every turn.

However through a strong group ethic and a commitment to producing a high-quality student exhibition that we could stand beside and defend, SEIZE became a reality.

This is a catalogue of that show. Although written from the perspective of just one of the 8 participating artists, Tom McGinn, it includes the voices of all those who exhibited.

All the single ladies (7x) Now put your hands up Up in the club, we just broke up I’m doing my own little thing you Decided to dip but now you wanna trip Cuz another brother noticed me I’m up on him, he up on me dont pay him any attention cuz i cried my tears, GAVE three good years Ya can’t be mad at me [Chorus] Cuz if you liked it then you should have put a ring on it If you liked it then you shoulda put a ring on it Don’t be mad once you see that he want it If you liked it then you shoulda put a ring on it wo oh ooh oh oh ooh oh oh ooh oh oh oh x2 (Chorus)Cuz if you liked it then you should have put a ring on it If you liked it then you shoulda put a ring on it Don’t be mad once you see that he want it If you liked it then you shoulda put a ring on it I got gloss on my lips, a man on my hips hold me tighter than my Dereon jeans acting up, drink in my cup I couldnt care less what you think I need no permission, did I mention Dont pay him any attention Cuz you had your turn But now you gonna learn What it really feels like to miss me (Chorus)

SEIZE: in pictures A pictorial essay

SEIZE: in words A discursive accompanying guide

A performance of appropriation/ Seizing the strategies of performance

The main identified theme of Space permeated the show like oil in a synthetic sponge. It was saturated with it and required just a gentle squeeze to remind us of its presence. Arranged over three floors of an abandoned club, the works couldn’t escape it.

In the highest corner of the building, Daisy Forster worked with the tools and materials of a builder, feigning architectural promise and undermining them through the use of polystyrene blocks within encasing layers of deceptive concrete. ‘Mid-sized city attempt’ referenced the materialisation of public space, but problematised this through a subversive use of materials that had been seized from the artist’s environment. Spotlighting, a technique provided by the venue and likewise seized by other artists in the show, gave the works a sense of the theatrical, as if these works, faltering in the face of their own structural inadequacies were petrified to the spot, about to perform a magic trick or comedy gag but unable to deliver or reach the punch line, leaving space for the viewer to arrive there alone and unaided.

A sense of the performative was equally present in the work of Lily Ackroyd- Willoughby, whose work shared Daisy’s designated space. Here

sat 5 chairs, stripped bare, in a state of repair. The pieces faced inwards around a spotlight, inviting staged action and implying spontaneous

exchanges. In contrast to Daisy’s work, despite these chairs’ apparent

fragility they fulfilled their function and were intended to be used as much as contemplated; an expression of the artist’s desire to destabilise the

standard sanctity of the art object in material culture and offer a space for the dialogues or ‘multi-logues’ of relational aesthetics to materialise. An

open-ended conversation with the public that was reflected in the works’ unfinished state.

Standard engagement with art objects was equally questioned in the work of Ned Pooler, whose work was displayed across the room. Here an oversized canvas stretched across two walls, covering the intervening gap of a ruined bar. Eschewing the need for a stretcher or canvas support, the artwork fulfilled a function- it concealed things beyond our repair, drawing attention to painting’s historical role as illusory deceiver and spatial organiser. It also expanded the notion of a static, quadrilateral painting by refusing to remain flat- presenting a more active, experiential vision and assuming a scale that miniaturised the spectator.

In this sense the work opened a space between two traditional poles of artistic practice- painting and sculpture- and attempted to propose an alternative inhabitation of this space, where images become compromised with the physicality of the support that holds them, and in turn the physicality of the support is emphasised with the presence of an image to be read, encouraging haptic optics (we return to this when we reach the basement). Again, theatrics seemed inescapable- the work was reminiscent of a set backdrop, or a hand-painted film poster billboard - pointing to painting’s expanded, global uses for functional, commercial needs as well as for its purely aesthetic capacity.

The strategy of interrogating painting’s status was partially echoed in Tom’s sculpture HI-Vis, also displayed on the top floor beneath a disco ball, positioned in order to bridge a potential gap between Daisy and Lily’s industrial, stripped-back aesthetic, and the more excessively sensuous and saccharine elements of Ned’s painting. Composed of seized scaffolding poles arranged in a self-supporting structure and adorned with bands of neon paint and coloured thread, the work achieved this to a certain degree, introducing explicit ideas of architectural construction before the approach to Daisy and Lily’s work. Employing paint found at neon raves and thread as decoration, it could be said to have ‘camped-up’ a signifier of the masculine-dominated field of construction, a sense especially heightened with the glitz from the disco ball. This work in the context of the others’ therefore subtly underlined gender positions, highlighting the endurance of the social constructs we still unwittingly reinforce through everyday living, and also serving as a foreword to the self-proclaimed masquerade of masculinity or androgyny in Daisy and Lily’s work.

Descending a flight of stairs led us to a view of Eleanor Mason’s work, which towered above the viewer and stamped a form of monumentality in the space despite it being composed of paper on a timber frame. This work was intended to be entered by the viewer. Ellie’s work both colonised the room in which it was erected and generated a space, a unique, almost spiritual experience for one individual at a time due to its dimensions. The paper had undergone a radical transformation, obliterated by the excessive, tessellated, screen-printed repetition of natural surfaces.

This room of the venue seemed to involve a dialogue around the repeated image, as Sarah-Joy’s work, tucked into a corner answered the non-specificity of Ellie’s work with a wallpaper featuring specific quotes, personal imagery and the face of Nelson Mandela.

Sarah’s work defied a single coherent meaning, yet through the inclusion of a multiplicity of references, the viewer felt almost obliged to attempt a construction of one. This seemed secondary however to the main focus of the installation in the window space - machine stitched books. Resembling pillows these works defied a logocentric assimilation of information- the text blurbs were rendered largely illegible due to the scrawling stitch- and another mode of knowledge, that of a childlike, tactile engagement with objects, was reinstated and encouraged in its place.

Both these works on the ground floor encouraged performative action on the part of the audience in relatively confined spaces. Demanding a direct physical engagement and intimacy with the art in this way, the work of these two female artists became resistant to a traditional, western, masculinist engagement with art, an engagement established and subtly questioned by Will Turner in the adjacent room...

Here painting’s roots in empirical observation were tested via a series of 5 paintings. Employing the stereotypically masculine provinces of mathematics and scientific methodology, the paintings depicted interior domestic space, constructed from raw measurement data derived from objects in reality, drawing attention to the constructedness of the painted image. Deploying perspectival geometry descended from the enlightenment, the paintings addressed the historical legacy of the canon of western painting, yet through the acknowledgement of inconsistencies and anomalies in the resultant paintings, a subtle critique of such rationalism was implied, through the presence of improbable orbs and black dots placed on the canvases’ surfaces, unsettling the standard relation between observer and observed.

Again, Tom’s work at this point provided a relevant counterpoint to discussion around the status of painting. Presented on the floor before Will’s work, ‘Paint your cave’ equally disrupted any sense of the canon, although in this instance through the application of paint onto a pre-existing object, operating in a similar manner to HI-Vis upstairs.

