Camp Out: Finding Home in an Unstable World

June 2 – September 16, 2012

Camp Out: Finding Home in an Unstable World is the third in a series of summer projects that will use the natural and cultural resources of St. Louis as a site for artistic inquiry and production. The artists invited for Camp Out will conduct “action research” to comment on, add to or question the unique history of the St. Louis region and of the role artist’s play in addressing urgent social questions. The title Camp Out suggests the two extremes of living in the landscape. For some, camping is a deliberate “back-to-nature” experience precluded in our urbanized world. For other past and present global citizens, however, displacement from home and finding basic resources for living is a great struggle.

Laumeier will animate its public spaces by presenting artists whose practice addresses long-neglected issues of concern in our region, such as the disappearance of “public space”, the conversion of arable agricultural land for suburban sprawl or industrial use, the isolation that comes with suburban living and the persistent social and economic divisions between racial groups caused through the mechanisms of history. Artists for this project will work off of ancient and contemporary forms of human shelter, using new materials and processes to create unique sculptural forms. The resulting works will encompass shapes deeply rooted in nature to those that use new technologies to engage the aural and visual landscapes that say something about the way we live—or need to live—now. These projects will unpack a range of American myths, from the self-sufficiency of the rugged individual to the sense of land as empty and conquerable, where resource extraction is without consequence. This project signals a refreshed direction for Laumeier’s artistic goals, and will allow artists a unique opportunity to experiment with space. 

Artists for the project include: BGL: Jasmin Bilodeau, Sébastien Giguère, and Nicolas Laverdière (Canada), Oliver Bishop-Young (UK), Cyprien Gaillard (France), Isabelle Hayeur (Canada), Edgar Martins (UK), Mary Mattingly (USA), Michael Rakowitz (USA), Emily Speed (UK), Dré Wapenaar (the Netherlands), Yin Xiuzhen (China), Kim Yasuda (USA).

The fear of place and the manifestation of this in contemporary art is the territory for TOPOPHOBIA. As an anxiety disorder, this phobia is understood as an irrational dread of certain places or situations, yet, considered as a cultural phenomenon topophobia connects us to the existential human question of how each of us finds our place in the world. The exhibition and related publication take a look at the representation of place and space as threatened or threatening.

TOPOPHOBIA is a group show featuring the work of ten UK and international artists. The range of media and approaches is wide. Anne Eggebert makes detailed drawings derived from images on Google Earth; Matthias Einhoff uses high-end corporate video techniques to make a spectacle of an urban wasteland; David Ferrando Giraut creates a state of anxiety with his filmic pan of the aftermath of a car accident; Polly Gould constructs distorted topographical watercolours reflected in the surface of a globe; Marja Helander depicts herself out of place between her two cultures of contemporary Finland and Sami nomadic heritage; Uta Kogelsberger reveals uncanny night visions of urban and desert America in her photographs; Almut Rink appropriates the 3D software used by architects to take the viewer on an imaginary journey in a virtual space; Abigail Reynolds exposes disjointed time and place in her use of old book illustrations in collages and assemblage. Emily Speed houses her body in a fortress made from shutters; and Louise K Wilson uses sound derived from her work at a previously top secret Cold War testing site.

Cornerhouse Manchester
14 January – 19 February 2012

Jon Barralough · Mark Beecroft · Andrea Booker · Eileen O’Rourke · Jessa Fairbrother · Richard Proffitt · Lucy Ridges · Emily Speed · Cherry Tenneson

Cornerhouse is delighted to present Lost is Found, a group show of nine artists’ work exploring the beauty of the disposed in Gallery 1. Curated and developed by the Creative Stars, 19 talented young people from the Greater Manchester region, the exhibition examines the themes of rebirth, identity and fragility which are discovered through a range of visual art media including sculpture, photography, and drawing.

Lost is Found provokes the audience to engage with the art, leaving the works open to interpretation rather than providing answers to unmask the mysteries and illusions on display.

Featured works include Emily Speed’s egg, nest, home, country, universe, a glimpse into the dual life of buildings as physical shelters and containers for memory. Split Milk from Andrea Booker reinvents abandoned signage from demolished buildings, recreating subliminal comments. Richard Proffitt’s Louisiana Blues Anywhere is an absurd totem of the modern world that has been inspired by biker and teenage subculture, the hinterlands of suburban Britain and the ghost towns of Western America. Jon Barracough’s All or Nothing drawings explore the way in which images emerge from the traces that all living things leave behind, whilst Lucy Ridges’ photographic practice is a visual expression of all that can be imaginatively derived from our everyday thoughts and subconscious mind.

The works demonstrate a displacement of identity, relics of childhood, secret desires, fragments of memories and traces of history, reinforcing the idea that the redundant and the discarded, the lost, can be rediscovered, reborn, and made beautiful again – found.

I’m very happy to say I shall be in a group show ‘Topophobia’ at Danielle Arnaud Gallery (opening January 12th), which tours to the Bluecoat, Liverpool in March and to Spacex, Exeter in May.

I’m also making some work for a project at artist Jo Ball‘s house in London, which will open in late January.

Lastly, I will be making a new version of ‘Inhabitant’ (it was going to happen eventually) for an exhibition called ‘Camp Out’ at Laumeier Sculpture Park in St Louis, summer 2012.

The very very last copies of some my remaining artists’ books will be on sale with Hot Bed Press at The Manchester Contemporary this weekend. Slow Magic, A House Like Me and Lost at Sea will be there. I’m helping out on Sunday afternoon if you want to pop in and say hi!

Sluice Art Fair

15th & 16th October 2011, 12 – 10pm

26 South Molton Lane, Mayfair London, W1K 5AB

Home, Core Gallery

7th-15th October  2011
Preview: Thursday 6th October 2011, 6:30-8:30pm

Lucy Austin, Delaine Le Bas, Carolyn Lefley, Graham Crowley,Rosalind Davis, Peter Davis, Kate Murdoch ,Freddie Robins, Emily Speed, Annabel Tilley, Rich White and Rose Wylie

The work I’m showing will be drawings of scratch built constructions and these have been inspired by the puzzle gardens and the cottages built by the mine workers in Wirksworth. Using local materials and building on available land, the cottages sit back to back and make a tightly knit, higgledy piggledy community. It’s an amazing place.

I also have to thank Helen Moore for her support and input over the last two years, she’s become a good friend as well as a rock! Lastly, but most importantly, my thanks goes to the curator who worked on my exhibition, Sarah Coulson who has been a pleasure to work with. Her advice, company, humour, fanatical type-setting and enthusiasm have been invaluable. I feel incredibly fortunate to have realised my first solo show with such brilliant support and in the incredible setting of the Bothy Gallery at Yorkshire Sculpture Park. It’s on until September 18th.