Broken Ground
BROKEN GROUND
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11 February - 25 March 2012Wed - Sun 11 am - 5 pm |
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Derek Besant
Jayne Wilson |
Is it during times of destruction and change that we best experience the many layers of the city’s history? We present an installation of large-scale prints by Canadian artist Derek Besant, with a specially commissioned sound piece by Christian Bouchard. The work is themed around core redevelopment and upheaval within several large cities, and the temporary state of chaos that results in the streets. Based on reconstructed photographic images of building sites in Budapest, Vienna, London, Toronto, Mexico City, Calgary and Shanghai, the images of these cities’ infrastructures reveal them to be complex narratives embedded in space and time. Each of these cities has been undergoing major demographic and structural shifts, and these changes have had a knock on effect upon the flow of traffic and pedestrians and patterns of social interaction. Returning to each city at various intervals, the artist discovers that many of the original configurations he photographed have been dug up, covered over, or replaced by new, unfamiliar structures. Cities are continually excavating the past and dismantling the present. Besant looks upon these events as theatrical interventions or temporary acts in which people reorganize materials and space into and out of chaos. Pedestrians view the scenes through scaffolding, wire fences and traffic, and piles of bricks, coils of electrical cable and concrete bags become the props. The images in the exhibition, created using industrial printing processes onto veil-like scrims, expose aspects of the city which, by their very ubiquity, usually go unnoticed. Occasionally these sites capture our attention, and we get a fleeting glimpse of the city’s underbelly. At these times we realize what is happening in the streets of every city, even this one. Besant gave Quebec-based composer Christian Bouchard the audio recordings he had gathered from various sites (subway stations, museum halls, traffic, etc.) and invited him to dissect and augment this material in order to create a new sound piece to accompany the images in the gallery. Jayne Wilson produces carefully researched images and films which arise out her ongoing fascination with archives, history and industry and from her background in the graphic and visual arts. Tinged with humour, her filmic collages merge fragments of found footage and archival material with her own photographed images. Taking mechanical engineering as a starting point, both films borrow from her obsession with numerical sequences, the photography and graphics of the post-war period, instructional films, and everyday urban conventions. They strive to remind us of the power and beauty of engineering and mechanical movement, and seek to evoke the nostalgic qualities we associate with the early days of film. Inspired by The British Engineerium industrial museum in Hove, and produced with the support of Arts Council England, All That Mighty Heart is Wilson’s first venture into film. It invites you to consider the fundamental elements and qualities of mechanical engineering, and their capacity to act as a counterbalance to a fast moving life in which time is a scarce commodity. Hey Presto! The Secret of Sound of Travel is the first in a series of films inspired by the history and science of modern communications. It takes a scientific maxim about technology and magic and offers a reflective, surreal slant on the laws of science and its application to modern communications. In the guise of an informational film, this one fails to deliver; instead it leads us down a nonsensical path, exposing our unquestioning faith in the authority of science. For further information visit jaynewilson.co.uk Employing found photographs, drawing, 3D modelling, photocopying, projections and other techniques, Peter Marsh draws upon images found within the urban environment. Fragments of man made objects, building sites, and the city’s feral inhabitants provide three-dimensional structures from which he develops a chain of associated works in different media. His working process attempts to convey the often incidental aesthetic qualities, as well as the breakdown and discrepancies that emerge out the repeated copying, storing, organizing and transmitting of information, using a variety of techniques. The way we interpret these ‘glitches’ may reveal a deeper truth about how society functions, how we choose to see reality, and how we might catch glimpses of our humanity within the fabric of a seemingly faceless city. The urban fox uses and often thrives within the physical structures and abstract systems set up and evolved by modern society, yet it lives an extramural existence. Not accounted for in the urban blueprint, the fox seems to slip unnoticed through the city’s matrix, appearing if at all as just one more ‘glitch’ in the man made design. Celebratory arts group Same Sky works with students from St. Martins, Fairlight, Elm Grove and Carlton Hill primary schools to create an outdoor sculpture inspired by urban experience. February 10 (6 - 9 pm) & 17- 19, at the north end of St. Peter's Church. Broken Ground Symposium – How do we experience the city? On Saturday February 18th a multi disciplinary event will take place with experts from the fields of archeology, history, geography, planning, architecture, museums, psychology and art, offering an opportunity to share ideas and experiences in the creative environment of Phoenix Brighton. WORKSHOP: ‘Brown Site, Green Site’ See the city bloom as you create an urban paradise in a box that lights up. Free drop-in workshop with Same Sky. Come along any time, stay for an hour or more. Suitable for all the family. Thursday, 16 February, 11 am – 4 pm.
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