Paralleling Ned’s painting, the very materiality of painting was questioned as the image of parquet flooring (summoning the history of illusionism) was applied directly to a concrete paving slab seized from the local area, expanding the parameters of conventional or traditional painting methods. Interior met exterior, and painting as a surface became an agent in the metamorphosis of a found object appropriated as sculpture. Something that by definition should hang at eye level was turned into an object you stub your toe on whilst appreciating the technical abilities evidenced in Will’s paintings, a potential inconvenience whose weight is tangible, a tangible challenge to works that operate in a system they attempt to critique.

Oscillating therefore in the gap between something to be looked at and something to be experienced in space, with a firm interest in the role of tradition for contemporary practices, the work here prefigured Tom’s work in the basement below. (For more on my wokr refer to the essay ‘zombies and holograms’ further into this catalogue)

Let us turn to Edward Hurst’s work first. Hidden in a smaller room tucked around from the entrance to the main space of the Basement, Edward Hurst’s film ‘The Birth of the Brain’ played out. Generating a sound that built from a few random noises into a throbbing, pulsating, ritualistic chant that invaded the larger room, the film screened in this video suite made explicit the theme of performativity evidenced in the other works of the show. The source of the sound: a video patchwork of multiple perspectives, each offering a different viewpoint of the artist’s unique strain of performance. Each of these multiple perspectives related to the technology bestowed upon the documentor- photoman sought to document the performance through photography, cameraman from the roaming perspective of a hand-held camcorder. Lightman sought to illuminate the piece as he saw fit. 6 men in total, all in a room chasing an elusive ‘idea’. The bizarre banal performance of making soup invoked ideas of ritualistic, occult practice, and the piece confounded attempts at a linear reading despite a general logic to the sequencing of time. Entrancing and elusive itself the video collapsed the perception of art as a repository of absolute concrete meaning and through the injection of the unorthodox and the eccentric into the sacred space of the art event, the work resisted easy assimilation, displacing the locus of the artwork and gesturing towards multiplicity at the heart of any substantial reading. Edy used the strategy of performance as a tool to achieve this, expanding conventional systems that entrench the artwork as an object rooted in time and space.

In this context my own work in the Basement also performed. An icon from the music industry danced on an iconic form stolen from Early british Modernism, a form bearing a likeness to that of a Barbara Hepworth. Beside this work a form reminiscent of a Henry Moore reclining figure was subjected to an intermittent barrage of rapid strobe lighting and the calm benign banality of a fishtank.

In a way similar to the work of Edy and Sarah-Joy, the piece declined a straight-forward, logical reading, capitalising on the awe and intrigue inherent in the unexpected and unorthodox cinematic experience. It celebrated a multpilicity of approaches to understanding the object and image as phenomena, encompassing and collapsing together the two poles of haptic and optic apperception (the one dealing with the intimate sense of touch, the other with rational distanced sight).

Referring back to the work of Ned Pooler and Will Turner, the contrasting approaches to the image were potentially crystallised in these works, as a confusing and immersive play of light on a surface up close and within reach was moderated with a perspective from a distance. The inclusion of scrolling text added another layer of complexity to the work as subtitles fought for your attention.

The works also relied on symbolic synecdochic recognition of forms.

Synecdoche involves the use of a part to signify the greater whole- in this instance the Beyonce pop video invoked the whole community of pop culture and capitalist machinery, and the two sculptures summoned the legacy of purist modernism for pleasurable scrutiny.

The heavy use of symbolism in the work of both Moore and Hepworth cannot be ignored- a symbolism that bridged the gap between the two poles of surrealism and constructivism in the early 1900s. In a sense my work revived these once-avant-garde practices in order to expose their endurance and dilution (or perhaps growing strength) given today’s media-infiltrated cybernetic imposition on the whole of life.

Invoking the detournement or detourage of Duchamp, and Baudrillard’s notion of the simulacrum, the work argued for an equivalence of material whilst at the same time acknowleging the essential differences at the heart of these debates. Appearing to generate the images as if they were a reflection of internal desires and workings, the sculptures displayed a form of psychology. More than this, the created figures, both reclining and vertical, in turn operated as agents for the figuring of ideas.

Invoking the detournement or detourage of Duchamp, and Baudrillard’s notion of the simulacrum, the work argued for an equivalence of material whilst at the same time acknowleging the essential differences at the heart of these debates. Appearing to generate the images itself as if they were a reflection of internal desires and workings, the sculptures displayed a form of psychology.

More than this, the created of figures, both reclining and vertical in turn operated as agents for the figuring of ideas.

A sense of the ‘primitive’, or of a deeper sensuality to the forms was expanded by a fellow artist in the show, Daisy Forster, whose reading follows: This mischievous artist plays around with classical sculptures and popular culture to tease out the way in which we interpret information.

Highlighting the issues that modernist art movements placed upon art, as sanctimonious evidence for artistic genius, the hybridity within this artist’s sculpture humourously transforms the place of the art object for institutional art spaces Through the reference of African American cultures and formal qualities of specific sculptures that were heavily influenced by African works of art, the artist attempts to redefine notions of African diaspora, bringing it up to date with contemporary artistic practices. It attempts to disrupt the colonial binary that condones notions of Western supremacy over art from other cultures. Through this the artist insists upon a multilateral view, engaging with a notion of hybridity as a culturally enriching process, while forming a subtle critique on the use of African art work within western sculptural practices

In the basement in particular, perhaps due to the specific use of lighting, a sense was made apparent that the gallery and club, as public spaces, share similar agendas for a social or individual consumption of experience. Both club and gallery lay claims to the provision of opportunities for the loss and reaffirmation of the self, for a transcendence of the everyday. Transforming a former nightclub into a temporary gallery was an opportunity to explore this similarity and collapse the rigidity of interaction imposed by the construction that is the white cube.

In many ways the works in the show demonstrated a specific interest in the ways in which an audience or viewer can be engaged, either en mass before a spectacle or on individual terms. A preoccupation with the value of play can be detected in the approach to materials, forms, pre-existing systems and parameters that the artists have seized from the world around them, presented in an abandoned space that testifies to the vice of excess and the inevitable decline this entails for society as a whole, in order to project a more optimistic future..

Initially daunted by the scale and amount of floor space, we surprised ourselves with how substantially we managed to occupy the venue. Nevertheless the show was curated to allow pauses, the transitional spaces being left free of art and allowing space for the visitor, triggering thinking.

If anything, the art that was presented in SEIZE can be read as a series of responses to the real problem of how to generate space for oneself as a practising artist in an already stuffsaturated world. Forced into working in the interstices between distinctions or mining material from traditional approaches in order to problematise the foundations of this accumulation I feel strongly that our work successfully interrogated how we look at and assimilate the material world presented to us.

The interstices in fact appear to have much room for manouevre.

strange how my

you there yes you i am here you are there i am independent i stand alone i stand for you strange how my brothers and sisters echo through the cultural strata and now find meaning in multiple contexts i sit just as comfortably in ikea as i do here or in a cube of light i recognise no distinction (Have I lost my essence?) some say I am a vessel a vessel for an idea perhaps a stage prop?

