Olga Koroleva’s short films combining footage from all the artists’ work are also now available to watch online. They beautifully capture the evolution of the exhibitions over time, picking up on key moments in each piece.

You can find the WAKE film and publication and the ARCHIPELAGO film and publication on Artsadmin’s blog Artsonline. The apps are available from iTunes.

…

I wanted something that involved time and distance — and finally I arrived at this 100 kilometers of river and 20 hours of duration.

Anne Bean

Listen to the interview in full on the Theatre Voice website.

Image: Detail from “The Crow who didn’t know…”, Claire Blundell Jones’ contribution to ARCHIPELAGO. Photo by Laura Milnes

…

VD: What brought you to curate WAKE?

AB: I don’t see it as curating but as initiating a concept. I wanted to create a dialogue and exchange about ownership, collective process, where a work begins or ends, materiality itself and the non-verbal transmission of ideas.

VD: The WAKE concept seems a peculiar idea. Where does it come from and have you got knowledge of any other artists attempting a similar project?

AB: I like ‘peculiar’ and, no— I haven’t heard of anyone else attempting anything similar.

VD: What inspired you?

AB: Many exhibitions that I’ve seen and dwelt on, wanting to directly continue with the work I had witnessed.

VD: How much does it reflect or relate to any of your personal artistic approach? Does WAKE come as a conclusion to your practice?

AB: I don’t have conclusions. WAKE is very much part of my central beliefs in overlap, connectivity and work in progress challenging chronological time. It is a backwards and forwards interaction: visible tracks of turbulence.

VD: Seeing that each artist had to choose their successor, it feels to me like a sort of promotional event of new talent. How much do you agree?

AB: This is not new talent. These are all artists with track records. Promotion is not a concept I’m at home with although I’m very happy if it leads to new work situations.

VD:  Was anything said beforehand in selecting artists?

AB: Obviously I gave a brief synopsis of the ethos of the work but we never met and talked.

VD: Any guidelines?

AB: No guidelines, just the brief synopsis.

VD:  Besides the fact that each artist’s – You, Cobbing, Cotterrell, Weiler, Lowe and Buckeridge – collaboration in WAKE is by definition ‘Art’, where in the curating process does it relate to Art?

AB: It is not a curating process, it is a conceptual process and thereby directly relates to art.

VD: What is the purpose of WAKE and what is its message?

AB: There is no purpose or message, in any direct sense. It is a questioning, an experiment, an exploration in which, i hope, most of the witnesses can participate.

Image: Dilston Grove, empty. Photo by Laura Milnes

By Flavia Malim 

Under the cool shadow of the trees I enter Dilston Grove and exchange weather related comments with the girl on the desk, who recognises me, this having been my at least my fifth visit. I lean on the heavy wooden door and it gives way, letting me into a brightly illuminated alcove and making the rest of the unlit space pitch dark. My eyes adjust and I see a flickering film covering the whole of the far wall like an altarpiece or a stained glass window. It’s a silent movie with a painterly, watercolour quality, glimmering and  cycling through intense but subtle washes of green, red and blue. Composed like a still life; two ladders form a cross, lying at a 45 degree angle, reminiscent of the crucifixion. The black rubbish bags from last week rest between the ladders like the rock blocking the tomb of Jesus. This work is the first I have seen in this exhibition to reference the origins of the site as a church.  A moving, meditative piece, it responds beautifully to the previous work, embracing the strange fruit of the previous week.

In the Cafe Gallery, the artists continue to expand towards each other, tentatively invading each other’s spaces. Four tentacles of red rope are Unravelling, reaching out to Florence Peake, Helena Bryant, Caroline Wilkinson and Zoe Mendelson. A hank of Helena Goldwater’s hair hides behind the door to Graeme Miller’s Conjunction. Large chunks of Audience Chamber jigsaw cover two walls approaching Zoe Mendelson’s wall drawing. Helena Bryant sleeps on her pile of boulders, head resting on her suitcase, while Michelle Griffiths serenades us – her songs and tree branches reaching and growing to the welcome desk. Five shelves now signal Fiona Templeton’s presence, each holding piles of booklets. In the foyer, The Crow who didn’t knowhas poured forth a flock of sheets of unknowing.

Despite the growth, a feeling of cautiousness hangs in the air, and a lack of acknowledgement of the presence of the other. The Cafe Gallery remains an archipelago. Isolated castaways stare out to sea but appear to be looking down the wrong end of the telescope. No challenges have been made, no invasions, no piracy, but no mergers or marriages either. It’s a polite hatter’s tea party, rather than a mutiny on the high seas. I longed for Long John Silver to make an entrance and indulge in a bit of looting and kidnapping.

…

Image: WAKE Week 5 – Rachel Lowe. Photo by Laura Milnes.

By Diana Damian

The two exhibitions taking place in tandem, at Dilston Grove and Cafe Gallery, present a challenge to the usual restrictions imposed by curated exhibitions. On one hand, WAKE presents a structure where six artists inhabit the gallery one after the other, using traces from the previous work to develop material for the space. Initiated by Anne Bean, each artist was invited to invite their next, creating an inherent relational dialogue. In ARCHIPELAGO, Gary Stevens invited fourteen artists to co-habit one space for the duration of the exhibition, producing work collectively without being required to directly interact.

