Toil & Trouble

3 Nov-20 Nov 2022

PV 3 Nov 2022, 6-8pm

Overview

Life did not take over the world by combat, but by networking.  - Lynn Margulis, Microcosmos: Four Billion Years of Microbial Evolution (1986) 

If humans are to survive, they must participate in their own evolution. This means discovering, more than defining, ourselves through our engagement with others.  This show proposes a methodology based in conscious collective evolution, rather than self-determination, using conversation and rearrangement as an ethos for an exhibition that changes across its duration and becomes a catalyst for exploring how control of meaning is shared and surrendered in a group dynamic.  

The initial installation of works will be agreed between three artists – Ali Darke, Lucy Renton and Sue Withers – whose practices intersect around axes of craft, the domestic and female labour, negotiate the boundaries of decorum; that which society deems appropriate in culture, language, behaviour and taste. Through the aesthetics of domestic decoration, the industry of grooming, and the unruly body they consider what is disparaged as feminine excess.  

Invited to intervene in the show midway, Eric Great–Rex will have an open brief to ’disrupt’, to alter and re-stage it. This activity becomes the focus for a public discussion between the artists and the ‘Disruptor’ and the re-staged exhibition remains open to the public. There are effectively two shows, before and after the ‘Disruption’, with a public sharing of the critical process of its alteration.  

Surrendering control is inherently risky and parallels the productive uncertainty of studio practice. We also see installation as a productive site, foregrounding our belief that the exhibition is the beginning, not the end of the work/s.  

Following the rupture caused by Covid, this is a key moment to reassess the experience of physical exhibitions, and the role of the artist as curator or as curated.