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.
Read MoreVisual 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.
Read MoreAnd 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.
Read MoreThe 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
Read More…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.
Read MoreRoute Motif represents a first for the artist Chloe Harris and another first for Basement. Chloe is a young artist at the very beginning of her career, educated at Exeter School of Art, and who has recently become a full member of the Society of Women Artists. Over the last three years she has exhibited as an Associate Member in their Annual Group Exhibitions. Her show at BasementArtsProject represents her first solo project as an artist.
Read MoreThe exhibition ‘Squaring the Circle’ by Loane Bobillier comes at a point where we can look back at National and International events of recent years and question our place within the framework of a rapidly changing society.
Read MoreCrazy Eddie can often be found sat in his local coffee shop with a random object before him on the table. The job of understanding comes from observation. Edward Mortimer has been creating sculptural artworks for some thirty years. His works are simultaneously humorous, nightmarish and weird but crucially, always well observed.
Read More‘Decompressed Time Frames’ (the exhibition formerly known as ‘Compressed Time Frames’) opens with the extension of a work begun as part of the 2017 Leeds Light Night, in which Bradley mobilised his audience, attached by an unsafe rock climbers rope, and traversed the city from art venue to art venue.
Read MoreSo, 2023 is still a thing; by which I mean Leeds2023. Despite the fact that Brexit put paid to any opportunity for UK cities to present their wares on a European stage, Leeds has committed itself to ensuring that 2023 remains an important year for the city in terms of culture; despite the funding and exposure being cut off by political dispute.
Read MoreIt is hardly surprising, that since reopening BasementArtsProject in August, the nature of the exhibitions have been somewhat political. Pushing through a time of great turmoil and upheaval as we are doing right now, things that have been bubbling under for a long time have quite predictably and reasonably come to the surface.
Read MoreDuring the Lockdown I received an update from the studio of Yol, and just before I left another video update arrived in which he appeared to be trapped inside the Coronaverse. I shall leave you with his emergency transmission.
Read MoreAt the studio in which I have spent the last four days, I pack up my things for the final time and prepare to head for the Torhaus. Today is the opening of the exhibition ‘Meine Welt Auf Corona’ and as soon as it is done I have to head back to the station so that I can catch my train home.
Read MoreToday is essentially a free day. With the exhibition now fully installed and all of the tech stuff working properly, I can spend the day taking in some art elsewhere. I have arranged to meet Sylvia and Christiane at the Dusseldorf U building.
Read MoreMoving out of lockdown, the world is opening up, a chasm to be filled by STEM courses at Universities where the arts are systematically destroyed in an attempt to keep the economy going.
Read MoreThursday 22nd October
Today I am meeting Viennese artists Christiana Spatt and Maria Hanl at the Torhaus. Maria’s work is a film piece and has already been installed, Christiane is a painter and photographer and her work is the final piece in the Corona jigsaw.
Read MoreYesterday in a special edition of the Lockdown Journal, we updated you on the status of the ‘Compressed Time Frames’ exhibition by ArtCouple, and today I bring you some material by Abdullah Adekola, poet and founder of the Black led and Leeds based poetry collective ‘Say It. With Your Chest’. We hope to be working with Adekola in the very near future, watch this space.
Read MoreMan is not rational; only what encompasses him is intelligent
Read MoreToday, I depart for the Industrial Rhineland of Westphalia, specifically the city of Dortmund for an exhibition entitled ‘Meine Welt Auf Corona’ (My World After Corona).
Read MoreThe work of Lou Hazelwood and Chris Graham, when working as a duo, seeks to make sense of the slippage from one political and philosophical state to another.
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