Beware of Artists, they mix with all classes of society’
A popular meme from the internet of today allegedly has its origins in a warning from King Leopold of Belgium to Queen Victoria, when in 1845 he wrote
‘dealings with artists, for instance, require great prudence; they are acquainted with all classes of society, and for that reason are dangerous; they are hardly ever satisfied, and when you have too much to do with them, you are sure to have des ennuis’
Considering my two favourite childhood books were about Italy and opera respectively, travelling to Italy to study 19th century guitar was not a surprising move.
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.
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.
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
Discovery perches at the edge of a precipice, beyond which a void beckons. What would happen if one day we discovered the secrets of the human brain. Would we understand ourselves differently? Would such knowledge fry our circuitry and destroy our consciousness such as it is now?
…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.
2023 was, for me, a tale of two birthdays. It was the year that I turned fifty-one and resigned from my job of nineteen years with the Henry Moore Institute. It also represented thirty-four years, to the day, since I took on my first proper job, beyond a paper round, with Sainsbury’s.
Route 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.
After an expensive education in ballet, another cataclysmic shift in the ever failing world economy sent the fictional character of Fatima towards a dispiriting life of drudgery, in a career that she did not train for and most likely did not want.
The 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.
Art often points out the direction of travel; for imagination is the precursor of discovery. Without imagination there would be no discovery, and without discovery no progress.
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.
And, as if responding to Crazy Eddie’s demands, muscles twitch and groan, eyes and mouth open simultaneously ushering forth a guttural roar: a roar expressing physical pain, or the existential howl of a recombinant form returning to sentience from that place beyond life that we know as death?
If there is one thing that the pandemic lockdown has taught us, it is that many people thrive on interaction, community, collaboration and so many of those words that could be misconstrued as trendy buzzwords for the times.
Since the Decompressed Time Frames installation and performance in April this year, we have been quietly developing the performance possibilities of the work and trying to address the issue of archiving the impossible.
Whilst 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.
