Making Everything Count

Lou Hazelwood & Sabine Jeanne Bieli: Archetypes of Random | Blank_ Gallery, Leeds

Edek Thompson: Apocalypse Remix | BasementArtsProject

Sustain Reuse Recycle Repeat Reform: Sluice Biennial | The Minories, Colchester

Having travelled down the country with a back pack, a toolbox, a painting on a large piece of wood, a portfolio full of work and a battered old suitcase gaffer taped to a skateboard chock full of small scale sculptures, I find myself on Colchester High Street heading for The Minories; a contemporary art venue in which I will be showing the work of several artists that have been associated with BasementArtsProject across the years.

Whether it is the first ever exhibitor at BasementArtsProject and regular contributor to our programme Kimbal Quist Bumstead, recent graduate Loane Bobillier who exhibited with us as an undergraduate in March 2023 or current exhibitors Edek Thompson, and in collaboration with Blank_ Gallery Leeds Lou Hazelwood, one thing that comes through is their dedication to the process of ideas, making and adapting to create a future ultimately more interesting and satisfying than the past. The present as someone once said is ‘a gift’, and I believe we must use it wisely and pass it on. The past has already been written and we cannot change it, the future though is a blank canvas and it must not be something that we receive passively, we must work hard to create it.

Colchester High Street, for all its Ye Olde World-iness is a High Street like any other. Whilst many architectural features go back a long way, The Minories is a combination of Tudor with Georgian additions and the hotel in which I am staying also dates back to Tudor Times, it is still taken up with many of the commercial symbols of contemporary society, whether it be McDonalds or a Nike Store the Indicators are that as a society, rarely do we stray too far from the path well trodden. As with the Tudor and Georgian buildings, evidence of more recent cultures (a Wimpy!) long gone from the main high streets of Great Britain do still exist here, like flowers finding a way to survive between the cracked flags of the paving.

But…..

I am getting ahead of myself.

This essay is going to cover the whole month of June, probably one of the busiest months I have ever had as BasementArtsProject over the course of our twelve year existence. The month of April ended at University Centre Leeds, Blank_ Gallery with the opening of an off-site Basement curated exhibition of work by Lou Hazelwood and Sabine Bieli. As May drew to a close BasementArtsProject saw the opening of exhibition number two by Leeds based Edek Thompson with his ‘Apocalypse Remix’. This exhibition was accompanied by a month of workshops and a DoodleChat.

A week after opening Edek’s exhibition I found myself transporting a shipment of artworks down to Colchester by train, a story in its own right, for the Sluice Biennial Expo. The reason for combining these three events into one essay is not laziness, or even about the time constraints associated with so much contextual writing, but is in fact due to a connecting thread between the three exhibitions.

The context for the ‘Sustain Reuse Recycle Repeat Reform’ exhibition for the Sluice Biennial 2024 was drawn from a continual analysis of how we (BasementArtsProject) operate, and the work and practice of the artists with whom we have elected to work since April 2011. There is an element of necessity and access on the part of both artists and Basement, but this is what gives us a somewhat unique modus operandi and allows us to consider such things as part of our raison d’être. In the context of BasementArtsProject art is not just the what, but also the how and why. Three matters that, when considered together, provide an insight into the world view of those around us.

Lou Hazelwood has exhibited twice with BasementArtsProject over the last few years. ‘Landscapes of the (Un)known’ was our last show before the first pandemic lockdown in March 2020. As we returned from the last of the lockdowns of 2022 she returned with artist Chris Graham, with a very different body of work entitled ‘Trade Routes and Trauma Sites’. During this time BasementArtsProject worked with Lou to develop an exhibition around a recent set of works that head off at a tangent to the work that she had produced for 2020’s  ‘Landscape’s of the (Un)known.

The work of Lou Hazelwood involves materials that have been cast aside, materials that are generally considered unusable in any traditional sense; chemicals and paper that are in some way spoiled or out of date and any guarantee of outcome or quality would be uncertain, if not completely unlikely. For ‘Archetypes of Random’ Lou has made use of negatives that had been kept in damp conditions resulting in mould damage. The combination of her analogue photography style and the damaged surfaces result in an incredibly diverse array of patterns, colours and strangely perfect circular redactions. These are not so much the previous interior landscapes of the mind, vague images buried in the fog of memory, as they are whole new universes, expanding constantly at every edge. Alongside this, Lou selected a series of sculptural works by Sabine Jeanne Bieli that also utilise photographic techniques in their production, that of the Cyanotype.

With the addition of these works the universe expands into the third dimension in an immersive explosion of colour. On sunny afternoons the large window based works throw pools of coloured light across the floor. This is the first time that this space, the reception area of a University building, has felt truly tranquil and meditative. As much as people come and go around you, there is still the feeling of being able to bask in the warmth of the sun whilst being bathed in a glorious wash of colour.