I do play a role in a system of objects a family of forms

brothers and

sisters echo th

Still, now I have become the embodiment of all that is traditional and pure there is nothing subversive about me i am simultaneously old and modern conservative and avant-garde i unchange timeless one curve to the future and one to the past am i hollow? at least not shallow my inside is an outside of sorts my holes/apertures/openings/exits/orifices amount to a 0 your anthropomorphic gaze bores me

through the cul

tural strata a

perhaps we are only ever truly free when the choreography is not our own an immersive liberation from decision making I wish i could talk more to you about this but this plinth paralyses me I only speak when there are viewers to listen vocalising always invites doubt spoken words eat the ones that precede them //////////////////////////////////////////// i’m watching my weight i dont sit well here i may be reclining but to be honest I’m never comfortable reclining doesnt always mean at ease i feel like a puppet an animated cadaver resurrected a frankestein’s monster or a standard zombie generalised and unspecific identity sacrificed for sake of abstraction

and find new me

aning in multip

tiple contexts.

Have i lost my

essence? ther

e is nothing s

subversive abou

t Me.

zombies and holograms A speculative essay

Zombies and Holograms: dancing around ‘B/HOLLOW FORM’ also starring: ‘RECLINING FIGURE’ steps lead down to the basement.

The aperture of the narrow doorway looms and you cross its threshold to enter... a vacuum of dark.

Out of the darkness two beacons emerge to guide your focus, one vertical, one horizontal, reflecting the light generated by two projectors.

Space is uncertain. The plunge into darkness affects the judgement of distances and elicits caution from many.

You are drawn to B/ Hollow Form. Perhaps the most striking, this piece involves the projection of one icon onto another. A Barbara Hepworth plays host to a Beyoncé music video.

This pop music goddess grinds and flaunts her sexuality on the surface of the sculpture. Her image plays across the sculpture’s body. Stolid corporeality becomes directly embroiled in a battle with the animated workings of digital light. The materiality of both is compromised and underlined. Clean immaterial light tarnishes a ‘pure’ physical form.

Performing under the alias ‘Sasha Fierce’, the presence of Beyoncé complicates things. She is both herself and someone else in this video, liberated from ties to her individual ego yet rooted in it in order to venture forth into an exploration of hyper-strong, independent, sexy, dominant femininity. Can Barbara Hepworth’s status as a female artist be folded into this? Or vice versa? How can perceptions of a modern British sculptor from the mid 1900s, viewed as conservative, be affected by the aggressive predominance of a performer from contemporary history, whose likewise radical video at the time of release has now become stale, outmoded?

Two wrongs don’t make a right. The mathematical inaccuracy of this comment perpelexes me. (-x-=+) The gap of history between the two- more than half a century, is collapsed. They create a temporal vacuum.

A surrogate of temporality is injected into the piece with the looping of the music video. The piece is continually repeating itself. Rehearsing itself.

Acting. Performing

The sculptural work is presented through a process of deception or illusionism. Polystyrene and jesmonite masquerade as resistant materials: stone/wood/solid plaster? The sculpture employs the vernacular of the stage prop, rendering the static performative, or at least redolent with its own potential activation.

The Hepworth becomes a puppet, yet the language in which it speaks requires subtitles, it not being a native tongue. The voice is that of the author, thrown onto the sculpture, appearing to emerge from the object itself. The words that scroll across the bottom of the sculpture are as follows:

Perhaps true freedom only happens when the choreography is not our own An immersive liberation from decision-making I wish I could talk to you more about this but this plinth paralyzes me

Text that considers the power and limitations to be gained from the occlusion of a sense of self and the re-creation or (recreation) to be generated through the adoption of pre-existing material. Text that feigns access to higher truths.

Like an ethereal ghost, Beyonce’s holographic image dances on Hepworths hollow form, rendering it dynamic. Or underlining it’s petrification Cultural forms interract with forms of culture.

Collapsing the separation between high and low in a cultural spectrum and exploring the vibrance generated through the interface of the two. Enacting a similar erosion of the boundaries delineating the separate domains of the image and the object.

Eschewing modernist preoccupations with originality and authenticity, yet through the combination of two stolen artefacts, generating a ‘new’.

Dealing in the haptic versus the optic. Framing a bodily engagement with an object in space simultaneous to a detached hovering working of the optical organs.

The supposed absolute solidity of modernism is exposed as more than fragile- the sculpture has not been touched and yet it’s matter is radically transformed.

My own problematic relationship to modernism. Do I view it as an easy target?

A form of cannibalism is at work here.

The inclusion of the strobe is incongruous with regard to the sculpture, yet at home in the basement of a club, therefore performing an assimilation of the sculpture as a body like any other, drawing attention to its corporeality and immobility though in a different way to B. We stand and wait for that moment where the sculpture jerks or shifts its position to get comfortable on those hard black plinths. In the blink of an eye. A decapitated zombie.

computer generated and designed for a screen-saver.

Instead it has become figure in an interior, an element of interior design. A petrified corpse invoked from art history, re-animated by benign fish and false frozen coral. A closer look reveals the aquarium footage itself to be synthetic,

A reclining figure, yes, but Moore of an aquarium, interrupted at regular intervals by the aggression of a strobe light. Employing the same technique as ‘B/ Hollow Form’, yet with less explicit comparison of cultural strata, the work banalises and mocks the serious lofty pretensions implied with the resurrection of a modern British sculptural trope: the ‘figure in the landscape’.

RECLINING FIGURE

B On the Brain

A FaceBook Conversation with

Edward Hurst about our work in the Basement

Tom McGinn: Shall we talk a little bit about using the basement for our work in Seize? Although originally a practical decision (the darkness of the basement being suitable for our light-generating work) I think there were some interesting relationships that emerged during the show, both between our pieces and the context we placed them in. For example I noticed there was a rhythm to both of our pieces, but an absence of music in mine that was filled with the ritualistic chanting of yours (-how would you describe this sound?) I found it interesting that both our works re-introduced an element that was integral to the previous history of the basement (dancing figures, pulsating sound), but in distorted, ghostly forms. What do you think? Do you think our pieces worked together or against each other?

11:22 Edward Perseus Hurst: bit of both to be honest. an interesting part of the exhibition for me was how each work seized space, and therefore it became a bit of a land grab . A lack of light leads to a pollution of it the moment light enters a room. I felt like my film interrupted the rest of the room in a way I didn’t really want it to. I’d have been curious to see what the reaction to our room being lit, or being on a different floor would be. The room certainly implied a sort of seediness, which I’m not sure worked as well for me as it did for the implications of Beyonce on a feminine sculpture. The chanting was layered vocals on a loop pedal. But that’s not particularly critical . What I was aiming for was a consistent noise of a hm. But because of the technology I couldn’t get that and it had to repeat, making it more of a chant than a noise. Does that help at all? What do you think about the basement? Did you feel my work interfered with yours?

14:20 TM: Can you clarify what you mean about pollution and lack of light? Do u think that there was some form of territory exhibition politics at work then? I definitely thought they were both trying to command attention through different means, and the immediacy of mine (maybe even gimmick) versus the reward to be had from sustained attention with yours (the unfolding narrative) I think the works shared a sense of the absurd which to me seems very powerful subversive tool to short-circuit standard engagement with the world - although I suppose in an exhibition context people are more willing to suspend preconceptions.