The results, in both cases, are surprising, engaging and bring a particular level of anticipation, involving the audience directly into the process, easing them into a particular engagement with the development of the work. Anne Bean began the process in WAKE by rolling out a hundred kilometres of yellow ribbon into the high, concrete and abstract space of Dilston Grove. Whilst her followers, William Cobbling and David Cotterrell both employed projection and sculpture to interact with the material and develop performative installations, it is Carl von Weiler whose I found particularly striking. Instead of carrying on the legacy and developing the aesthetic life of the yellow ribbon, he packs it all into a series of packages suspended from the ceiling. The space is completely transformed, dominated by a series of nests of heavy black fabric, tied with industrial rope and suspended from the top of the former church at different heights. It is dramatic, emotive and highly engaging work, dominating and changing the architecture of the space- giant nests, like alien eggs waiting to break out in a forgotten concrete palace. Their weight, texture and the creaking sound of the wood bars that holds them in place make for a uniquely atmospheric environment, whilst also interrupting a conceptual trajectory that has formed at Dilston Grove.

In ARCHIPELAGO, it strikes me that the opposite happened; in this communal process of creation, works seemed to be more disparate than coherent, cacophonic yet evocative nevertheless. Walk into Cafe Gallery and you’ll come across such a variety of works that you’ll feel like entering a foreign landscape, paved with signs which at first you’re to read individually – only as an organic map. Where WAKE seems inviting in its process, ARCHIPELAGO seems to be more isolating as time goes by, as a community of works is formed that feels more insular- this in itself is a fascinating phenomenon. What to make of Emma Benson’s Unravelling, a performance art installation where her hair feeds down a colourful tube like a tree with growing roots, in close proximity to Frog Morris & Lee Campbell’s I Love Ducks/I Like Duck, a brilliantly witty piece inviting audience members to write on a post it either a message to celebrate ducks, or a recipe for cooking duck. Whilst you’re writing your thoughts on the yellow post its, Emma Benson’s roots reach your feet, growing and growing throughout the gallery until they reach another organic installation, Michelle Griffith’s Human Folk Bird. A couch sits in the corner of the space, filled by a landscape of trees and flowers; nestled among the branches are collected folk songs from all around the world. And opposite this is Graeme Miller’s Conjuction, a seminar between a series of speakers and microphones, a statement about voice, absence and responsibility.

In their dialogue, WAKE and ARCHIPELAGO chart an interesting shifting geography of forms of collective artistic practice and audience engagement. Of course, the curatorial certainly comes into play, in the form of two opposing structures that feed off each other in spite of their distance of concept and space. ARCHIPELAGO’s apparent cacophony is as engaging as Wake’s progressive cycle of works. The ribbon laid out in the beginning forms the key material of work, whereas Archipelago is more dictated by the local geography and the implied and even forced proximity of the works; their discrepancies become strengths when the work is viewed as a collective effort.

Occupying Southwark Park, WAKE and ARCHIPELAGO relate to their local landscape but also change the space geographically, marking out a collective experiment that relates directly to its architectural landscape. The two different forms of continuity inherent in each exhibition exist and engage in tandem, drawing out a series of landmarks that will, in turn, leave their mark in this South London park. The two exhibitions are far more than curatorial exercises, they exploit and explore ways of making without being shy of the consequences of their structures, and this does not only make for engaging work, but also for strategies for a different, altermodern artistic practice.

…

ARCHIPELAGO continues in Cafe Gallery until Sunday 17th July, 12-6pm daily.

Image:

Fifth and penultimate artist, Rachel Lowe turned Dilston Grove into abysmal darkness. Amplifying the dramatic undertone that Carl Von Weiler had previously set, the only remains of the previous artists’ physical presence are pasted on the rear wall: it is a projected, flickering image, of a pile, “a “funeral pyre”, the artist later explains. Using video to reflect the intangible, Rachel Lowe tells Victor Delvecchio why she has taken everything away.  

…

VD: When we first spoke I remember you had difficulties, did you overcome the problem?

RL: I did first think of a slide projection using still images. The problem was that I was focusing on the architecture of the church and realised that it was too difficult. Once I started filming it, I liked it very much. The “pyre” is quite difficult to understand, it has a presence but it takes a while to understand the different layers within the video. Using a still image would have been too still. I think it adds something more complex to the representation.

VD: Aside from the video there isn’t a single trace of what’s been done before.

RL: I have gathered together everything physical, objects that the artists used in the past four weeks. I have made a big pile, a reference to a funeral pyre and then I am either filming it or photographing it. It appeared as a slide on the wall. Then I have removed all the objects; they will be present but not present at the same time.

It totally changed the space but without actually putting anything in it and it was very exciting to take the actual objects away. Although seeing the projection and the object at the same time was interesting too, it was important to see that the video that appears on the wall “is about” the pile; I wanted the presence of the objects in the projection. Depth has been collapsed onto one image and I am very interested in how mind perceives the different layers; I want people to be aware of the space; I am filming it in the space and then I am removing it.

