- Venue
- Basement Arts Project
- Location
- Yorkshire
Kathryn Oubridge takes a look at the materiality of time in new work which is going on underground in Leeds at Basement Arts Project during a viewable two-week residency by early-career artist Alistair Woods in ‘Subjected to Change’
Last weekend saw the opening of a new residency at Basement Arts Project in Leeds, Subjected to Change, by early-career artist Alistair Woods.
Every once in a while, one has an experience of an artist’s work which one knows immediately will leave an abiding impression long after that work has been packed up and moved on, or disappeared altogether. This was one such experience for me.
Now, I am generally circumspect when it comes to art reviews, and more often than not avoid altogether those headlining exhibitions that get rave reviews, on the basis that such reviews set up an expectation, which invariably cannot be met. For reasons which will become apparent, however, I offer this review of my own visit to Subjected to Change, confident in the knowledge that any element of ‘preview’ which it might suggest, will be well and truly thwarted by the exhibition itself.
Descending the stairs to the chilly basement of this pre-war, mid-terrace house in LS11, one is met by a space which bares its history and is itself overtly in a state of transition. The artist’s assemblages, photographs and textiles are mounted on walls of exposed brickwork, partially covered by crumbling plaster bearing traces of old paint alongside more recent remedial work. Nooks and crannies, fuse boxes, wiring and pipework are drawn into the artist’s assemblages, which use found objects and materials altered by the artist-alchemist, interspersed with his photographs, which have themselves undergone a similar process of being hacked about and rearranged in the darkroom. The artist’s interventions are subtle and entirely respectful of the space.
Rest assured, that in describing what I have seen for myself, I have ruined the surprise element for no one else, for the work, which I saw, will no longer be as it was, but will be already undergoing some sort of reincarnation even as I write.
Alistair Woods has an insatiable appetite for reinventing stuff – and an eye for creating out of discarded junk work which has distinct formal concerns and a strong aesthetic. Order out of chaos. But only for a moment. His exhibition presents a series of snapshots of a work in progress. The opportunity to see it is a one-off, as the work which is here today will be gone tomorrow.
Photography plays an important part in Woods’s work and is an aspect of his practice which he pursues keenly. The inextricable links between time and memory and the photographic process are well-documented.
The act which Woods performs in his construction and installation of these assemblages in some ways replicates the act of taking a photograph itself in its anticipation of a memory which will ultimately be lost to time. Many of the found materials he uses offer up their own embodiment of a memory or memories, known or unknown. But, unlike the process of photography, the element of preservation is decidedly absent. There will remain no abiding product of the process at the end. The assemblages will be taken apart, disintegrating at the end of the period of installation, never to be re-constituted in the same way again. Just as he hacks up the negatives of his photographs, so he removes the possibility of preservation through replication, underlining the fact that, notwithstanding our attempts to fix memories in our own snapshots, all memories are in some measure fugitive, subject to the vagaries of time.
It is of no little significance that Woods makes a conscious decision not to document his work with photographs as it unfolds. This is borne out of his concern that to take a documentary photograph might risk fixing an image of the work in his own mind, so killing it by interrupting the process of exploration which is underway into interminable flux, reinvention and reinterpretation through time and space. The work that Woods is putting together (and taking apart) is determinedly forward-looking in the way it plays with memory and uses time itself as an essential ingredient in the experience for the viewer.
13th May 2014
Basement Arts Project, founded in 2011, is a grassroots arts venue supported by Leeds Art Fund and Arts Council England.
Alistair Woods will be working in the space until Sunday 25th May. Viewing times are from 2pm to 4pm on Sat 17th, Sun 18th and Sunday 25th May (or by arrangement) and a special Closing Event will run from 7.30pm to 9.30pm on Friday 23rd May.
For more information contact Bruce Davies at [email protected] or text 0750 672 1504
See the artist’s website at: www.alistairwoods.co.uk
A book will be produced by Basement Arts Project in the weeks after the exhibition closes that will document the development of the work from initial concept to finished piece. This will be available free to all who visit the exhibition during its run.
