- Venue
- BA (Hons) Fine Art, University of Lincoln
- Location
- East Midlands
A threshold is not only an entrance through which you enter or leave a room or building, but a place or point of beginning; the outset of a particular journey. This is it features the work of over 40 artists and explores every corner of the grand Victorian building which houses the art school: the open space of the hallway, the transitory corridors, the haunted tithe barn and the many classrooms of this former girl’s school. Each environment not only claims its own territory through the wonder of the architecture but marks out a boundary only to be crossed by confronting opposing worlds. Torn between parallel thoughts, the viewing experience culminates into a flirtatious dance with displacement and familiarity, control and manipulation, fact and fiction, public and private, pleasure and pain.
Behind one door, Fiona Akhurst’s installation Ask the question but never give the answer awaits: a hammer and a pane of glass hover next to each other in a vitrine. Seconds away from the moment of touch, the power of the two electric fans encouraging this encounter thankfully fails – or perhaps our own will to prevent a disaster telepathically repels the objects; the potential sound of shattered glass is still ringing in my ears. This tension is somewhat dissolved by the cool, large, white room which sits quietly in the same space; a point of entry is only found in the last stages of walking its perimeter and on discovery a world of pulsating darkness pulls you in, in an ultimate test of endurance (Valerie Beck, Limbus Patrum).
At the turn of another door handle, Sara McKenna’s Bird Cages is at once visually alluring and physically repelling. Swathes of hair gracefully tumble from a nest of bird cages suspended from the ceiling and gently touch the floor; the height of the space is exaggerated in the plight of Rapunzel’s freedom and just as the open cage doors seem to celebrate this fact, something more sinister appears to line the base of the metal enclosures: the redness of danger. A sea of islands created by Roy Pearce, distances this horror put presents another air of disorientation: shifting sands not only appear frozen in time but suggest a new solid matter that can be used to mould negative and positive versions of our world.
As one material transfers from one state another, the introduction of performative elements also allows the exhibition to shift in pace. Bundles of black fabric placed throughout the grand hall initially appear to form a low-rise landscape but as each mound is passed into the hands of Fabiola Paz Ramirez, each length of material is unravelled and tied around her waist to create a floor-length gown. Standing on a plinth, the form of the adorning garment is exaggerated, but only briefly: perhaps the layers of fabric were too restrictive, the pedestal too high. As soon as the vision is complete, Ramirez escapes and the landscape we once knew returns.
This is it, the exhibition title proposes. Always in the present tense, this title suggests another threshold that we must cross: a starting point for new state or experience. This is it but not quite as we know it – yet.
Helen Jones, 2008