Edek Thompson is an artist whose work addresses issues around climate change. His art is far from po-faced or doom mongering and is instead humorous and light-hearted. These are works designed to make people question things through the bizarre nature of the creatures and characters in his imagery. Strange adaptations such as dachshunds with the long spindly legs and webbed feet of a duck. In another case a duck with a crow’s head, and many other such weirdly fantastical beasts. The idea being that as the seas rise and the climate changes, so too will creatures adapt both intelligence wise and physically to combat their changing world. The short legged dachshund will no longer drown as the sea rises, instead he can paddle and swim with his newly adapted body. The intelligence of the crow melded with the body of a duck as he/she sits comfortably adapted to the ocean waves planning his next move.

As with Lou, Edek’s work makes use of the things others discard as useless and unwanted. In the grand tradition of skip diving artists his work, often very large work, is built up of many layers of found materials; wood, card, discarded vinyl lettering, cut up magazines, etc… For Edek this becomes a vehicle for his surreal creatures that he refers to as the ‘Post-Apocalyptic Warrior Guardians’.

People matter in the practice of Edek Thompson, and not just in a general concern for humanity kind of way as evinced by his imagery, but in a practical way that considers those around him in the here and now. Apocalypse Remix is the first exhibition by Edek in which workshops, a regular feature of his practice, are integrated into the structure of the proceedings. By the end of the exhibition there has been roughly eight workshops and a DoodleChat, all of which have resulted in the participants work being integrated into the exhibition itself. Discussions that took place around the workshop tables included one particular conversation about having work by other people literally hung next to his as part of the exhibition and did it not bother him, as it was after all his exhibition. But, this is the generosity of Ed’s spirit where people are concerned, he concluded that whilst he had not initially considered that, he really was not bothered by this element.

It is Ed’s desire to engage with people at such a deep level as part of his practice that makes me understand the humorous nature of his images. This is not about berating people about the state of the world, there is an element of teaching but it is more of a subtle subtext within the work, but what it is really about is taking people on a journey with you. The general nature of political discourse around issues such as climate change, and everything else that politics touches, is to set people against one another, so that when activist groups start doing things that get in peoples way the fights and arguments start. Here, engagement is the key and many of the conversations that I had around the exhibition involved debate around climate as much as art.

A week into the exhibition and I find myself packing my jerry-rigged suitcase full of work and setting off for Colchester in Essex, leaving my daughter, a volunteer and one of my directors to look after Ed and his workshops, which is where this tale began.

I was quite amused upon entering ‘The Minories’ to discover the work of Chris Dobrowolski, an artist whose work I know very well, in a prominent position. A mechanical donation box featuring a scene in which your money sets off the robbery of a security van and a voice shouting ‘Put the money in the bag’. I consider Chris’ many stories of his jerry-rigged contraptions and the nature of how I have hauled all of this gear, artworks and toolkits, down the country as very similar in spirit. I first encountered this artist’s work as a 3rd year Art Student at Leeds Metropolitan University where he gave an illustrated lecture/performance relating a number of his tales of adventure that have stuck with me ever since; the hovercraft being a particularly great story. I find it unsurprising that his current line of work will be taking him to the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, the man is a natural born story teller. It was also good to catch up with Chris who visited whilst I was there.

The project that I prepared as BasementArtsProject’s contribution to the Sluice Biennial Expo involves both artists currently exhibiting under the Basement umbrella in Leeds; Lou Hazelwood and Edek Thompson alongside eight others, all of whose work relates in terms of subject matter and production methods. ‘Sustain Reuse Recycle Repeat Reform’ explores artists whose practices address, in a myriad of different ways whether intentionally or not, the idea of sustainability in terms of practice and/or environment.

The work of Jeffrey Knopf was, for the artist at least, a contentious issue as to whether or not his practice (3D printing) was truly sustainable in the environmental sense, based on the very long life span of the material. This generated a very interesting discussion about the environmental implications of many different art-forms and how that operates when combined with ideas of big business and small individual practice.

At a tangent to Jeff’s work using the same materials and methods, Crazy Eddie (Edward Mortimer) looks at sustainability of practice; the idea that 3D scanning and printing could help to overcome the problems associated with sending work to exhibitions by not only making it cheaper but more environmentally sustainable, crossing the travel gap digitally.

Edek, Lou and Wendy Williams are all artists who make work with recycled materials gained in the manner of The Wombles; ‘Making good use of the things that we find, Things that the everyday folks leave behind’. Wendy and BasementArtsProject have worked together many times over the years, often under the moniker of SCIBase as a roving collective. The nature of her current work and how we have worked together over the years made her a natural fit for this project.

