Leeds Met - Perhaps Nothing, Perhaps Something

I really liked seeing Cornelia Parker’s work at the Leeds Met Gallery. I could spend hours looking at it. The bricks looked suspended in time, like in her work with bits of earth and wood. The pieces look like they’re floating because your eyes focus on the objects and not on the wires. I liked how most of the bricks were so still and yet just a few were spinning round ever so slightly.

 

It was cool to see some of Rachael Whiteread’s work in real-life - casts of the space beneath six chairs. But I didn’t find it particularly exciting to look at. I think they’d be more engaging if you could touch them, sit on them and maybe move them around.

 

It could be argued that being able to touch a ‘work of art’ some how de-values it because it makes it less precious. If something is ‘un-touched by human hands’ it is more unique and people put more value on it. I guess in terms of artwork, it depends what sort of approach the artist wants people to have towards their work. If you can touch, hold or move a work, it is generally more accessible to a wider audience because interacting with something helps our understanding of it.

 

I’m generally against the idea of stopping people from touching artwork but obviously this can be quite a big sacrifice for an artist who may have spent a lot of money and time making whatever it is. I’m interested in the sort of work though that comes and goes, things you have to experience and can only be created once. Documentation becomes very important in these cases, even the choice of whether to document it or not can be very significant and may divide many artists.

 

PSL 195 Miles

I really like the space at Project Space Leeds. It’s large, which means artists can be ambitious, it has a distinct gallery feeling without being too clinical or ‘white cube’-like, it has public toilets and the large area outside the front is useful to take a step back from the work without feeling you’ve completely left the gallery. But I’m torn as to whether it’s in a good location or not. It’s near the city centre but not in it, there are car parks nearby but you have to pay, being out of the centre means it has the space but on foot it’s a bit out-of-the-way, which means it’s unlikely to get the passing general public.

 

The audiences PSL attracts are more likely to be people with their feet in the art scene, e.g. artists, designers, people who work with artists and designers, people who work in galleries, museums, cinemas, libraries, theatres, music venues (the sort of places you see arts events advertised) arts students (art, design, music, film, theatre, language, history etc.)

 

In the show 195 Miles I thought the work seemed fairly conceptual and made use of a wide variety of media. It felt as though it was geared towards the above sort of audiences who are more likely to be familiar with contemporary art than people not in those fields of work or who don’t have an interest in going to current exhibitions. 

Chorus at the Howard Assembly Room, at Opera North via the Grand Theatre

This installation was amazing! The group UVA was behind its creation along with Mira Calix who provided the music/audio for the work. It was in a large, barrel-vaulted ceiling room that almost appeared empty at first until you soon noticed the line of 8 intermittently flashing pendulums in front of you but suspended from above. I didn’t want to use a flash so the pictures I took 

haven’t come out very well but you kind of get an idea of how it looked. The mesmerising, swinging lights and peculiar sounds immediately drew you into the

 room but it was interesting to notice that if other people were standing under the pendulums then others would follow, but if no one was, then people tended to

 file into the room around the sides and not walk underneath 

them. The first time I saw it some children were there and seemed to love it. They weren’t at all afraid to run and follow the swinging of the lights backwards and forwards. The next time I went along, a man and a woman were lying on their backs looking up at the pendulums above them. This seemed quite an extreme way of observing than we’d normally socially expect but I was glad to see such an uninhibited approach to a work.

 

I imagine it possibly attracted people who worked in the immediate surrounding area because there were signs in the windows along the street. It would be have been a good place to go in your lunch break or after work just to chill out and escape the busyness of town or the boring-ness of work. I found it really relaxing to sit and watch and listen, I could have sat there all day.