Norm Exhibition, Northwich, Cheshire

The trouble with site specific installation is that you spend a lot of time crossing your fingers. I had a good day the other day when I laid out the paintings and sculptures I will be using in the norm exhibition and found that they fill a sizable space in what I hope is a meaningful way. But squeezed as it was between the TV cabinet and the christmas tree it is still hard to anticipte how it will look in the space. I realise that how things will look in a given space is a concern for an artist in any medium but unframed as it is installation relies more on the space as its frame. So I sit and stare cross eyed into space with a confused look on my face trying to visualise how it will all look. We do have a generous 2 day set up time so there is room for changes and evolutions to the plan but one just hopes that all the elements created work together in this new space.

Considering the Norm Part 3 by Simon Kennedy

If Beth and Jason’s work portrays ideas surrounding the outward appearance of so-called normality, informed either by mental health or social/cultural conditioning, artist Simon Kennedy looks at how technological advancement or more specifically digital culture, continues to re-shape what is deemed to be normal in terms of how we interact and communicate with one another. The recent addition of the word ‘Selfy’ to the Oxford English Dictionary, is an exemplification of how something as fundamental as language is not immune to change under the increased pressure of new cultural norms. Simon looks at how new ways of communicating have radically altered our textual and linguistic landscape. Emoticons, abbreviations and acronyms have all become commonplace in our everyday communications in a bid to shave valuable seconds off the time it takes to transfer information.

Simon presents the viewer with a selection of engraved signs and symbols alluding to various facets of artistic discipline. Instead of a poem we get the image of an inkwell and paper, instead of a film we get the image of a clapperboard. Whilst this kind of shorthand is accepted in our digital lives, would we be accepting of such time saving devices in other areas of life?. The artist has saved his own time in producing a paired down version of a landscape painting for instance, but at what cost? Is this simplified version adequate to conjure the real experience of viewing a landscape, is a smiley face an adequate symbol for all the subtle variations in ones experience or portrayal of happiness? These signs or pictograms are made from found bits of wood and engraved by hand, this purposefully contradicts the instantly gratifying and sophisticated nature of current digital technologies. Far from being passive by-standers, society at large is responsible for creating and perpetuating much of what we consider to be normal. In this instance, the artist ivites us to question and interrogate the validity of the various norms we sanction through continued social practice and participation.

Just as new words such as ‘selfy’ find thier way into the dictionary based not upon meaning but prevalance of usage, what we consider to be normal, relies less upon a universally accepted definition but more-so on the continued practice and usage of a particular paradigm. NORM presents the viewer with three different meditations on the same theme and in each case the viewer is invited to question his or her own preconceptions on what it actually means to be ‘normal’.

Considering the Norm Part 2 By Simon Kennedy

This spiders web of complexity has not dissuaded a group of artists operating under the banner of ‘Working Title Artists Collective’ from producing a new exhibition: NORM, whereby three very different takes on the theme of normality are presented.

Socially engaged artist Beth Barlow, has continued to build upon a project began in 1996 at Denbigh Mental Hospital. Beth has been revisiting this work through a series of sculptural pieces using found objects and discarded wood in conjuction with a series of paintings. Each individual work collectively forms an installation tailored to a specific space. The work both questions and highlights the repeated and often mundane tasks, we are all subjected to on a daily basis and aligns them with conditions such as Obsessive Compulsive Disorder and other repetative traits observable in other mental health conditions.

Sticking with the theme of mental health, artist Jason Sheppard (who has himself been diagnosed with Attention Deficit Disorder) looks at the way in which internal or pyschological abnormalities are often so subtle as not to be detected by the world at large. In this instance appearing outwardly normal can be just as debilitating as appearing outwardly abnormal. We rely so heavily on our eyes to make sense of the world, that if something appears to subcribe to what is normal or standard, we automatically assume that it is. Jason’s work presents the viewer with a series of photographic portraits. Male, female, old and young. There would seem to be nothing amiss and if we saw any of these people in the street, we would assume them to be perfectly normal, but we would be mistaken since they all suffer from Attention Deficit Hyperactive Disorder. The artist’s aim in this case is to increase awarness of such hidden conditionsand in doing so breaking down the stigma that surrounds them, not least ‘that they don’t exist’. In addition to the photographic portraits, Jason presents a mixed media installation that portrays the way in which the artist see’s his own life…“Not all there and with some parts missing“.

Considering The Norm Part 1

By Simon Kennedy

Wearing shoes, not going to bed when we’re tired, spending the majority of our time indoors or not going to the bathroom when we need to, these are just a few things that occur so often in our daily lives (generally without thought or question), that despite thier detrimantal effect on either our mental or physical health, the vast majority of us, would consider some, if not all of the afore mentioned occurences as being perfectly ‘normal’. But how do we know what normal is, when so-called normality is in a perpetual state of flux, forever being constructed, deconstructed and then re-constructed in a different guise, form or language?. Far from being a solid and stable construct, normality relies upon a multitude of external and relative factors to determine its appearence at any given moment.

If you visited the Dinka Tribe in Southern Sudan, you would come across men with carefully placed scars across thier faces, this is not the result of a fierce battle or animal attack but the metering out of a cultural tradition, marking the transition from adolescence to manhood. To those not accustomed to such a ritual, this purposeful kind of scarring may seem at once strange, if not cruel but to the Dinka it’s perfectly normal.

In the west, it used to be a common sight to observe somebody making use of a telephone box, again this was seen as normal behaviour but since the advent of mobile phones and advancements in new media technologies, such a person nowadays is quite likely to be viewed with a modicum of suspicion, they must be dealing drugs, or perhaps hiring a prostitute, whatever they’re up to… it’s not normal. From these examples alone we can see how cultural and technological factors can influence and inform what we consider to be the usual or standard thing, if you add to this economic, political, religous, juidicial, social and educational factors, you begin to understand why ascertaining what and why something is deemed normal has as many layers as it does variants.

So as Christmas becomes a distant memory and I sit back at my desk the list of tasks needed to make our Norm Exhibition a success grows. By we I mean Working Title Artists Collective a group of 3 artists who decided to try working together. This is our fourth year as a constituted group. Two of us (Jason Sheppard and Beth Barlow)were brought together by the wish to do something creative in our native city of Chester. The the outside eye Chester is full of culture but with no permenant home for the arts it has often been left to determined artists to fill in gaps. Later Simon Kennedy joined us and as two of us now live in Northwich our boarders widened. We ran further Projects in Chester Runcorn, Cuddington, Manchester and now Northwich sometimes supported by the Big lottery and twice by the Heritage Lottery. Sometimes as in the Norm Exhbition funded ourselves with tiny purses of money.

Norm is an exhibition just for our own work, no community involvement, no funding obligations. It is based on a common theme in our work, a quest into What is normal today?

With the exhibition due to start at Artworks Northwich on Thursday 13th February there is still much to do. We will keep adding to this blog as we go along as truthfully as diplomacy will allow.