Ruby Jean Waterhouse and Cleo Nelson are the most recent additions at BasementArtsProject, having exhibited with us for the first time in November 2023. Ruby curated the ‘Fray’ exhibition in the blurb for which she described it as being about time breaking down memories and how stories forming a withered history, breakdowns giving us an opportunity to form something new. Ruby’s work has in the past taken water as a constituent part, although for Fray the reference was amniotic fluid rather than water, whilst Cleo Nelson had created work knitting with a strange water soluble material. On this basis I asked if they would collaborate on a single artwork.The thought of these two works in conjunction with the idea of breaking down as a form of recycling, rather than reusing as in other works, provided another interesting angle, in a way connecting more with the ethos of the PLA plastic used by Jeff Knopf. Ruby and Cleo no longer live in the same cities so together they devised a ritual to be performed at nearby lakes in their respective cities: London and Leeds. The artworks gave a sense of the importance of water in their ritual and how it related to an objects permanence or in the case of the knitted fabric impermanence. In an ironic twist, Cleo sent her work to me in Leeds by post and the package was dumped on the step and not found for almost an entire day. It was also pouring with rain: torrential rain! All of the work survived including the water soluble knitted pieces, but some of the paper work was damp and had to be dried out with two pieces leaving an imprint on each after being separated.

Kimbal Bumstead is another long-term collaborator of BasementArtsProject often taking part in our external shows when we venture out. Not only did Kimbal provide our first ever exhibition as BasementArtsProject but also our anniversary show ten years to the day. The project ‘We Are Still Here: Sonic Landscapes’ had to be done virtually as it came during lockdown and provided the source material for his contribution to this show nearly three years later. ‘Sonic Landscapes’ was an open invitation to the public to take some drawing equipment and a sound recording device out into the open and to make a drawing (with their eyes closed) in response to the sounds they could hear -at the same time recording the sound on their phone. Those who took part then sent their drawn and recorded contributions to Kimbal. With this he constructed an online simulacrum of the real-world Basement, which could not be accessed at this point, and created an exhibition from their work. As with Edek, Kimbal is another example of an artist highlighting the work of others alongside his own.

Whilst the original ‘Sonic Landscapes’ had the feel of an acoustical ecology project anyway, this further iteration at Sluice featuring the artwork in the form of a map, and the sound presented with it, there is also the dematerialised potential of artworks, only existing on a hard drive and that is therefore only experienced in the form of playback. The night before the opening of Sluice a local venue ‘Two Brews Bar’ hosted a night of experimental sound art as a teaser for the Biennial in which Kimbal performed a live remix beneath a projection as it moved across the vaulted ceiling of the venue, also a basement.

Sharon McDonagh is an artist whose practice I have previously described as forensic. In the years since working as a forensic artist for the police force she has turned her eye to architecture; constructing detailed canvases embedded with items taken from abandoned houses. Far from being the usual quaint depictions of whole buildings in relation to their surroundings, these canvases compact the psychological feeling of the house and construct small abstract memorials imbued with a sense of abandonment. The largest of the two pieces exhibited here is a fragment depicting a literal section of the Basement walls -removed from its context as part of the Basement and shipped down the country as an artwork for a different wall.

Last, but by no means least, Loane Bobillier; an international student via Switzerland and Singapore who exhibited at BasementArtsProject in March 2023, a few months before graduating from Leeds Arts University. For this project I asked Loane if she could think about the idea of what it means to make work post-university whilst trying to survive as a recent graduate from the arts. This could mean economical factors, access to equipment and materials and any other aspects that were an influence upon her work now. Again the skip diving comes in to play as a large bit of wooden pallet board is rescued from landfill only to become a double sided painting. Instead of throwing out plastic containers for bathroom products that might normally hold bleach, shampoo or other such materials, here they become armatures for mod roc, paint and gold leaf sculptures. Half filled with water and sealed into these artwork containers to retain an element of their former existence, yet also possibly referencing water as an item as precious as any artwork.

BasementArtsProject would like to thank:

Edek Thompson

Lou Hazelwood & Sabine Jeanne Bieli
Blank_ Gallery: Tom Poultney, Jaime Slater, Lydia Braithwaite

Loane Bobillier, Kimbal Bumstead, Lou Hazelwood, Jeffrey Knopf, Sharon McDonagh, Edward Mortimer, Cleo Nelson & Ruby Jean Waterhouse, Edek Thompson, Wendy Williams

Sluice Biennial: Karl England

And for their invaluable help up and down the country as well as packing up on the last day Lila Bobillier, Loane Bobillier, Veronique Bobillier, Conor Cleland