ARTISTS TALKING

I realise this gives little away, but it does hint at the fact that I am intrigued by the things we are not meant to see. My sculptures and installations explore a dialogue of little curiosities; the ordinary becomes slightly strange and a subtle dose of unease is injected into the mundane.

Earlier this year, for nearly a week, I began to think of the north concourse of Leeds train station as my studio. Not the most private of places, nor indeed easiest to realise an installation that would relate to a separate work I had just installed in Leeds City Art Gallery.

Vitrine is a project run and curated by Leeds-based artists Kerry Harker and Pippa Hale. Its agenda is to present contemporary works of art in a variety of vacant display cases and shop windows that can be found around the city. For the exhibition ‘Trajectory’, a group of five Yorkshire-based artists were selected and called upon to rise to this challenge.

I had met Harker and Hale last summer in the bustling environment of the train station to discuss the project. A number of different ‘vitrines’ were on offer, but I was immediately drawn to the charm of the smaller of the two available within the north concourse. With its aged wooden floor and glass doors it was almost like a small room, a private space in a very public place. I was also drawn to a separate vitrine in the City Art Gallery that acted as a dividing wall between spaces. I liked the fact that it could be viewed from both sides and the notion of vulnerability this seemed to offer. I decided to make a work that created a relationship between the two very different locations.

In the City Art Gallery vitrine, I exhibited three two-sided drawings made directly onto plaster-soaked net curtain. They depicted random acts and occurrences where meanings, like memories, needed to be pieced together. Alongside these I showed a series of sculptures emblematic of evolving landscapes or abandoned utopias. Together these works united to offer a sense of consequence and an air of expectation.

Playing on the public aspect of the train station I decided to impose a sense of domesticity on this vitrine by wallpapering the space. A ceiling coving and skirting were added and marks on the wallpaper were made suggesting the place where pictures once hung. These marks were the exact measurements of the three drawings that were shown in the City Art Gallery. Finally a ‘sculptural prop’ bound in lace and trim was placed within the vitrine. Abstract and devoid of function, yet seemingly complicit in what was taking place, I thought this offered an element of wistful romance and optimism to a scene that could have been melancholic.

http://aarhus.nu/snapshot/05-03-20.html
www.vitrine.org.uk
www.axisweb.org/artist/simonleruez