ARTISTS TALKING

A noisy stopwatch dangled in the middle of the room attached to both the floor and ceiling. Scattered around it, up the walls and inserted into the floor were the wires, clocks and electronics of a bigger installation. Putting on a pair of headphones, I listened tentatively to the tale of the muffled beats, not sure what it was all about. What did all this apparatus do? I didn’t really know, but then somebody started drawing on a roll of paper strewn across the floor and I realised I could hear what they were drawing, microphones in the floor amplifying the sound of the evening unfolding around me.

The exhibition, curated by the oddly named but friendly local organisation, Dyingfrog Arts Network under the banner of ‘Journey, Movement and Place’ brought together six regional artists, all making new works for the show at 11 Wolstenholme Square. The space is shabby, partially cleaned but still derelict; this old textile factory has never tried to be the perfect neutral gallery but instead always opted to maintain its tatty worn out interior, artworks usually deposited in amongst the debris.

All the works here had responded in some way to this dilapidated history, the most successful being those that incorporated the building such as Sue Sharples’ remnants of insulation that bounced up the wall from coils in an Eva Hesse-like fashion, whilst Dave Bixter’s web of thread, spun around columns like a giant loom, tracing the movement of the artist as he walked to and fro.

Claire Weetman’s drawings often do just that, documenting her actions within a restricted situation, going round in circles perhaps? Or like Bixter, walking back and forth. Here she presents Lost, a series of scribbled lines within a circular circumference derived from the videos of her homemade, modern day cartographic contraption employing compass, camcorder and Tupperware container. Plotting the tale of her excursions with great detail (even including grid references), Weetman not only makes tangible drawings, but draws attention to her activity in and around the building, something it seems all the artists here are doing in one form or another; yet whether we actually care where she walked to or not is another story.

www.kevin-hunt.co.uk