Limits

Lifelines

from February 17 to March 13

Salisbury Arst centre

A few months on and the Limits of my project have proven endless; I am currently working on Lifelines, commissioned by the Kingfisher Writing in Health project, based at Salisbury Hospital ans salisbury Arts Centre, and this has stretched my practice to a bran new dimension; I have used the line to create a journey liaising words and architecture in this 13th century converted church.

Lifelines is an attempt to anchor the spirituality of the poems to the physicality of the place. The project has been running for the past 10 years and the words seemed to be floating in the space. It was a matter of making them visible and alive.

I used the ribbon in Limits , exploring physical, mental and social limits. I wanted to further its life; the collaboration with the Kingfisher writing project was a great opportunity for me to do so, as well as try out the potential of a large scale work.

I have always been aware of the self healing purpose of art. It is the first time that I have been able to express it in such a physical way.

Kingfisher says;

“Lifelines is the second of three visual arts commissioning projects, celebrating and making visible the work of the Kingfisher Project. Laurence Rushby’s response to the brief has created a site-specific installation at Salisbury Arts Centre using a lifeline of red ribbon to link a multitude of personal stories to the architecture of the building. Fragments of poems written by The Kingfisher Project’s community group participants hang in the air in this striking and thought-provoking new commission celebrating the importance of art for health and wellbeing.

A bit of quick news about the project and my practice; first of all, I feel that I have been, in the past month , working harder than ever on getting out there. I have attended one to one surgeries and conferences to view other people’s work as much as to test my own. This has been precious and I have just redone my cv, my statement, and have put all of this work into little files with names on top.This was crucial to gaining an undertsanding of the work and finding ways of puting it out. I am also in the process of stretching the work into public art domain .This sounds promessing.

I am still busing with ideas to continue this work .In the meantime, I am organising the open day 17th of october .

Thanks Anthony for your comments; I think you saw through the work very well as the line has now taken a life of its own and the work has become a lot more playful and free.

I saw your project is also taking a new direction! I am looking forward to view what comes out of it!

I haven’t been on the blog for over two months; not just because it was summer and I was desperatly waiting for the sun to come out and get a bit of Holiday feel but mostly because , as the sun did not come, I kept working inside the studio. All the work I have developed indoors seems to be very intimate and profound ) so I have been reflecting on the work in depth and decided not to loose myself in writing for a bit.

However, In my last post I was mentioning the possibilties of returning to painting and I have done so.

I guess I needed to reconnect with the material and simply explored the moment of creation; keeping in line with the red line theme, I attempted to grasp the very instant when , despite of all fear, reflexion, consideration on judgement and wish to keep control of everything, you suddenly cease to think in order to create. This is the time when you jump off a plane or off a rock into cold sea, the time you are born or the time you give birth, the moment you enter the space of the blank canvas to make your mark.

The time when the red line snaps and becomes loose, and all tensions cease and in this time, only the space you give yourself is the Limit.

I have also had a lot of not so profound moment of inspiration and created a series of spontanious events which I am presenting with all of the work on Limits in an open studio day, 17th of Otcober, 10 to 5.(see it advertised as artist event in this website)

Just got my authorisation to explore the restricted area. walked to the row of buildings I had been looking at from day 1 with my camera. when arriving at the entrance, I chose to go back to the studio and take the red line a pen and some paper as to hold my breath and force myself to look ,with something like a newly found wisdom.

I felt like I was breaking into a virgin territory(at least to my eyes).

I spent a few hours in there ,took 100 pictures and came back with a strong desire to paint.

I did not use the red line.