Exhibition press release:
The Shipley Gallery is a provincial museum founded at the beginning of the twentieth century around a large bequest of paintings; it now also houses a significant contemporary craft collection. Upon arrival as artist in residence in October 2004, I found a basement room of boxes - contents unknown, having slipped through the cracks of curatorial change.
I was drawn to unpack the boxes as a way of exploring the essence of the creative process: how can mundane activity transcend the everyday to manifest the human spirit? I also saw the activity as a kind of drawing – the translation of energy and material from the dark interior of the museum to a place of vision and light, through the physical vehicle of the artist.
I imposed standards such as the requirement to handle and dust every item in the room. My workspace was far from the main hub of the museum, seldom visited and too low to stand up in. To escape the discomfort and obscurity of my task I created a portable image and text archive documenting my discoveries: this was enthusiastically received by nine writers’ groups around the region as inspiration for creative writing and poetry.
The boxes contained museum office detritus from the 1920’s through to the 1980’s. Early handwritten gallery records embodied a quality of care; dusting them was like removing a film of dirt obscuring something essential that has been forgotten. My favourite find was slides of the Apollo moon landing: it is one thing to view the earth on TV, quite another to hold it deep underground on a slide, like an astronaut’s holiday snap.
To complete the task I transformed a storeroom midway between the main gallery and my workspace; a windowless, damp, oppressive tomb it was once the home of the gallery caretaker. Visitors were invited to unwrap a selection of items and make notes on their find. The colourful installation, selection of objects and musty smell combined to create an atmosphere of quiet reflection - ‘rather like a chapel of rest’ as one visitor remarked.
The exhibition was open for 5 days and attracted 58 visitors. On Thursday visitor numbers were low as it rained in torrents all day.
The residency was supported by Gateshead Council, Gateshead College and project managed by David Goard.
