The second exhibition I did in a week was for ‘Squaremile’ at Bridewell Gallery in Liverpool.
The Gallery was once an old Police Station/Prison hence the name and the brief was to respond to any place within one square mile of the gallery.
Exactly 0.94 miles away as the crow flies stands a tiny tower in Everton Park that was once a prison, it’s now most commonly known as part of the logo for Everton Football Club.
I wanted to recreate the small prison inside the Bridewell Gallery, a bridewell within a Bridewell. It is made entirely from out of date Law Books donated by Liverpool Law School (also within the square mile)
I want viewers to go inside the small structure, stooping to enter the narrow door and feel uncomfortable, as you would in an actual jail cell.
St Bride’s Well
Law Books and Wooden supports
bridewell (ˈbraɪdˌwɛl, -wəl)
— n
a house of correction; jail, esp for minor offences
[C16: after Bridewell (originally, St Bride’s Well ), a house of correction in London]
This work represents the diminutive Everton Tower or The Roundhouse as it’s known locally, built in 1787 to ‘incarcerate wrong do-er’s’ and to remember those who received little or no education in days gone by which is perhaps why they became ‘wrong doer’s’.
Wolstenholme Creative Space is a beautiful old wreck of a building that does indeed have fally down bits to it.
They sent out a call for submissions earlier on this year for an exhibition called ‘With these walls we are shaped’. The exhibition called for artists to respond to the gallery space itself, the building, it’s history and the way it is now used.
Here is what I came up with, not one but two installations. One directly dealing with the walls (literally) and inviting the viewers to become part of the walls.
The second responding to the musicians who play at Wolstenholme regularly.
Piece 1:
Stereotactic
stereotactic [ˌstɛrɪəˈtæktɪk ˌstɪər-]
adj.
orientation or movement of an organism in response to the stimulus of a solid object.
Using bricks from within Wolstenholme Creative Space, this piece of art invites the viewer to respond to the stimulus of this particular solid object. Become shaped by these walls – become the Organism.
Piece 2:
Stereo-tastic
Stereo-tastic[ˌstɛrɪəˈtæsktɪk ˌstɪər-]
n
(Electronics) the technique of reproducing and transmitting visual surround sound
This work plays music recorded at live gigs within Wolstenholme Creative Space, the piece represents and reacts to this music; a visually explosive resonance and invites the viewer to walk through the installation to hear and be surrounded by the space and sound.
Ah a-n blog, how I have missed you. :)
It’s been a while, where does time go? Yet again I have been busy but I will be blogging again far more regularly now that things have started to calm down.
So…updates galore.
The Biennial is great, if you haven’t made the trip up to Liverpool you still have time and there is so much great work to make it worthwhile.
I had a week to install 3 installations in 2 galleries, it was mayhem…..to say the least. In the midst of the mayhem I pulled a muscle in my back and was out of play for 2 days.
However, not one to give up and with some help from my husband and Julie Dodd it all got done in the end. 5am finish on the day of the opening on one of them, so a bit touch and go!
I think I’ll update each exhibition in separate posts so as not to bore anyone and to save having one enormously long post.
But suffice to say for now I am in a good place, happy with the way the work has gone, proud to be part of two excellent exhibitions and I got Artwork of the Week on the ArtinLiverpool website…fantastic.
http://www.artinliverpool.com/blog/2010/11/artwork…
