We sit around in the MA seminar space trying to come up with a title for this group exhibition. The students have some words like ETHEREAL and MATTER and we ask AI but it comes up with frankly ridiculous suggestions. ETHEREAL MATTER it is then, but with the first E faded out to suggest it’s THE REAL MATTER. What does it mean?
Entering the basement of 28 Back Burton Terrace is an unexpected and very singular experience. More than just a basement it is something closer to the wardrobe entrance to Narnia; behind an unassuming door, down a narrow cobwebby flight of stairs lies a world of experience and ideas.
Upon entering ‘The Basement’ the first thing you encounter is someone trying to zip themselves into a suitcase accompanied by the bold statement ‘Pack Your Shit and LEAVE’, scrawled on the wall as if in anger or madness. Welcome to the surreal absurdist world of Phee Jeffreries.
Whilst ‘The Living Tomb’ looked at ideas around memorialisation and the central premise that in the midst of life we are in death, The Frog brought in a much different angle, if you will a form of exposure therapy.
Helen Wood takes the mirror of concern and presents a series of works highlighting the nature of consumption, material production and the paradox that is the notion of green growth.
‘Traumas of The Flesh’ looks at feminist issues and their impact on mental health. For this exhibition Mo Robertson builds an immersive environment containing a series of sculptures made from textiles and casting material.
Gatekeepers of The Body is an exhibition by Middleton based Artist Annabelle Richmond-Wright. It is also the first stage of a public sculpture project, the second in four stages designed to revive the fortunes of our community here in South Leeds
Visual art is also a language, one which many people would suggest that they “don’t understand” but, I would argue, that it allows for a form of dialogue between people that the spoken word does not encourage.
It is the position of BasementArtsProject when commissioning projects, to do so in such a way that allows a project room to grow and develop over time. In doing so it allows a multitude of reference points to emerge; the intention of the artist, the purpose of BasementArtsProject and the needs of the audience.
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.
Artists Ruby Jean Waterhouse and Cleo Milly Nelson have come together for Sluice Biennial to produce We Are Bodies Apart, a multimedia exploration into how we can communicate with, and through water.
Born in 1969, Sharon is a York based artist strongly influenced by past experiences, current social issues with a hint of nostalgia. Sharon uses a variety of medium from spray paint and emulsion, to plaster and items that have been rescued and ‘acquired’ from undisclosed locations.
A key aspect to the work I do as an artist is thinking through making. Ideas do not come from nowhere; seeds are planted at some point, carried through the air and land somewhere somehow, perhaps unexpectedly.
The basement space, below ground level, had a buried feeling. In the semi-darkness the noises of the world outside were subdued, heightened the senses. I became aware of a hole in one of the walls, close to floor level. An old fireplace? Certainly a conduit of some kind and leading to the upper levels of the house, possibly beyond, to the outside world.
Despite my advancing years, I still cling naively to the belief that some things must sit outside of our accepted economic system, and that other ways must be found to ensure that everybody can afford to live. After all, the system that we have lived under for a long time now has never seemed to work.
And so in the darkness of the winter months of 2024, we open our programme for the year with an exhibition that creates a sense of place, whilst also being somehow dislocated from the realm of the real world.
The Metaphorical Museum really exists, we just don’t realise it. Just like our memories It exists in a place where time, the 4th dimension, collapses and inhabits the 3 dimensions of physical space. It is a place of invention, innovation, excavation, examination and learning.
