Louise Winter: Per Diem
Grey Space Galleries, Leeds
Friday 3 August 2012
Last night I went to see Louise Winter’s new solo show opening at Grey Space Galleries at Melbourne Street Studios, Leeds.
GreySpace Galleries will be hosting the first solo exhibition by contemporary Newcastle based artist Louise Winter. the artist is concerned with questioning the fixed identity of objects and materials so they defy usual definitions or expectations.
Central to Winter’s practise are ideas of displacement: is the location of material central to its definition so that if it is displaced from it ‘real’ context can it still be regarded as the same object, where then does it exist if at all?
Winter continues to develop these themes at GreySpace as she attempts to re-assemble discarded aspects of known objects, creating a tension between the literal and abstract reading of these things as signifiers. Her practise is investigative in its nature and form, moving between object, process, event and performance, exploring the poetic and often absurd potential of the everyday.
Louise showed a mixture of pre-existing, site-responsive and previously unseen new works including:
rubbish pile and fan (2012) http://www.axisweb.org/artwork.aspx?WORKID=103011
can and shelving (2012) http://www.axisweb.org/artwork.aspx?WORKID=103046
pouring can (2011) http://www.axisweb.org/artwork.aspx?WORKID=103537
She also found a novel way of blacking out the windows for the video projection: Black binliners scrunched up and stuffed inbetween the window and the security bars. I asked her if she considered them a piece of work or more of a functional intervention and she leaned more towards function as the primary motive.
We talked a little bit about her rubbish hoard and where she sources her rubbish: She has a particular old quarry-like place near where she lives where she frequents in search of potential items to make work.
Louise likes making work from objects that already exist, namely rubbish, because (paraphrasing) the world already has enough things in it.
Axisweb profile: http://www.axisweb.org/seCVPG.aspx?ARTISTID=16076
