Crazy 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 MoreWhilst I always understood that Jacob’s Ladder would be a labour of love for both myself, as BasementArtsProject: the commissioning organisation, and for sculptor Keith Ackerman, I knew that it would definitely take longer than the one-hundred days of the Yorkshire Sculpture International 2019. But we never imagined the three year odyssey that it would become thanks to the C***d pandemic lockdowns.
Read MoreThe clock stopped at the time of birth; marking a transition between worlds as the first breath is drawn.
The anguished screams of birth, become the rhythmic sigh matching the cadence of a weary world
Read MoreFor the last few months I have been in discussion with artist Paul Digby about his latest sculpture project ‘Looking To The Future: Emily’, and talking about BasementArtsProject’s position as co-creator on it.
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 MoreBeneath the surface of the locked down world the oxygen is running low. The tiny life support capsules sustaining our presence in the airless vacuum of millions of hard-drives, can only sustain three dimensional life for so long. It is time to head for the surface, but not too rapidly.
Read MoreSo how do we get past the problem of perception, access and desire. Life is about dialogue, that is how we learn. We educate ourselves through experience, we find the edge of our zone of comfort and understanding and we push past it, through to what lies beyond.
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 MoreWhen we lose a sense of purpose we lose our sense of the future, and that is where hopelessness slips into the void and feeds our deepest fears. That is the point at which the sun sets never to rise again.
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 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 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.
Read MoreThe ‘Emergence’ exhibition looks at the energy that transforms material and gives new form to that which already exists. It is about the hand of the artist in the transformation process, the mind of the artist in the conception of the work and it is about the nature of the material being transformed.
Read MoreAs we emerge into a post-pandemic world, rubbing our eyes and blinking in the sunlight, the importance of the root system becomes apparent. The things that we thought may not survive did in fact just die back for an exceptionally long winter.
Read MoreThe question is how to achieve those elusive steps to improvement, how to train your vision on a new horizon and attempt to take people with you on that journey.
Read MoreA long time ago, on a project far, far away…
Read Morethere is something really fascinating about revisiting, reworking and stripping back. Sanding down the floor of the studio, peeling back layers of varnish and paint that had become caked on the floor was both an incredibly satisfying feeling - like cleaning a dirty kitchen and then seeing it sparkle
Read More. . . the fact that there is much art out there that most of us will never be able to experience firsthand does not mean that there is no point in trying to experience or understand it.
Read MoreThere is something rather disheartening about opening up my computer each day to a raft of reminders and notifications telling me that I should be installing, opening, taking down yet another exhibition that has not happened.
Read Morehe source material, a photo of a wrapped garden ornamental pedestal, was sent to me by my American pal and painter Peter Waite.
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