Does Humour Belong in Art?

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.

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Gatekeepers of The Body/I've Got You, You've Got Me

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

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Born At The Kitchen Table

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.

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Diving In The Cool Depths Of A ‘Wine Dark Sea’

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.

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Sharon McDonagh | Preserving The Past

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. 

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Kimbal Bumstead |ReMake ReUse. ReImagine

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.

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Sarah Sparkes: Lost Portals

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.

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Hit The Deck! Doors Closing,Lift Going Down…

Ian Thomson reflects on the nature of his sound work ‘Underground Lift’ and the connection between the inner ear and the Holbeck interchange.

‘Lost Portals’ continues at BasementArtsProject until Friday 26th April. There will also be a Lunchtime Conversation event on this day.

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Work is Dead! Long Live Work!

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.

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Working Beyond The Realm of Experience

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.

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Neuland, Familiar Longing: Griet Beyeart & Silvia Liebig’s ‘Junction’

Place was perhaps the key theme underpinning Griet Beyeart and Silvia Liebig’s 2023 exhibition, ‘Junction’. Consisting of an installation and video art, with an aural landscape created by Beyeart, the exhibition was part of Liebig’s ongoing ‘Neuland’ project.

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Junction: a point where two or more things are joined.

Residents of South Leeds may remember Silvia Liebig from her time spent here in 2019, just before the outbreak of the pandemic. As part of East Streets Arts long running Artist House 45 residency project (2015-19), that also included Lloyd&Wilson, She was a resident of the house during 2019.

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Excavating The Future

The unusual texture of printed plastic, slightly warped due to AI filling in gaps, allow onlookers to discern between works cast in pewter and jesmonite. These ‘copies’ of works usually guarded behind glass evoke cultural memory yet leave viewers with a sense of remembrance just out of reach

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That Which We Thought We Knew: The studio practice of Jeffrey Knopf

…my process is a hit and run technique, I can be anywhere and I might see something that grabs my attention, a shape a form that is different so like a photographer I want to capture that moment but instead of it being two dimensional it’s in the three dimensional realm.

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