Maybe our work would ‘work’ better in the contexts they appropriate and work through- this would be a museum for me, which again gets problematic. Your work put me in mind of Youtube culture and cookery channels, and for me that’s interesting. What’s an hm? I don’t think the sound of yours interfered as such, I think it added an extra dimension which suggested rituals and ceremonials that I was suggesting through the Hepworth and Moore and our standard engagement with the like. I think the basement was the most problematic and therefore the most interesting floor, I think the way we engaged with moving image and sound in turn engaged audiences on a range of levels. Considering Plato’s allegory of the cave might be an interesting way of interpreting how our works functioned in that space- do you agree?

14:45 EH: I’m not sure if I’d say politics, as for me that gives a sub text that we were deliberately trying to sabotage, however, a work of art is made to be looked at, so there is always a struggle for attention with purely visual works. With regards to light, it’s that our works completely defined what an audience saw, in a pitch black room you can only see where is darkest if there is some light to base it from - if that makes sense?

You need the light to appreciate the dark, but within the darkness all you can see is the light. A sort of humming noise, a drone where the sounds bounce of one another. I think you could use Plato’s cave if you wanted - all art is just a shadow of an idea and that’s heightened when there’s a cave like area. One of the things I do in my work is try to do something that defeats itself, i.e. doing the impossible or having an idea that is capturing an idea. I think there is an acceptance in both our works that we largely say nothing, but pretend to Only I feel your work encourages a trickery, by using loaded symbols like Beyonce and Hepworth’s female form.

The symbols are a focus of yours whereas within mine they’re more arbitrary. the choice of aesthetics in mine I think is a lot like Sarah Joy’s

15:29 TM: I’d have to agree with part of that. I definitely choose loaded elements of visual culture specifically in order to play with the baggage they have. I don’t know what you mean by trickery though. I place things intuitively (in a similar way to Sarah joy), partially aware of the significance their combination has (commenting on the idea of separate levels or spheres within 15:41 EH: I don’t mean a trickery in a culture, subverting canonical modes negative way, more in a playful way, that of viewing/engaging with art) yet the it implies something that whilst may be meanings that emerge or the connecthe case for some, is by no means the tions people make (for example about initial implication. Listening to your crit I the female form/the African origins of got the impression that there are heavy modernist sculptural investigations) are feminist themes apparent in B/Hollow ultimately down to viewers in that they but that maybe that’s not the primary become relevant or not for different intention? I hadn’t thought about the people. I do feel like we say important futility in that way, it’s interesting and things with our art though. Or at least I definitely agree with an anxiety, I’ve I feel like I do, none of us are assumfound out a lot this year about sincerity ing a purely nihilstic stance; we all have within art. Again with my use of arbiagendas. For example your acceptance trary, I mean that it appealed to me as of futility is a critical statement about a something to play with - perhaps arbiculture that demands commitment and trary isn’t the right word - rather than intentionality. Maybe there is an anxiety making a statement about the things I for some of us about saying something use. That’s what I was meaning to say profound or meaningful amongst the - that within your work you’ve chosen heavyweight texts that we have studied, things that people know about beyond an attitude that we both acknowledge the context of your work, Hepworth is but ultimately choose to ignore/ use a really well known artist as is Beyonce to our advantage. In the end I wanted and audiences will know, or for some mine to be an aesthetic spectacle that part of the meaning should know them, can be read on other levels. whereas within Birth of the Brain the symbols are made of a internal visual I don’t think there’s anything arbitrary language like the African aesthetic about your work which isn’t and wouldn’t be obvious to a casual observer.

18:34 TM: So I guess we both constructed our work more with a consideration for aesthetics but the one’s I’ve employed are more mass cultural or mainstream and the one’s you’ve used are more personal or idiosyncratic. Yes I was struck by how Daisy and Sarah’s feminist comments on the sculpture unearthed a whole can of worms, especially the parallel between the distortion of the female form on my sculpture and a de Kooning Woman. I’m not sure this amounted to a full feminist reading or whether they were just comments on objectification, reverence/idolatry and the predominance of the female in culture at large. But you’re right, gender wasn’t my primary interest with the sculpture. That’s not to say I don’t discourage such readings, if anything its great that they are present in the object without me thinking too much about it.

In the past I’ve had problems consciously illustrating theory through work and the results always feel dead. I think the presence of the other sculpture/projection (alternating aquarium/ strobe light projected onto Henry Moore-esque reclining figure) helped to diversify interpretation into more of a consideration of play and how the materiality of the image and the sculpture is transformed and potentially compromised with their combination. A significant part of your film for me was the presence of multiple technologies to capture a single event, this made me think of Benjamin’s Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction.

I think he’s wrong describing the decay of authentic aura in the context of your work- your performances only exist as a single videos and therefore I think their aural integrity is maintained, despite the original performance existing at a remove from the final product. In the context of my own I think the binary Benjamin sets up between contemplation and distraction is tested. I really like the fact that our work interrogates the binary of sincerity/ flippancy.

Making room, a space to think a conversation with

Sarah-Joy ford

Sarah: So we both include the female form in our work, how do you think this operates in each?

Tom: I think with mine it’s more the fact that it was not a deliberate choosing of the female form, but more choosing an element of popular culture. It’s interesting that the first thing that came to mind happened to be the female form.

Sarah Joy: Yeah, well she is the icon of the music industry, I don’t think it would be possible to achieve the same thing with men, as they are not so much of an aesthetic object Tom: It would have been a completely different piece if I put men in trunks dancing, there isn’t any part of pop culture that features the sexualised male, apart from porn and also gay culture SJ: And then it always becomes…marginalised.

TM: So the piece is mainstream, if it was men it would have become a gay piece SJ: I think it’s interesting because you did the complete opposite of me, because you haven’t made the personal choice TM: It was almost like the choice was divorced from any thought process, it was unthinking SJ: And the choice of Beyoncé is relevant, not only an icon now, but the icon of our childhood Tom: Also the icon of Barbara Hepworth in art, and how the two are different, that was the point I was initially trying to make. But it makes different points without me trying to make them. Barbara Hepworth was the first female sculptor in Britain to reach that height of recognition SJ: It’s almost two different versions of success, although Beyoncé uses her sexuality to gain success but maybe Hepworth sacrificed something else…

TM: But you have to remember Hepworth was selling her female sensuality, her relationship to her material and her fluid relationship to work and life. Although that said, she was already in a privileged position. Perhaps by putting the two together, parallels are drawn which don’t exist. In a similar way with your work there’s this hyper-sexualised girl next to Nelson Mandela SJ: I guess we both almost unthinkingly draw upon similar issues, one from the mainstream and one from the marginalised. Yours is a mass symbol TM: It’s a sign. Barthes SJ: But the female form is only a little part of my work, the female is discussed through other ways. The one image of the girl isn’t about pageants…

TM: I know, I read it almost as representing the trash you’re surrounded with when you’re growing up, both benign and malevolent, and that she was lost in this pool. It was almost as if the girl was you, and you identify with her SJ: I do. It’s reflective of that fear I was discussing with regard to a self-portrait. To me she’s an exaggerated version of what we see every day, heightened in child beauty pageants and the way we dress our children TM: the ing es,

For her it’s an unthinking choice whereas you are almost complete opposite. You’re constantly asking why am I dothis, what does this mean to me, and making these choicwhereas she is just blind

SJ: I’m trying to decide the difference between being blind and questioning it. Is it enough? I feel that’s all my work has managed to do. There is no answer so we’re just flagging things up TM: I think that we use a technique with them though, so we are in a sense making a statement through our choice of mediums- interactive textiles and video sculpture.

