The Heuristics Laboratory is Pete McPartlan, Ruth Scott and Georgie Park. We were commissioned by Sideshow (the Nottingham Fringe to the British Art Show) to present our first project: a 3 week exhibition this winter in a space in NTU.
Each artist will use the space as a laboratory for a week exploring an unfamiliar process. Opening up the learning process and welcoming unpredictable results.
See theheuristicslaboratory.org.uk for more information
Getting to Know the Machine
From now until my week in the laboratory (we are now showing at the new site of The Malt Cross Gallery Nottingham 8th Nov- 2nd Dec) I will be persistently turning spindles. Hoping that through repetition that the act of making can become symbolic both for me personally and for the viewer (in retrospect of my activities).
I was naturally nervous to begin this process properly this week. Not an irrational fear considering I have bearly used a machine in my life and that the traditional craft is based on combining fast spining wood with sharp tools!
However I am suprised at how comfortable I am becoming with the machine. I am finding it intesesting to observe the speed at which physical changes occure to my body. Particulary at the moment i am noticing a felling of strength in my hands similar to how I feel when I have been carving at a sculture or working with a mold.
It may seem obvious that this would happen but its has stiil some how taken me by surprise. I think this may be due to an assumption that I am the one with control over the machine and very separate from it. Yet it is having a very definate effect on my physicality which would suggest that what is really happeing is more of a negotiated control between body and the machine.
Meet Bob!
I recently sought advice from a woodturner called Bob. Bob has been turning for 70 years and has a brutal attitude when it comes to precision.
Tomorrow I am going to meet him for the second time to show him one of my first turnings and eagerly await a telling off for the bad habits I have already accumulated.
By way of introduction here is a short video with some of his more sever advice:
Our Individual Projects
We have been commissioned by Sideshow, Nottingham’s fringe festival for the British Art Show for an exhibition at the Malt Cross Gallery Nottingham. For the commission each artist is will be using the space at the University as a laboratory for a week . The show will conclude with a closing event detailing the results of our experiments.
Here is a descripiton of our individual projects:
Pete McPartlan: Telecine
Telecine is the process by which film is duplicated onto video. Pete will recreate a telecine laboratory, creating a video out of found film. The lab is traditionally a controlled environment free of contaminants that aims to produce perfect facsimiles. The telecine process is a deliberately invisible component of film making. Pete will attempt to invert this – using an open and brightly lit room. The space will be cast as an extra in the new scanning of the film, the floor to ceiling windows becoming lightboxes. Allowing the architecture of the space to encroach on the original and breaking down the integrity of the original film. The work will be the product of the artist’s improvisations with a reel of film, small construction materials, cameras, motors and bits and pieces. Pete proposes a series of playful experiments to capture the film using ad-hoc processes, building temporary contraptions with dual purpose – installations devised to scan the film.
Controlling the means of post-production.
Ruth Scott: Line-Walk
Walking across a slack line that is attached and raised between two fixed points Ruth will attempt to gain control of her body through a durational act. By exploiting the states of balance and imbalance she shall often fall and almost always try to regain a sense of stability. She will use the pillars in the building to attach her slack line where public demonstrations shall take place . A film showing the difficulty of learning this will be presented alongside the slack line, which shall be played during non-performance times throughout the week. She will attach smaller cameras to her body that will trace and capture the involuntary movements depicting the struggle to stay on the line. The artists’ pre-occupation with keeping balance stems from a residency she did in France where she practised on a wire tight-rope. Line-Walk is a departure from this approach where the slack-line is placed higher off the ground and can be more challenging due to the rope moving as one walks across.
Georgie Park
Setting herself the challenge of mass-producing by hand, hundreds of replicas of wood-turned spindles such as chair legs and banister poles, Georgie will become a self taught wood-turner. By producing objects that traditionally connote domesticity she is striving to connect the body to the family home. Yet this endeavour is fundamentally flawed: it is distancing, to complete the task the artist must indulge in the the isolating act of obsessive production. Produced uniformly out of 50 cm lengths of 2×2 pine, left freshly turned and unvarnished the spindles will be piled in the space appearing as discarded detritus. Two or more small monitors placed amongst them will play subtle movements, reflective of breathing from disused spaces within the home.
How we Met
I met Ruth and Pete on an AA2A residency at Nottingham Trent University which started in November 2009. I had graduated in 2008 but had to move back to a small market town with little artistic activity whist I recovered from some of the debt that I had left art college with.
So at the time of the residency, I was feeling a bit out of the loop and some what creatively isolated.
From the offset, it was suggested that it could be a nice idea if we considered working on a project together for Sideshow (the Nottingham fringe to the British Art Show) which kicks off this autumn/winter. This sounded like a good idea, but not knowing each others practices, we had no idea how or if this could work so we started meeting regularly to discuss our ideas.
In the end our meetings ranged from dinner dates to studio/ crit sessions to occasionally one too many in the local pub. However we found that we were still quite cautious with our project ideas, wanting the opportunity to work together but also worrying that things should not be forced.
So with the deadline for commissions fast approaching our meetings became longer more frequent and although this could be hard work, I found I was involved in a supportive structure that I think is probably quite difficult to find outside of education.
In the end after much exhaustive juggling of ideas, I think we realised that we had spent too long looking for similarities or feeling that there should be similarities for us to work together. When we accepted that we could see conversations between our practices, but that essentially we worked in very different ways, we came up with the formula for The Heuristics Laboratory: a three week exhibition in which we each take an experimental week to explore acts of learning or discovery.
