- Venue
- Project Space Leeds
- Location
- Yorkshire
Wildwood
Wildwood, a new exhibition at PSL (Project Space Leeds) investigates woodland spaces and all the emotions and connections they inspire, literally – through physical connotation and metaphorically, through tools such as folk tale and legend. Bringing together work by eight artists, the exhibition mixes pieces by established artists, emerging artists and recent graduates, and explores concepts of woodland through diverse approaches, bringing them together thematically in a very exciting way. Wildwood is thought provoking and emotive, and it is interesting to see such a diversity of artists exhibiting together.
The gallery itself is vast, and therefore invites large-scale work, but for this exhibition, the space has been divided up into individual spaces for each artist’s work. The scale of work is still possible, but this device serves to create both senses of closedness and mystery as well as vastness, echoing the atmosphere of a natural woodland.
In The Great Indoors (2002), Laura Ford’s huge mixed media stag sculptures, their backs covered with enormous camouflage rugs suggest blurred boundaries between hunter and hunted. In their midst, a tiny human figure dressed as an explorer is dwarfed, creating a scene of Lilliputian proportions that is eery and disturbing and yet draws the observer into the work, encouraging a closer look.
Diane Howse’s poetic installation piece, Museum, questions the identity of woodland. Placing a collection of found and accumulated objects within a display table, (twigs held together with wire, leaves sewn together with red thread, an album of woodland photos, image of a leaping toad, a circle of plastic stags, silver plated stag horns) explores the concept of woodland as a living entity, and somehow suspends it in time, as does the giant photograph of a tree on the wall behind. It is as if the artist is searching for the essential essence of woodland. Within the space is a cupboard, stuffed full with antlers, partially hidden, perhaps archived and at the head of the table an antlered headdress on a stand, like a mythical god presiding over this recreated woodland.
Kelly McCallum’s work deals with ideas of preservation. She uses taxidermy to preserve a series of creatures – fox, pigeons, hedgehogs and a pair of blue lovebirds. The stuffed creatures are embellished with jewels, pins, golden maggots and stag beetles to create scenarios that reference craft and tradition, death and beauty.
Recent graduate Rachel Goodyear’s biro and pencil drawings discreetly convey a cartoon world of unexplained situations. Her depiction of part human, part beast or insect characters create a sense of alienation and isolation. Like much of the work in this exhibition, there is a feeling of delicacy and fragility that reminds one of the fragility of woodland spaces, their need for protection, but also their simultaneous need for growth and renewal.
Sophie Lascelles’ installation is as much about the process of projection as it is about the forest it portrays. Forest (2007) involves images of trees and forest projected onto an uneven surface. The forest’s visual texture flickers and blurs, the projector whirrs, the piece plays with the suggestion of forest landscape, encouraging the viewer to create their own sense of wilderness within this contrived one.
Heather and Ivan Morison’s work, while offering a sense of mystery, does it in a lighthearted and vivacious way. Their looped short film Crazy Yellow Anthill Finland (2003) shows the couple emerging naked from between the trees, then poking at a giant anthill with sticks before running away again in sped up frame. There is a childlike aspect to the work, which suggests a sense of freedom and lack of inhibition created by the surroundings, and humorous aspects are enhanced through a soundtrack that combines the calls of elephants, exotic birds and a cuckoo.
Emma Bolland’s Hansel & Gretel (snow white) (2007) also employs elements of humour to create work that suggests woodland and explore what that means to different people. Her snow-white PVC cutouts are front lit, creating blurred shadows that evoke a sense of confusion and anxiety.
Located within its own wooden cabin, Rebecca Birch’s Bristlecone (2007) explores the community of people living in the vicinity of Ancient Bristlecone forest in California. The conversations with residents from spiritualists to forest rangers give a sense of place – interestingly, and somewhat titillatingly, while the film is about these trees, we are never given a glimpse of them and only experience them through other people’s accounts.
The exhibition, which is curated by artists Pippa Hale, Kerry Harker and Diane Howse, creates an enduring impression of woodland and wilderness – precisely the wildwood of the title. The intent of the curators has been to create a space that inspires awe and wonder in the natural world through artists’ responses to those wild places. And yet this emotional response can take place in an urban context – the gallery is situated in the midst of prime Leeds real estate – a fascinating and inspired juxtaposition in itself.