SJ: We both use loaded mediums and forms, we both work through something that has been canonised in a very specific way, with specific connotations attached to them throughout history and we are engaging with those histories TM: We are trying to tease something out SJ: It seems like the possibilities of textile art stop with a contrast. I want to tease something out that’s more substantial than a simple dichotomy, and discuss something more complex without it just being about the fact that it’s textile art. I wanted to see if I could take the symbol of oppression and reappropriate the medium.

TM: Do you think I was trying to flatly set out to explode the idea of a Hepworth as a stand alone, static sculpture? I didn’t want people to view it as a complete attempt to subvert, more trying to emphasise parts and expand the possibilities SJ: I think it did both. How far do you think that these works of ours are ‘original’?

TM: It comes back to this idea of appropriation, we are taking things from disparate sources but what we do with them is original.

SJ: We all work from within our cultural frames of reference.

Artists have a world of objects to choose from and we take the bits we’re interested in and create something new.

TM: It’s interesting that the artists I’m using- Henry Moore and Hepworth- were viewed as being original, or originators of new formal possibilities in art. They were trying to create forms that had never been made before, in that modernist spirit of authenticity and artistic genius. They were trying to reach something impossible however, as they were inevitably influenced by the things around them, nothing is independent.

SJ: Nothing is created without some form of knowledge TM: I was intentionally trying to be unoriginal with the forms I made. I was choosing forms that were standard and recognisable from the canon of Modern British sculpture. I guess you were looking for more esoteric or personal things, taking quotes from a little heard-of book “The Art of Marriage” for example…which is perhaps political too.

SJ: It’s personal and political; you can’t really separate the two. That’s what I’m trying to say, you’re not a purely individual person, you subscribe to a set of beliefs belonging to a wider community, you can’t separate yourself from your politics, [Your idea of how things ought to be in the world] or your politics from your art. Take the example of views of women. That’s what my work started as, looking at what it means to be a woman artist, then I realised you can’t look at that in isolation, and that’s when all these things came together. You can’t really discuss contemporary art in terms of originality.

TM: But the question is, how far should we be aware of what this appropriation means? The Moore reclining nude, abstracted yet recognisable as human, has, for example, loads of Freudian analysis that it generated, and with the distorted projection of Beyoncé’s alter-ego, am I making a connection? Or should we care? Is our job just to throw things together, and to allow the onlooker space in which to make connections and test their standard, unthinking interaction with the world. Should we be hyper-conscious of what we are doing? I think that limits it.

SJ: I know what you mean, if you are collecting things in a certain way and saying something really specific, you might as well just write it on a piece of paper.

TM: Exactly, the way you produce meaning is not through didactics SJ: There needs to be space for the individual to perform a genesis of thoughts, ideas, and links TM: Do you think we acheived this open space?

SJ: It’s an idea we’re both working through.

Ta(l)king images A conversation with Ned Pooler

Tom: So you say that your images aren’t stolen Ned: No because I take them myself. Apart from maybe the one from the film Tom: That’s the predominant one in your painting isn’t it?

Ned: Yeah Tom: So it’s quite interesting that this is from another element of culture Ned: Technically I’ve stolen it but I’ve made it my own; one by taking the image myself but also two by painting it differently from the actual photograph Tom: Ok, so you’ve almost taken liberties with it, would you say?

Ned: I’ve stolen it but made it my own, starting with taking a picture with a camera, so not just ‘screen-grabbing’ it Tom: So would you say that’s more of an intervention than the processes I employ?

Ned: Yeah because, the camera doesn’t capture it faithfully Tom: That almost makes it more authentic because even though you’re technically stealing, it’s conducted from a perspective.

I think that’s interesting Ned: What do you mean by authentic?

Tom: In that mine is inauthentic because the artist isn’t as integral to it Ned: Yeah it makes sense cause you haven’t changed the thing itself, you’re changing it by projecting it Tom: The moment of interruption for the image occurs at the moment it interacts with the sculpture whereas I suppose yours goes throughNed: a sequence of changes that are all initiated, well not initiated..

Tom: Derived from the image, is that what you mean?

Ned: Well no, they’re all decided by me, it’s my decision; it’s my actions that are changing it Tom: Ok so it’s all rooted in your artistic agency Ned: Yeah Tom: Ok, so your approach is sort of stealing- but not Ned: Well perhaps with the main image. It’s funny because I started the project thinking ‘all the images are my own’, I don’t take any. But then I’ve realised through other people’s comments the extent to which I use things that someone else

Ned: As artists you mean?

Tom: Yeah butNed: Oh but even just as people Tom: Yeah, cause we’re living in a hyper medialised [sic] world, so I think ours is both a statement about that or perhaps a reflection, we’re both working through the idea of ownership. For example when you’re watching a film, it almost becomes yours as you’re watching it Ned: Yeah it’s like a book as well Tom: But with less freedom Ned: Less freedom than a film the film because it’s visually there for you whereas a book isn’t, but you still interpret– it’s still subconscious, you don’t decide how you want to interpret…

Tom: No Ned: But it can still be different from how the director intended you to view it Tom: So do you see yourself when you’re composing your paintings as a cinematographer of sorts?

Ned: (Pause) No…well, with this painting…

Tom: It was like a backdrop Ned: Yeah Tom: I don’t think enough was made of that in the group crit Ned: Yeah Tom: But there’s a massive sense of cinema in the thing, it is cinema almost. You’ve edited and cut things which is cinematic, but you’ve done it with paint, so it’s not like you’re just simply painting it Ned: Well this is probably the first time I’ve moved into working like a real painter, because I never did composition before Tom: What do you mean ‘like a painter’? Do you mean making lots of preparatory studies?

Ned: Well I didn’t do lots of studies, but I did some, which I’ve never done before Tom: Do you think that was almost a necessary technique to grasp the scale of it?

Ned: Yeah it was a way to grasp how I was going to sort it out, but I sorted it out in my head more than through drawing Tom: So you don’t normally use that approach you start straight away?

Ned: Yeah I just do it Tom: So perhaps it was just a response to the scale of it, I think with bigger things you always take your time with them more and plan, or you consider it more because it’s such a big thing, you don’t want it to fuck up

Ned: Yeah Tom: I think that’s relevant. We both use stolen images, I use stolen moving images. What do you think the differences are, apart from the fact that mine’s moving and yours is static?

There’s a similarity in that we both distort the images Ned: Yeah and they’re both pop culture references, because Indiana Jones at the time was this incredibly social film that everyone saw, it was like Star Wars Tom: Ok you’re taking it from history too Ned: Yeah, so I’m going back Tom: That’s interesting because it shows that as artists we have the freedom to choose from any period Ned: But then, well that video isn’t even current, it’s old Tom: Oh yeah the single ladies Ned: So technicallyTom: It’s like two years old, three years old? How old is it?

Ned: Quite old Tom: But there are different levels of taking from the past, that’s interesting Ned: But then I’d say that in the music industry its more prominent, the time scale isTom: Accelerated Ned: Accelerated yeah. People say ‘Oh, I don’t want to listen to this song anymore, it’s two weeks old.’

