The new term at the Link starts with work from the curators, Elisa Artesero and Roger Bygott, with the addition of work from guest artist Hannah Leighton-Boyce.
The theme of the work on show is threads/lines, be they real threads or lines of light. Roger’s work uses threads from shoes to frame the vista of two windows, the shoes create an absence and loneliness when viewed upon entering the gallery, the male and female shoes point outward towards the world outside, an optimistic stance on one level, but on another they are turning their backs on each other in such a definite position. However, when a visitor stands just behind the shoes to look out at the view, particularly in the evening when they can see their reflection, it is as though they fill the shoes for that moment.
Elisa’s light sculpture uses white thread to reshape the end gallery space in a mix of sharp angular shapes, some covered with paper as platforms for the bright slowly moving projections to bring the sculpture to life. The light from the projections also catches on the strings, illuminating them and giving a sense of movement. The shadows cast from the sculpture also moves across the back wall as the light and dark areas of the projection slowly shift across the space. The Light Paintings I & II projected and framed on adjacent walls are there to be viewed like a painting which happens to move, to watch the swathes of colour and patterns slowly move across the framed area in a slow considered manner. In the evening it is possible to watch the Light Paintings as reflections in the window while positioned in front of Roger’s work.
The Foyer space contains Hannah’s series of intricate pencil drawings from the movement created from stitched pieces of work, laid out as if a large landscape piece.
Also in the Foyer space is an installation and related video pieces by Roger. The foil lined ‘Accumulator’ is a phase in an ongoing series exploring space, fiction and memory. There is some reference to Psychoanalyst Wilhelm Reich’s ‘Orgone Accumulator’ a quasi-scientific/mystical invention devised by Reich in the 1960s. He claimed his ‘Orgone boxes’ could enhance the life-force and the libido. In no way attempting to recreate Reich’s box, this installation nevertheless proposes an accumulation of creative energy in the form of artistic process and fictional possibility. The meaning of the piece is undefined, yet meanings can accumulate and develop in relationship to it. The material lends itself to Sci-fi imaginings, and yet there is a cone of red thread in there harking back to the past maybe. There is a contrasting connection of the Industrial Revolution and the Technological Revolution.
The three looped video pieces also document various phases of the ‘Accumulator’ in the form of performance, poetry and music. We are presented with fragments of a story, part abstract, part science fiction.
Link Gallery 