So where are we now?

It is midway through the ‘Laboratory’ exhibition and the artists have been at work in their spaces testing new ideas and exploring recurrent themes in their practices. Sarah pointed out today that the artists have spent a considerable amount of time discussing their ideas with her, me, each other, their invited contributors and also the visitors to Jerwood. This has similarities with an art school critique, an open studio discussion, or maybe even an artist colony (although our budget doesn’t extend to a move to the seaside unfortunately…) It has proved to be a healthy part of the exhibition process, and it is also one of the major reasons why the artists wanted to participate in ‘Laboratory’ in the first place, as peer discussion is a useful tool in the development of ideas.

Discussion has become an integral part of ‘Laboratory’, so I asked Sarah to describe what has struck her about the artworks in ‘Laboratory’ as they now stand:

Jock Mooney

“Jock has spent a lot of time working on his ‘drying rack’, which was initially placed in the centre of a constructed chipboard floor. On the drying rack is a selection of his small handmade objects – placed on sticks and supported by plasticine – that have had brightly-coloured gloss paint poured over them. The paint spills onto the floor creating an uncontrolled pattern of paint puddles.

“This has caused me to ask: is this drying rack an artwork in its own right and, if so, where does the artwork begin and end? There has been an ongoing debate in ‘Laboratory’ around the idea of the ‘finished’ object, and these continually-evolving paint drips allow for an ‘unfinished’ element to be a constant part of the work.

“After the group crit on Monday 10th, Jock came in first thing the next morning and rearranged the drying rack, taking away the steel supports and placing the boards directly on the floor with one resting upright against a wall. This reordering of the space has further blurred the boundary between the finished/unfinished artwork, as the drying rack is continually evolving and changing.”

Mia Taylor

“Mia’s work is gradually inhabiting more and more of the space, with foliage sprouting from the screens, fluorescent painted branches stacked on the floor and canvases waiting and ready to be used against the walls. She is resisting the temptation to create pictorial space within the paintings at the moment and is focusing on the gallery itself. Colours and textures from the canvases are creeping into the gallery via fragments wrapped around the pillars and the coloured tissue paper that Mia is pinning up in various patterns on the windowpanes.

“The gallery space is being continually re-evaluated, with the four screens being frequently rearranged to guide the viewer through the space in different ways. The screens are semi-transparent, echoing Mia’s interest in light and translucence, and the coloured light that is being created by the tissue paper is filtering through the screens as if they were almost stained glass. Her work is definitely becoming an installation.”

Steven Eastwood

“Steven has been concentrating on his research at Rooney’s gym around the corner from Jerwood and has been working with both male and female boxers. He has shot footage of several different pieces including: a fight between female boxers; sparring to the camera; male and female training sessions that resemble dances. The concentration and focus of the boxers captured in the footage gives it a powerful edge.

“Steven’s research is uncovering stories from the participants, especially Marianne and Angel, about their reasons for becoming a boxer, their medical history and injuries that they have suffered. Angel has also revealed that she is a songwriter, painter, film-maker and animator. This had led Steven to begin co-writing a song with her, with lyrics based on her life story and past injuries.

“A training session with Marianne that Steven filmed yesterday resulted in a series of one minute snippets focusing on her hitting a punch bag. The concentration, energy and rhythm he captured may feed back into the way that the film will be edited, for example the rhythm of the punch, the pace of the movements, or the sound of the trainer’s instructions.

“Steven is finding such a wealth of extraordinary stories that the main concern now is how he will feed this into a film. What will he edit out, what will he use? For the meantime the idea of keeping things open-ended seems to be the best path. Another question that has arisen is how to interview and draw out stories from the subjects? One answer will hopefully be an osteopathy session for Angel that Steven has helped arrange, in which the osteopath will discuss her current physical condition, perhaps with reference to past injuries and the body trauma she has suffered.”