Tom: With the film you’re taking a snapshot…

Ned: I’m taking it out of context, completely and so are you because you’re removing the sound and then distorting it again Tom: So we’re both divorcing the image from what made it what it is, you’re stopping it from being a series of images and I’m stopping mine from having sound Ned: But you cut yours aswell, didn’t you? You’ve taken sections out of the video and rearranged it Tom: I’ve looped bits and added things in Ned: Yeah Tom: I suppose that’s where my authorial voice comes in, with the ‘lyrics’ as well Ned: Yeah, technically you have changed it because you’ve changed the sequence, that’s similar to when I take the picture, when you take the video, you edit it and you move it about.

Tom: Yeah, I didn’t think about that actually. I often forget that I’ve put the text in. So we both distort the images through the way we transfer the image, or you could say the end product disrupts the integrity of the image. What do you think is the importance of that? Because I think there’s something in that, we’re not just doing it, is yours just an effect like a by-product or are you trying to say something with it?

Ned: What do you mean, by taking that particular scene?

Tom: No, you know where her face gets distorted by the way it was hung, was that intentional?

Ned: I didn’t want it to happen, but then I realised that I wanted to make a point of it and that I was distorting her face. I was getting a bit too precious over it at first Tom: Ok so for you it’s not so much a strategy to question things, but more a by-product. Or has it become something as a result?

Ned: I think it’s become something, but I don’t think people realise it because it’s a painting Tom: So you think people still read it as a flat thing?

Ned: No, I do think people read into distortion, you mentioned earlier Daisy pointing out that you’re distorting a woman’s face and her body, I don’t think people read that into mine though as much because it’s a painting Tom: I suppose also it’s just her face isn’t it, she’s clothed and she’s not sexualised at all Ned: Well no, she is! She’s got a massive cleavage, Emma Rushton pointed that out straight away Tom: Really?!

Ned: She said ‘You’ve painted her super seventies, with really big curly hair.’ She said ‘You’ve put this massive cleavage on her.’ and I said ‘Well actually she had a big cleavage before.’

But I think I’ve accentuated it without realising Tom: Hmm Ned: So I don’t know what that’s supposed to be saying Tom: Well it’s probably not supposed to be saying anything Ned: But when I was painting it I thought ‘I do want to beautify her.’

Tom: Ah ok, that’s interesting because I thought she was really ugly!

Ned: Really?!

Tom: Yeah, her face has a little bit of the grotesque to it, but I guess it’s both really Ned: Yeah it’s both because when you see her how she’s supposed to be, you can find an angle if you stand in the right place where she is not distorted Tom: I think the colours you’ve put in her face don’t help, she’s not got a smooth complexion Ned: No Tom: You’ve painted it patchy Ned: Yeah, well that’s also the material I’m painting on. But when I was painting her, I didn’t paint exactly from the woman in the photograph I took, her nose is bigger and she’s kind of got a big chin

Tom: It’s odd because you’ve obviously played around with her aesthetically like a surgeon, you haven’t stuck to the original Ned: No Tom: Ok so do you think with our approach to images we’re trying to undermine them or are we trying to do something more positive with them? Such as liberate them from what they used to be Ned: I think I’m definitively trying to take them, but I don’t know whether I’d say liberate. I’m trying to distance them from what they were Tom: That is something programmatic though because you’re wanting to do something other than purely aesthetic with it Ned: But then I’m not trying to get rid of its original connotations at the same time, I almost want people to experience the uncanny, recognise the images and second-guess themselves Tom: What do you mean?

Ned: I want people look at the painting andTom: For it to be recognisable?

Ned: Yeah recognisable but not like for like Tom: No, well I don’t mean in terms of the way you alter them, I mean in the way you paint it on a canvas that’s not stretched conventionally- do you think you’re trying to liberate a painting from it’s conventional notions of itself?

Ned: Yeah definitely Tom: But do you think your liberation of painting is also a liberation of images, in that your approach to painting can equally be applied to images. I mean you could print off a photograph and have it chemically transferred onto fabric and you could play with that instead?

Ned: Yeah probably Tom: But would you be happy with that, or is there something in painting that you prefer? Because I personally would be satisfied taking a photograph and distorting it,, altering it on Photoshop and then hanging it, what is it about painting that you need?

Ned: Well I don’t have to paint. I wanted to start painting again this year because I saw it as my route back in, in that I go back to painting when I don’t know what else to do Tom: That’s interesting in that you’ve gone back to something that’s comfortable and done something uncomfortable with it, you’re pushing it Ned: Yeah I didn’t want to go back to something I’d done before, I didn’t want it to be ‘normal’ I wanted to go forward with the idea that ‘I’m going to paint as big as I can and change it, and I’m not going to paint it in a conventional way’ because I wanted to create something new and interesting, something that might not have been seen before

Tom: Ok so that is quite a modernistNed: Radical I suppose, well not very radical Tom: Almost a modernist desire to do something new Ned: Yeah Tom: Which is interesting when you look at how I’m appropriating images and objects that attempted to do just that and now they’ve become so commonplace Ned: You’re doing it with both, you’re stealing images but then also the objects you’re projecting the images onto, arte derivative as well, but then you’re still changing them Tom: Oh but actually if you think about it, the way I produce and then use my sculptures parallels your approach to painting Ned: Yeah Tom: Because we’re both taking the original then deviating from it to suit our own intentions. And then things happen outside of our intention, according to the way things come into being Ned: Yeah exactly Tom: What was I saying before about modernist intent?

Ned: Oh how I was being a bit radical and modernist in my desire to step away from the ‘norm’ of painting Tom: And how both elements I have appropriated intended to do that, to almost be the epitome of the avant-garde, but how they have since become almost static and tired Ned: Yeah it’s strange you’re trying to do something new withTom: something old Ned: But then again I’m doing the same thing- painting has a vast history. And similarly I’m trying to create something new.

Tom: So they’re both historically rooted, if you link it back to the show, and the theme of seizing space, I guess we’re both trying to find space for ourselves amongst a saturated market of positions Ned: Trying to make a new realm for it Tom: Yeah trying to make a space for our making in an expanded field, find space for ourselves, our own little niche

“It’s about thinking” Group crit discussion of Tom’s work (Blind crit followed by questions and discussion with the artist)

Sarah: It’s brightly coloured, the end Lily: We’ve got the scaffolding and the slab, what shall we start with..

Sarah: So in the basement…

Daisy: there are big sculptures…

Sarah: I thought it was so interesting the artist only chose to put video on one of them, really trying to say something there and I’d love to know what...

[Laughter] Tom: Bitching aside…

Lily: I think it took on art history Will: yeah definitely Daisy: Oh my god it looked amazing Lily: and the idea of upper and lower culture Sarah: Yeah. It’s very relevant, because of the tour, at the moment Ned: AHAHAHA Sarah: everyone’s talking about it Ned: ahahaa Sarah: It’s bang on contemporary. Beyoncé’s tour at the moment, everyone’s talking about it Lily: It’s very, whatdoyoucallit, …zeitgeisty Daisy: What does that mean?

Lily: Of the moment. Is Beyoncé playing in Leeds?

