Drawn Territory - Part 4

A Conversation between Helene Kazan & Louise Ashcroft 2009/10
Continued from...

Helene Kazan: Focusing on the physical practicalities of your role as curator, what did you find was the difference in the challenges you were faced with in Trident Way, and the most recent exhibition Trident Way 2: The Southall Project?

Louise Ashcroft: The exhibition 'Trident Way 2: The Southall Project' was meant to directly relate to the work in the first Trident Way exhibition. It was in a neighbouring warehouse, which was very similar, but a lot cleaner, than the first one and the show featured many of the same artists. For Trident Way 2, however, lots more artists were involved. My plan was that these new artists would respond both to their context on the industrial estate and also to the previous exhibition as a social and artistic context in its own right. This layering of occupants; the existing group of artists and the artists who joined the group for the second show, echoes the social space of the area around the estate, which has an established population of Indian immigrants and a new influx of immigrants from other countries like Somalia. I am interested in how a group of artists or a community can become a kind of 'site' in its own right; the people and their activities become part of the place. This is why I like to run projects as residencies, so that individual practice spills over into collaborative thinking and lasting connections are formed between the participants. This is something, which is being lost now curators can simply select work from websites and organise shows by email. Whilst communications make it easier to form groups, I think you'll agree that a group show is always more interesting when the artists spend time in the space that they share. This is what interests me about your practice. You find it very important, quite instinctively, to live with the spaces you exhibit in and you become part of the activities happening around you in these spaces.

In the first Trident Way project, interrelations between the artworks were extremely visible. There were strong aesthetic connections and recurring ideas throughout the show, which brought the whole thing together in a uniquely coherent, yet varied way. In the second project, however, artists made smaller work and each work felt quite separate. The feeling was more like an art fair and the sense of community was less evident in the show as a whole. Perhaps this was because the group had changed and was much bigger, perhaps it was because the original group of artists simply couldn't sustain the amount of time and obsessive, creative energy they were devoting to this isolated, freezing cold industrial estate in the middle of nowhere. Although a few of the artists continued to spend a lot of time onsite (I remember you staying throughout the night on a number of occasions), the second show was more like a normal group show and most artists made work off-site and delivered it a couple of days before the show.

The incredible thing for me was how different these two shows were as a result of how their spaces were occupied, despite the fact that the project set-up was virtually the same on both occasions. Even though some of the works from Trident Way were developed in Trident Way 2, they felt like completely different works. Perhaps this appearance was partly due to the aesthetic differences between the two spaces. Your piece in Trident Way 2, Helene, had many of its original components, but on the pristine floor of the second space and in its glaring strip lighting, it had a completely new atmosphere. Perhaps the slick look of the second space changed how we related to it. Perhaps the large mezzanine, which dissected the first warehouse like a giant pier, and the grubby floor which made it feel like an active industrial site of production, made artists want to start building things in there, unlike the gleaming, empty vastness of the second space, which felt new and unused and was therefore quite alienating.

How important is your commitment to spending lots of time in a space when you are making a site-specific work, and do you consider all your work to be site specific? What does the concept of site-specificity mean to you and why does it appeal?

Helene Kazan: I have been thinking about this very notion in my practice recently, and it is a pattern that I have noticed. Firstly because my work is normally quite large scale, it makes it very difficult to create in my studio, this is where I believe I have deliberately over time created a process for my practice that is laborious but very exciting. I would say my work is situation specific, as opposed to site specific, as there are more components than just the site that give it its parameters, such as time of day, time of year, light, length of time in the exhibition space to name a few. To explain more, I take into considering all these factors as well as the practical specifics of the space and let them determine the outline of the work. Therefore, I can find myself working for many days in an exhibition space, as this is part of the concept of the work, my physical occupation of that space for that time is also part of the work. Often, I won’t know what the final product (the art work) will end up being like, I do plan and draw, but the process of making the work is as much part of the work as the final product. I find it very important to learn from every exhibition that I do, and to push its concepts further and further each time.

For that reason, I have found being involved in the working in these projects with you Louise, and Departure Gallery invaluable, as the context of each of the exhibitions has enabled a unique development of process for my work. As well as the exhibitions with Departure Gallery this year, I have been commissioned to do an installation for architects Metropolitan Workshop in April, which will see a temporary occupation of their entire offices, and a solo show in The Jerwood Project Space later in year. These will see this body of work develop in and for various very different spaces and contexts.

Louise Ashcroft: Yes, I like the idea of situation-specific work as opposed to site-specific work. I think the concept of a site being a fixed, permanent context is an illusion spaces are always changing. An artist's presence in a space changes the space and the concept of 'site' should not be understood as a static phenomenon in the way that many early site-specific artists seemed to assume, but, rather, as a complex interplay of social, cultural and material relations which change over time and differ according to individual perspectives. I will be continuing to explore and expand on these spatial investigations in my curatorial projects this year. The next Departure Gallery show on the International Trading Estate brings together over 40 artists, whose work responds to the idea of being in 'The Middle of Nowhere' playing with the paradox of being site-specific to being 'nowhere'. Helene will be developing a piece based on her own architectural plans of the warehouse space. 'The Middle of Nowhere: Objects and Actions in the Abyss' runs from 5th-10th March 2010.

Louise Ashcroft, Curator, Departure Gallery.

View full published article in LMReview06.