LOCKDOWN JOURNAL: COVID-19.32 (ArtCouple)
Out-O-Space Gallery
The Beginning
The Out-O-Space Gallery is a child of the lockdown. The scaffolding arrived one day ready-made outside our window, simultaneously blocking our view and presenting us with a new platform upon which we decided to build our gallery (see blog post on ArtCouple site here After an encouraging initial response, we decided to develop the idea, placing different pieces in it and finding new ways to use the (out of)Space. We assumed that, due to the Lockdown, the builders would not be back to remove their scaffolding for some time. We were wrong.
The End
About a day before Easter we were awoken to strange noises coming from the direction of the window that had the scaffolding outside—as if workers were working on it—unlikely in the lockdown.
Ursula got up to have a look and had a double surprise: a) workers were indeed on the scaffolding at this curious moment in the Lockdown just before Easter, and b) they were taking the scaffolding down—and our gallery space with it! Was this ‘essential work’? Apparently the Government's position on the construction industry is confused on this, among other things. We tried recording the moment of this unexpected dismantling: Simon made a sound recording, and Ursula managed to get a couple of photos. Afterwards, we were devastated. Gone so soon after its inauguration.
Dismantled now! Without the scaffolding, the window looked bare and exposed, we were no longer used to a clear view out of the window. It occurred to Ursula that dismantling is like a denuding: ‘mantle’ also means a coat (in both German and English), and now the coating is off, the window is naked!
The fallen scaffolding had featured a recent work, a crate of stuffed bottles: ‘eco-bricks’, plastic bottles filled with packaging. The workers said they left the crate below—affirming the exhibit had been handled with care! Not quite, as Ursula realised when she went down to get it, the box had been damaged. Later she noticed that two bottles had gone astray: one ended up on the pavement, the other in the rubbish bin. She rescued the one on the pavement but not the one in the bin. 5 out of 10 then, or 1 of 2: you can bottle up what remains half-way. That was ok: a story had taken place, the bottles had been baptised, an ending was born.
The Resurrection
It was clearly impossible to rebuild a simulacrum of the whole scaffolding structure once it had been taken down, but we thought we might be able to continue with a bit of cunning (scaf)FOLDING. Creating something like a drawbridge that unfolded on the window ledge enabling exhibits to be displayed again. As luck would have it, Simon had been repairing a framed print by Gilbert and George when calamity struck. The glass broke! ‘Are you angry or are you boring?’, the print demanded. A bifurcation for the Covid Age, perhaps. Given the problems acquiring anything ‘non-essential’, a replacement glass was unthinkable. This left the frame and backing board. Perfect. Adding two strands of tension cable found near Quarry Hill Footbridge, (Leeds), and a driftwood handle from Seascale beach, the platform was created. The Out-O-Space Gallery resurrected!
The Call(ing)
So, after our inaugural mini-exhibition in Out-O-Space II Gallery, we are inviting artists to send pieces for future exhibitions. We have already received some fine works from artists around the globe, and we look forward to more. We’re not quite sure what the limitations of weight are, and the gallery is folded back in during windy or wet weather. So far, we have received digital images for screening on our newly installed MirrorScreen™. We’re open to any suggestions and any media (sound, visual, conceptual, small, lightweight 3D etc). All exhibitions will be documented and posted online with links to the artists’ website for further enquiries.
The first one up will be a series of images by writer/artist/photographer/theorist, Jeremy Hight from 18th May 2020.
ArtCouple is a newly-formed multimodal partnership between Simon Bradley and Ursula Troche. Combining text, sound art, imagery and performance, their work explores (post)subjectivities and displacement. Through risk-taking and post-Fluxus practices ArtCouple have pioneered a form of ‘micro-psychogeography’ arising out of their collaborative walking art. Their emergent works include installations, performance interventions and assemblages of found objects informed by ecological concerns and site-specific findings.
Simon Bradley is a sound artist who writes and walks. He is fascinated by shifting connections between memory, voice, power and place. In 2016 he completed a practice-led PhD “Archaeology of the Voice’ in which he explored oral history and locative narrative in Holbeck, Leeds. Bradley has worked nationally and internationally on many sound/music projects and interventions including TATE Britain and Tokyo Dome, also an ongoing series of ‘Displacement Activities’ including Leeds, Montreal and Florence.
Ursula Troche is an artist and writer documenting her second migration— the first centring on the transition from country to country (across the North Sea), the second from city to sea (across England). Trained some way towards psychoanalysis, she became a psychogeographer instead, as a result of experiences of place and movement. Performed, amongst many others, at the Walthamstow Garden Party, exhibited at the ‘Palimpsest’ group show (2016), writings include ‘Looking for Irish Street’.
ArtCouple live on the Cumbrian coast next to the Irish Sea—they perform everywhere they go.
Interventions, provocations and presentations include: 2018 Royal Geographical Society, Cardiff; Wavescape, Split; Auntie Freeze Festival (The Cave); Tracing the Pathway, Milton Keynes; 4th World Congress of Psychogeography, Huddersfield; 2019: Terminalia, Leeds; West Cumbria Arts Trail; Falling Walls, Stroud; Walking’s New Movements Plymouth. Merzbarn; Cumbria
WEBSITE: http://artcouple.co.uk/