Working Beyond The Realm of Experience

Ten years ago I was approached by London based artists Patrick Morrissey and Hanz Hancock, the duo behind the curatorial project Saturation Point. In January 2015 we launched their exhibition Other Rooms featuring the work of ten artists, all of whose work was viewed by the light that they emitted.

A decade later three of the original artists return with the addition of one new artist and another set of illuminating works. 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.

Patrick and Hanz, who often work together under the Saturation Point moniker, once again bring the darkness to BasementArtsProject and a selection of work that is at once minimal yet intensely immersive. The slowly morphing geometric shapes of the Saturation Point projection piece Red Stripe Blue provides the majority of light for this exhibition, whilst the work of Ian Thompson provides none whatsoever being solely audio work.

These two works taken together ask some interesting questions about the volumetric qualities of artworks, especially those that work in a de-materialised way such as digital and sound art. Ian’s work in terms of physicality amounts to a pair of self-built speakers, a Raspberry Pi for playback and a chair. Barely visible in the space if it were not for the beam created by the Saturation Point projector, his work arguably has more presence than a physical sculpture. Whilst object based sculpture takes up a fixed amount of real-world space, audio work depending on non-object based variables such as volume and frequencies can occupy spaces far beyond the constraints of  physical works of art. In fact whilst the volume of sound can be raised to the point that it can fill other rooms, neighbouring buildings, streets etcetera, it could also be seen to be working on a molecular level affecting objects through vibration (Cymatics) or a psychological level, altering peoples perception, as can be seen when sound is used in warfare. The research to try and find the frequencies of the elusive ‘Brown Sound’ shows how the vibration aspect could be used to exert certain types of physiological change on the human system as well, becoming another aspect of warfare.

Underground Lift is a work that uses a collage of sound recordings produced by different sources; some man-made, others, naturally occurring phenomena such as the Aeolian Harp. During the installation of this work, there was a point at which we took a break and sat around the kitchen table discussing the volume over coffee. At one point I had to ask if a trumpeter had wandered into the recording and started playing ‘Reveille’. At this point Ian told the story of a walk   in the Isle of Sheppey were he had perceived the phenomenon of the wind passing over hollow fence posts producing these sounds. These sounds are resolved in the recording in the form of what seems like a mournful trumpet voluntary. Other sounds throughout this 11minute loop produce different affects through perception in this predominantly dark space; some visitors finding the work calming whilst others found it sinister and unsettling.

Red Stripe Blue by Saturation Point is thoroughly hypnotic in its slowly morphing geometric shapes looping over and over in infinite space. Once again work produced or reproduced in the virtual world of the hard-drive begs questions around the possibilities of scale. Whist this work was reduced down to a size that fits on a DVD the work itself was designed in such a format that it could also be expanded to fit the exteriors of large buildings. Here in the Basement, the work takes up a large section of wall at the back of the Basement. The 2015 Other Rooms exhibition featured the work of ten artists whilst Lost Portals features only three works by four artists, yet there is no intensity lost in this reduction in the quantity of material. The combination of Ian’s sound and Saturation Point’s projection work so comprehensively together in the space, despite having been made independently of each other for separate purposes, that any more would be too much.

This applies also to how the works respond to the only other work in The Basement for this exhibition. Sarah Sparkes’ work is small but in no way slight by comparison. Sarah’s work draws a line backwards in time to 2015’s ‘Other Rooms’ for which she created ‘Flue’: an Infinity Tunnel in the fireplace. Sparkes’ Great Grandfather had been a magic lanternist and her discovery of his slides, damaged by time and environment, sparked further investigation of optical illusion through the means of light and mirrors. One particular image took on a significant relevance in relation to the ‘Lost Portals’ exhibition.

In the image a woman stands next to an empty fireplace holding a baby. She is stood with her back to the viewer staring at what should be the wall of the room. The wall though has disappeared and has been replaced by a dramatic seascape, at the centre of which but far off in the distance is a fire, presumably a boat. Is this some kind of Extra Sensory Perception? a vision perhaps: has the woman left holding the baby lost her husband in a fire at sea? The empty fireplace suggests that the homely warmth has been extinguished by flames at sea. The box that Sarah has created around this decaying image on glass also refers to the past of her own work as well as that of her grandfather.

Looking deeper into the box one finds another infinity tunnel hiding behind the image, once again disappearing, this time off into time and space. On the wall below the Infinite Magic Lantern Box, around shin level, is the fireplace in which Sarah had created the original infinity tunnel ‘Flue’ nearly ten years ago. Now it stands empty, quite obviously only a matter of a foot deep leading to no hitherto undiscovered magical realm, a source of bewilderment to all who looked into it. Up above; on the mantlepiece, a memory, a hint of the past or the future, or maybe both compressed into a single frame that loops forever and ever and ever and ever ad infinitum…

Bruce Davies | April 2024