BasementArtsProject

YOL.POSSET.LLOYD | Between Gas Canisters and Personal Identity Lanyards | March 2019

Since 2017 ‘Between Sleeping and Eating’ has been a project, initiated by Toby Phips Lloyd, that has explored attitudes to work and issues surrounding the possibility of a Universal Basic Income. The project has grown to include performances by the trio of YOL/POSSET/LLOYD; these improvisations are based around the misuse of everyday objects, scrap metal, dictaphones and throat based vocal contortions.

In 2018 YOL/POSSET/LLOYD performed a set at Bradford’s Fuse Art Space and the next day used BasementArtsProject as a venue to record a new work sans audience. Both of these events are now available on the Chocolate Monk label. http://chocolatemonk.co.uk/available.html

In 2019 it is the turn of Yol to take the helm in the next iteration of this generative project with an exhibition of new artworks and another trio performance. Partly based on his observations of a park bench and its occupants throughout the course of a day, Yol has created a series of artworks that examine the differing nature of people’s use of time and place in relation to formalised work identity.

Living in an era in which art is derided as a waste of time by many, and is even seen in the educational curriculum as surplus to requirement, we need to look beyond the constraints of conventional Wisdom and imagination, or lack thereof, and work out for the next generation the biggest of all questions. For what purpose are we being educated? How do people that are essentially creative by nature, fit into a system that does not give them the opportunity to actively participate? Can other industries and fields of endeavour truly flourish if they have neglected to educate people creatively?

These are questions that spring to my mind when considering the recent project by Toby Lloyd formerly of Artist House 45 based in the Garnets, Hunslet between 2015 and 2017. The project by Lloyd Wilson looked at what happens when artists are given the opportunity to operate in a fairly unfettered way within a community. Latterly Wilson has been engaged in another project, ‘Between Eating and Sleeping’ which has posed the questions “What would you do if you had a year off?”, “What gets you out of bed in the morning?” And “What did you want to be when you grew up?” The recent project at BasementArtsProject ‘Between Gas Canisters and Personal Identity Lanyards’ featuring Hull based artist Yol (real name), and Newcastle based artists Posset (not his real name) and Lloyd (I’ll let you make up your mind on that one), has visualised some of the ways in which actual life collides with idealised versions of life. The exhibition revolves around the life of a Hull park bench, the inhabitants, the detritus and the difference between who we want to be, who we feel we should be and who we are forced to be by dint of our occupations.