The image is now just one long single shot, all the flashing comes from the different camera settings, it didn’t like the different type of light I asked it to read. It’s changing focus and creates this flicker. There is also a strobe light behind the pile which is really nice as it captures this shorter-than-a-blink moment, so it gives a sense of after image, you are not sure if it’s there or not; as the light changes, it creates a pattern and I like the fact that it looks like it’s communicating something.

VD: But, how much of Carl’s work did you keep?

RL: Carl took the ribbon off, which was really dominant in colour and bound it up. He brought that covering a big area but I wanted everything that has been used, the head and the arm and leg that were in William Cobbing’s piece and then got the projectors in David Cotterrell’s and the ropes. It just like removing any order, merging them, so it kind of loses boundaries.

I have made pieces before where I have projected a wall painting and projected a Super 8 film on top of it without any film in it so you just get the flicker; people stood looking at it for quite a long time, they expected something to happen.

A “projection” is a bit like a “reflection” and all these objects were records, marking the time that has been, as a memory. Now, only an image remains; it shows a contrast between something physical and a representation but as a continuation of the space.

VD: How about the dramatic feeling? The overall is quite unsettling…

RL: I am interested in the conceptual contrast between moving and still images. When the still images are projected – and because of the focus change – it creates a movement that is not real nor linear, actually. Because these are still images, it is not moving but it appears like it is. A little bit like stop frame animation, it’s sort of an artificial movement, I have tried to manufacture time.

VD: Is that the undertone of your research?

RL: Well, I have only reacted to what’s been before but the undertone would be that I am quite interested in the idea of a “funeral pyre”; the fire that’s used to burn bodies, it links to a disturbing idea of lynching.

VD: Is it “an end” to a “new beginning”?

RL: Well, it is a funeral pyre as much as an altar or a shrine but content has been reduced to almost nothing. Everything is there but nowhere at the same time, it is intangible now. I chose Bronwen Buckeridge, who works with sound so it will be interesting to see what she will come up with.

VD: How would you describe your work?

RL: I work across a variety of media but I am particularly interested in installation which uses projection. It’s about projection as a physical support, it’s like almost a sculptural installation which happens to use projection.

VD: How is it to be the reaching the end of that project?

RL: It has been very interesting, I really liked it. It’s been really good for me. I think the church has been a fantastic space and having access to lots of different equipment to try things out has been really good. I think it’s quite nice coming towards the end of the whole process. My idea wouldn’t have worked if I’d been at the beginning. It is very interesting to leave the artists to choose who comes next. It produced different associations. It has been really helpful to my work.

VD: Did you come to a conclusion?

RL: It’s been very good to spend five days, trying out different things with very different materials.

VD: Is it the first time you’ve collaborated on that sort of project?

RL: Yes it is, and it feels very exciting to have boundaries, the project provides a structure, sometimes it’s good when everything is not just self-generated.

VD: How close are you from your normal creative pattern? Does it feel like editing someone’s work?

RL: I am using what’s been before and I am very conscious of the tone of the other work. I had this project of using everything physical to then collapse it all together, that’s my way of using what’s done before, responding to it. Now, it’s like my own creative process to make the finished piece. I like the fact that the work is untitled. There are boundaries within the project but there is also freedom, there is no individual claim of the work. It gives the viewer a lot of space either to view it as individually or to think about how they relate to each other.

…

The final artist in the WAKE chain is Bonwen Buckeridge, who will be responding to Rachel’s installation at Dilston Grove this week, with a public opening on Sat 16/Sun 17 July. There will be a talk, involving all the WAKE artists and chaired by Rachel Withers at 5pm on Sunday 17th July at Dilston Grove.

Meanwhile, ARCHIPELAGO continues at Cafe Gallery, open Wed-Sun. There will be a chance to catch all the performance works on the last day, Sunday 17th July between 3-4.30pm.

Image: WAKE Week 5 – Rachel Lowe. Photo by Victor Delvecchio.

Laura Milnes documented some of her egg hunt…

….

It began when I spotted a rose peeping out of the base of Florence Peake’s Features (2011). I wasn’t sure if this was an extension of the velvet-red of the huge lips that form a third of Features, or whether this was a gift from a secret admirer. I was a little jealous:

…So I had a further peep inside and found a curiously fondled egg:

Next to it, at the end of a tendril of hair, lay a note:

…and hanging from Steve Ounanian’s canopy of cash, another dedication:

Carefully bound to Graeme Miller’s Conjunction (2009) is yet another message…and an egg…

…meanwhile, another perfectly rounded individual sits on Ian Bourn’s chair, calling to be squashed. Somehow, the Van Gogh chair becomes absurd like a Duchamp composition of unrelated objects.

I am startled by an unfortunate miscarriage of egg justice on Claire Blundell Jones’ discarded drawing:

And I’m left struggling to work out what someone is trying to say:

I leave the gallery wondering if I’ll find an omelette next week.