Sarah: yeah it’s very Zeitgeist, I think. I mean it’s everywhere isn’t it, there can’t be one person in this room who hasn’t spotted Beyoncé on their news feed Ned: BEYONCE IS EVERYWHERE Tom: Ubiquitous Lily: Thankyou Ned Will: Shut up, Tom Ned: H&M adverts on busstops Daisy: I want the yellow bikini she’s wearing Ned: Only 8 pounds Daisy: I know, bargain Sarah: It doesn’t have any support…

Will: I’d like to say this isn’t relevant but I think this is entirely relevant Lily: It’s interesting ‘cos this is low culture Will: yeah Sarah: Yeah, Low culture High Culture Lily: I think, since I’ve been reading quite a lot of Greenberg at the moment, I think that it’s the difference between…

Will: It’s a sin!

Lily: …avant garde and kitsch Sarah: Yeeah Lily: ‘Cos kitsch is low culture, it’s like, or what he says is, its like, for the lower cultures, they haven’t like got the education or resources to understand…

Sarah: Eurgh, Greenberg sounds like a dick Lily: He is. And there’s the avant-garde profound, purist art and the purist art is, you know, pure. So it’ s like, yeah Sarah: But it is local, I mean like the Barbara Hepworth, it’s all very close to home. Barbara Hepworth…

Will: and Henry Moore Sarah: It’s like the inescapable culture, yeah Henry Moore too.

You’ve drawn upon local and trans-continental things. I guess.

That’s interesting though..

Lily: But is…

Sarah: but then again I guess the global, Barbara Hepworth isn’t but Henry Moore…

Lily: But Barbara Hepworth and Henry Moore aren’t part of the modernist movement Sarah: They’re postmodernist aren’t they?

Lily: Yeah cos modernism was only in America, pretty much Daisy: But there was that sense of modernism there though that you got from those works at least.

Lily: But if you’re talking about Modernist, modernist only means painting, they hated sculpture…

Ned: You can have postmodernist sculpture Lily: Post-modernist sculpture yeah, Daisy: But post-modernist is quite different to modernist.

Lily: yeah it’s a complete break away from it…

Ned: Well hang on, if you can have post-modern sculpture, surely you can have modern sculpture Lily: No, because modern, well you can, but it only… in America, modernism was painting, and sculpture was seen as secondary and not as important Daisy: But I think aside from that one fact, the same things that people thought about painting can be applied to sculpture, obviously there’s contradictory elements in there.

Lily: I think Tom’s work is a reversal of Modernism anyway, I think what it is, is nothing to do with modernism.

Daisy: My issue for talking about modernism in that sense is the use of a black female…

Lily: Like de Kooning’s Will: There’s also, yeah, I mean the Henry Moore sculptures are all meant to be bodies, in a landscape Lily: and then you’ve got Barbara Hepworth, a woman artist

Daisy: And also, I read somewhere that Henry Moore was inspired by primitive art, which is again a return to the black woman Will: shaking her booty Lily: hmm Sarah: I liked the words, the text that came up Will: I can’t remember them, what were they Sarah: I can’t remember what they were but I quite liked that there were words, it kind of maybe said something about…maybe they suggested language, a message Ned: I can remember one of them, it’s like “I wish I could talk but this plinth paralyzes me” Tom: *shaking head* Will: go on tom Sarah: Oh are they your words? I thought they were like, just lyrics Tom: Shall I say the words Sarah: Say them all tom Will: Nothing else Tom: Perhaps true freedom only happens when the choreography is not our own Sarah: *whispers* It’s like its trying to say something but its not Tom: An immersive liberation from decision-making.

I wish I could talk more to you about this but this plinth paralyzes me Lily: Is that like, the first two were deep, you were drawing upon things that had already been created Will: The last one, I can’t remember the first two lines…

Sarah: The last one seems very direct Will: the last one though is very much the art’s voice, like directly probably, the art’s voice Sarah: Would someone without a lot of understanding of the context of the art world… I think we can’t understand what that means to a general person because we talk so much about plinths. What’s interesting is if someone doesn’t, who hasn’t thought about plinths or the way you curate an exhibition what that means to them Daisy: But there’s this language which museums and art galleries use, as soon as you put something on a plinth, it becomes a piece of art Sarah: Yeah but I don’t think the majority of people know about that Lily: A lot of people would say it’s unusual to project a filmonto a piece of sculpture. And the kind of people who are drawn to an art gallery, they’re not going to be the person off the street who has no idea.

They’re going to have a prior knowledge, they’re going to recognise the Henry Moore reference, and they’re probably going to know it’s a Barbara Hepworth, or at least recognise the forms from elsewhere Ned: And they’re going to know, I mean it’s pretty well known even to members of the general public who don’t go to art galleries, that by raising something, its raising its status.

[Pause] Lily: should we talk about the other two pieces before questions?

Daisy: I think the other two pieces are something quite different.

Ned: Let’s do questions about the pieces in the basement before we move on.

Sarah: Ok so they’re similar kinds of sculptures to pre-existing sculptures, but then why choose…did you have a message on the Fish?

Lily: Yeah what was projected on the Henry Moore?

Ellie: It was the aquarium one Lily: was that all?

Tom: and the strobe light Will: that one’s more experiential and…

Sarah: the two sculptures, are they trying to do something different, as in two completely separate things, or…does the image hold a lot of the value or is it more the concept of projecting onto it or the actual images themselves that carry the most weight?

Tom: Which question?

Sarah: Is it about the way you’ve shown it, as in the technique of projection onto sculpture, or is it more about the … oh I guess it’s about the relationship between the two, but I don’t understand why the images are so far apart like that, I don’t know why on the one hand an aquarium and a strobe, and on the other a video of Beyoncé. Tom: They’re both sort of experiments using the same type of tec hnique.

Will: For me that draws attention to the fact that the other one is being very direct. The other one for me has a point that its making, or it feels like it does, but obviously there’s an extension of all sorts of different things that are the same, but the fact that the other one is so removed from that and just is as opposed to it speaking, it draws attention to the fact that the other one is speaking more. There’s a sort of reflective subversion of his work, like one subverts the other, if that makes sense.

Sarah: Do you think the relationship between the two is important Tom? Tom: You mean why did I not just show one?

Sarah: Yeah why did you not just put one in, ‘cos If you’re going to put more than one thing in that’s similar they’ve got to have a relationship haven’t they. Or do they? I don’t know Daisy: I think as soon as you put two things next to each other it forces a comparison Sarah: Do you think that’s critical? Putting both of them in? Do you think that was a critical assessment of what you were including in the show? Did you think critically about it?

Tom: I guess in a similar way to yours I just put what I’d done in, but I don’t really know if I have a direct point I was trying to make through the inclusion of both. I mean I always like to work on more than one thing and in a similar way I wanted the viewer to be distracted between the two, I wanted you to have to negotiate two. You couldn’t have just stood there and watched one.

Will: I think that would have been much less successful Tom: Thankyou Will Will: I think it’s really important the fact that it’s not making a direct point is the point, that’s what I meant by subverting. I think it’s much more successful with that sort of complete variety and plurality.

Ned: I think it’s quite good that the other one didn’t talk, because then it made you focus on the one that did talk, but then it also made you think why is the other one not talking.

