Contains Space and Time
‘Contains Space and Time’ was a six week residency at The Great Medical Disaster, a temporary project space in central Manchester in 2017. In preparation for my time in the space I painted two sets of large cardboard packing boxes with the same imagery across all sides. Thinking about the ways in which many artist’s spaces had become the vacant shops and factories which landlords were struggling to fill across many cities, I wanted to investigate the precarious nature of this existence as a space for creativity. Alongside this attempt to capture something of the nature of the building I was working in I also invited a number of collaborators to spend varying amounts of time with me in the space. The premise of these collaborations would be that each would end with an exhibition of the work made together in the space for one night only.
My attempts to investigate the space resulted in a number of works including ‘Contains Space and Time Twice’, made with sculptor Precious Innes and a series of ‘Box Dances’ made alone. ‘Contains Space and Time Twice’ was made by setting up the two sets of prepared boxes side by side in as close to an identical arrangement as possible. Capturing each stage of our process with a camera on the far side of the room Precious and I took turns making a set of small changes of the arrangement of the boxes on our side of the room. When one of us had made our changes the other was obliged to replicate these changes as closely as possible to the boxes on their side. In this way we slowly moved the boxes across the room to meet the camera. after each pair of moves was completed I captured the results with a photo. The work is shown as a two channel film with an animation made from the set of photos taken looped on one screen and the real time film of the entire process on the other.
The ‘Box Dances’ I worked on alone were some of my earliest attempts to capture time and movement within the painted things I made. Again my camera was set up on one side of the room whilst a set of painted boxes were arranged near the wall on the far side. After clicking the ten second shutter release on my camera I would race to the other side of the room and get myself in position with the next small shift in the arrangement of boxes. The animations created contain time and space in a number of different ways.
Over the rest of my days at The Great Medical Disaster I was also joined by artists Emma Coop, Nicola Dale, Anthony Barkworth-Knight and Stephen Iles. I also allowed the space to be used by several other artists to come and experiment with their own work, independent of what I was doing, as well as allowing them to use the relatively clean large white walls as a backdrop for getting quality images of their work - something I always found a struggle to do in the studio spaces generally available.
My attempts to investigate the space resulted in a number of works including ‘Contains Space and Time Twice’, made with sculptor Precious Innes and a series of ‘Box Dances’ made alone. ‘Contains Space and Time Twice’ was made by setting up the two sets of prepared boxes side by side in as close to an identical arrangement as possible. Capturing each stage of our process with a camera on the far side of the room Precious and I took turns making a set of small changes of the arrangement of the boxes on our side of the room. When one of us had made our changes the other was obliged to replicate these changes as closely as possible to the boxes on their side. In this way we slowly moved the boxes across the room to meet the camera. after each pair of moves was completed I captured the results with a photo. The work is shown as a two channel film with an animation made from the set of photos taken looped on one screen and the real time film of the entire process on the other.
The ‘Box Dances’ I worked on alone were some of my earliest attempts to capture time and movement within the painted things I made. Again my camera was set up on one side of the room whilst a set of painted boxes were arranged near the wall on the far side. After clicking the ten second shutter release on my camera I would race to the other side of the room and get myself in position with the next small shift in the arrangement of boxes. The animations created contain time and space in a number of different ways.
Over the rest of my days at The Great Medical Disaster I was also joined by artists Emma Coop, Nicola Dale, Anthony Barkworth-Knight and Stephen Iles. I also allowed the space to be used by several other artists to come and experiment with their own work, independent of what I was doing, as well as allowing them to use the relatively clean large white walls as a backdrop for getting quality images of their work - something I always found a struggle to do in the studio spaces generally available.
