A Screen Near You
After being invited to show work at HOME Manchester’s Granada Foundation Galleries I asked if it would be possible to transform the two month exhibition period into residency within the space. Because the building is a busy multi-purpose venue the condition of working in there was that it happened outside of normal opening hours. I spent eight weeks working in the gallery space from 7am until things started to get busy, at around 10-11am.
Because the building hosts a gallery space, several cinema screens a theatre and a busy restaurant and bar, I wanted to use my time there to investigate the relationship between these spaces. How the walls in the gallery relate to the screen in the cinema, how the floors in the bar area relate to the stages and performance areas, and more generally how things being shown on a wall differs from presenting them on a stage or performance area.
On floor one I made a series of double sided painted panels (which referred at once to landscape painting and 70s minimalist sculpture) and a hanging system on the gallery wall which allowed each panel to fit in any space whilst maintaining the sense of one large painting. The work became at once painting, sculptural installation and a site of performance. Each morning I would arrange and rearrange the elements on the wall, documenting the changes in arrangement towards making a series of animations as part of a larger film. On floor two I installed three hanging paintings which I could step into, transforming them into wearable sculptures, in which I explored the limits and limitations of moving inside these painted, wall bound forms. The resulting film was shown on one of HOME’s cinema screens for one night only.
Because the building hosts a gallery space, several cinema screens a theatre and a busy restaurant and bar, I wanted to use my time there to investigate the relationship between these spaces. How the walls in the gallery relate to the screen in the cinema, how the floors in the bar area relate to the stages and performance areas, and more generally how things being shown on a wall differs from presenting them on a stage or performance area.
On floor one I made a series of double sided painted panels (which referred at once to landscape painting and 70s minimalist sculpture) and a hanging system on the gallery wall which allowed each panel to fit in any space whilst maintaining the sense of one large painting. The work became at once painting, sculptural installation and a site of performance. Each morning I would arrange and rearrange the elements on the wall, documenting the changes in arrangement towards making a series of animations as part of a larger film. On floor two I installed three hanging paintings which I could step into, transforming them into wearable sculptures, in which I explored the limits and limitations of moving inside these painted, wall bound forms. The resulting film was shown on one of HOME’s cinema screens for one night only.
