- Venue
- St Pulinus Projects
- Location
- Yorkshire
Just past Catterick racecourse and set in acres of beautifully kept parkland with a stately home tucked away in the background, the converted church of St Paulinus is the home of art collector Greville Worthington.
As if the venue weren’t dramatic on its own, it also currently plays host to an extraordinary exhibition of work by one of the biggest new names in British sculpture, Roger Hiorns. The exhibition has been made possible by support and financial help from Yorkshire entrepreneur and art enthusiast Kevin Linfoot, who is also a fan of Hiorns’ work.
Roger Hiorns’ sculpture is concerned with disassociation and an expression of will. The work in this exhibition clearly exhibits the fact that he is a master of delicate yet profound contrasts.
The exhibition at St Paulinus contains five major pieces of work that provide a comprehensive idea of Hiorns’ concepts. Hiorns typically combines solid, man-made elements with natural elements. So in the piece entitled All Night Chemist, an 8 ton BMW engine is covered with beautiful blue copper sulphate crystals. The crystals, which initially appear to be by far the more delicate and insubstantial elements of the piece are in actual fact the stronger element of the work due to their ability to obscure the engine itself.
Thus Hiorns brings into his work discussions of power and domination. His work is purposely problematic and contradictory. The BMW engine is a contemporary symbol of power and excellence and to Hiorns a symbol of dehumanisation, but the crystals – symbolic to Hiorns of the laws of nature – have the power to obscure it and render it useless for its original purpose and yet subsequently more beautiful.
In the particular context of the church, the colours of All Night Chemist the blue of the crystals and the red of the chair upon which it sits echo the colours of the stained glass windows. The work forms a strange relationship with the space in which it is exhibited: the church is a symbol of stability and religion, yet as a decommissioned church it is not being used for its original intended purpose. Here is a very strong link to Hiorns’ work.
Copper Sulphate crystals appear again in Crystal Mission (1998), in which cardboard and wooden models of churches are covered in the blue crystals. In his work Untitled (2006), the artist has smeared his own semen onto a 1000 Watt mercury discharge lightbulb. When switched on, the brightness of the bulb makes it almost impossible to look at.
A pile of dust on the floor is actually the ground down engine of a boeing 747. Rendering something so impressively powerful to a pile of dust is Hiorns’ way of reminding us, not only of our mortality, but of humankind’s place in time and the universe.
In the catalogue to this show he says, ‘We should be aware that at the end of the century we will enter the Eremozoic era. ‘The age of loneliness’ half the species currently on earth will be extinct, the next period will be one of great change. These objects have the highest regard for the next period.’
In the interview made for the catalogue, Hiorns also speaks of his own disassociation from his work. ‘I have no relationship with my work once it is completed’ he says. Ironically, though, the work itself has a very strong and evident relationship with the unique exhibition space that is St Paulinus.