Tom: I wanted in a way to make you look at sculpture as inherently mute Ned: Yeah Will: That was very much heightened or subverted by Edy’s sound Ellie: What do you mean by the sculpture was mute? I know you mean there were no words on it, but…

Tom: I wanted you to realise that actually there’s no… [Despite a concreteness to an historicised sculptural object there is less explicit story telling, as there is with most film and certain photography and painting, that rely on optical processing over haptic engagement with things as bodies in space] Lily: Do you mean sculpture or do you mean in an art historical sense, ‘cos the sculpture’s are Barbara Hepworth and Henry Moore, so do you think that Barbara Hepworth is mute, or the history that it fits into is mute? Saying the sculpture is mute, people don’t usually consider the sculpture to have a voice, it’s usually the artist who projects onto the sculpture, and then the audience projects onto that, and everyone’s just circling around this object, but the object doesn’t speak out.

Tom: So I’m doing the opposite by literally projecting a voice?

Lily: Yeah, you’re giving it a voice but then making one ‘mute’.

Ned: So then the whole concept of sculpture is implied as being mute Lily: Not even just the concept, the whole system of how you interact with art, because you even copied a sculpture from a canonical artist, so you’re already deflecting off your own personal artistic intention, so I think you’re commenting upon a whole system of looking at art and thinking about art, in terms of canons and artists and sculptures and the audience.

Daisy: I think everyone here works on some level with this idea of subverting canonical modes of art history, I think in virtually every conversation it’s come up Will: Yeah definitely Daisy: So I think everyone’s trying to get away from an established mode of thinking and making, and a very specific way of looking at work.

Will: So it’s a deconstruction Lily: We’re looking at looking, just more specifically with how we look at art and exhibitions, and ourselves Daisy: I think it’s interesting as this is the way our course has made us think Sarah: YEAH. Our art history is like written all over everything we make Tom: But I though mine was almost like an inversion of that, it’s like someone’s asked me to choose a sculpture and I’ve chosen the first one that’s popped into my head – Henry Moore, Hepworth, like a typical epitome of how high art enters the mainstream consciousness Will: I have a question Tom, Do you think, that the conversations and everything that’s been provoked by your work is subverted by the fact that the seize space is not an institution space. So if those sculptures we’re in like an art gallery, would it work better?

Daisy: I agree Sarah: Hmm Tom: In a sense Lily: I think the seize space helps the work… (club context) Will: I think it’s great, the physical aspect of it…

Tom: I think I’ve done the opposite…

Lily: But I think the fact that it’s not a gallery, helps it because you’re pointing at looking at it, and then the space points at looking at a white cube space, again through a presence of absence Tom: If anything, the projections I chose would have been incongruous in a gallery space, I’ve revived those from the space, left them there and instead inserted the sculptures

Lily: Yeah you’d expect to find Beyoncé in the basement of the club Sarah: And the strobe light…

Will: That’s true Ned: Yeah people dancing to Beyoncé Will: That’s very true, so you are still in a dialogue with the institution but it’s very different Sarah: On a less deep level, I think the movement separated from the music and the sound was really interesting to isolate the movement of the body. It was her dancing to something you couldn’t hear Lily: You could hear Edy’s sound. If it was silent, completely, do you think that would’ve changed it?

Ned: Definitely Will: I was in the pub the other day and they had the music channels on but the sound wasn’t playing and they just had the subtitles, and it was just so odd Ned: It makes you focus on the words Tom: Hmm. People on the night we saying to me, “I’ve just realised how overtly sexualised she is” Sarah: I suppose because the music is the excuse to do that, and you’ve removed the reason, and now it is just a woman, dancing around in a bikini, and because you’ve taken away the reason why and the unthinking social construction that produces it, it makes you take a step back because that’s not the way you’re used to looking at it Daisy: I think having the fish, it was almost like, comparing fish in tank, there to be looked at, to Beyoncé, turning them both into a spectacle, just to be looked at for pleasure… Looking at your work I’m caught between two, I don’t know, like, “shit, am I meant to be thinking Tom is saying something really mean about women’s bodies here” or am I like “Is Tom being really clever with his use of Beyoncé” and like, sort of, are you eliciting that way of looking at spectacles or are you problematising them and that way of looking with having objects just to be looked at.

Will: This goes back to that sort of Sarah’s whole issue with being hypocritical. I think everyone is always hypocritical Daisy: Oh god yeah Tom: So do you think I’m being either affirmative or critical you mean?

Lily: Well yeah you’re both cos otherwise it’d be boring Daisy: Yeah but then at the same time I don’t think you’re really…

Will: I don’t think you can escape being hypocritical, just by the fact of being…

Lily: I don’t think you have to struggle all the time with the idea of keeping to your self-designated principles Daisy: But then at the same time I don’t think you need to know if you’re being one or the other or both. I think highlighting something as an issue can be just as successful as trying to come up with an answer.

Lily: Mmm Daisy: Like I find with my own work that when I try to answer something it becomes so contrived, but just by highlighting things …

Tom: Posing a question Sarah: Yeah Daisy: It’s more successful.

Sarah: I like that Will: That’s sort of like essay writing then isn’t it, if you’re sort of trying to answer something you might as well write an essay Sarah: It’s nice, maybe it’s because we’re older and we’ve realised art doesn’t have the answers. When you’re younger you look at a painting and you’re conditioned to think, oh what does it mean? I think now we are so conditioned out of that. But then have we just conditioned ourselves into another condition Daisy: I don’t think we are conditioned Sarah: Do you know what I mean?

Will: So meta!

Tom: Because we’ve got more of an insight, we can spot the presence of conditioning Sarah: I think we’ve all got Leeds Fine art conditioning Daisy: Well no because when I look at a piece of work as it’s presented on art history course I feel so insignificant, well not insignificant, but I feel so stupid because I don’t like pinning my work down to one reading, because my work doesn’t mean any one thing, I just make things. But then talking about painting I think we are trained to analyse images and derive meaning, we cant but help finding out in a certain sense these meanings.

Lily: That’s why I think art is so educative and why it’s so important, not because it has answers, but the very fact that it doesn’t have answers Sarah: It makes you search.

Lily: It makes you think, and that’s why I think the actual true meaning of art, what it is perhaps, or its aim, is not a linear transferral of knowledge from artist to audience, its about stopping and thinking, however deep that may be. To explode the way out of everyday concerns. There is no formula or result. It explodes the whole thing that’s why I think its so educative.

Tom: But then people are scared by that

Daisy: because it disrupts what they’ve been conditioned into thinking.

Tom: But what do they get out of it? They just get an affirmation of what they already think, in the context of what they usually think. It doesn’t make them think any differently about their lives. Art requires a certain pre-exiting receptiveness on the part of the audience.

Lily: I think it’s enough to challenge the idea people have that what they think is universal and highlight the fact that this idea of universality is actually really constructed, and just one thing in a series of many other things that could be. And there’s not a right or wrong, there’s just many.

Will: Quite Nietzsche Lily: and that’s why I think these arts cuts are so stupid. Arts are just as valid as maths and sciences, sciences if anything make people think in a really rigid way, art isn’t about creating nice things or making, it’s about thinking.

A cross-section of books, films and tv series the artists in SEIZE were reported to have been engaged with throughout the duration of the exhibition preparations.

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