ANGELA WRIGHT - ARTIST
info:  angelawright.aw9@gmail.com

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ART INSTALLATIONS ... p2

This is a reuse of the material remains of 'Church-Work 3' [see below]; brought into an environment where it is made to relate to practical inventions - a context described by its curators as 'an interface between retail and the aesthetics of conceptual art and design'.

I was surprised at Angela's wall-work's unexpected 'extra' effects. It has a weird likeness to a rug-like object hung on the wall, an impression contradicted by the fact that its myriad little pieces are undeniably stuck to the wall ... emphasised of course by a cascade of glue-threads, which however simultaneously reinforce the impression of frayed rug!  Its ambiguity is also emphasised by its slight tendency to lean (this accumulated as it was made and was unresisted) as if carelessly nailed up at a slight angle.

Borough Market is a complicated, seemingly chaotic, sequence of joined irregular spaces, lanes and small roads, among the pillars and under the iron trusses and decking supporting a confluence of rail-lines issuing from London Bridge and Cannon Street stations.

A very busy and vital market thrives here - intensely bustling and full. On empty days with the stalls shuttered and produce boxed behind wire grills one is aware of old dirt, refuse in corners and the damp cold of decorated but industrial iron - then people only pass through what has become simply a vague container of routes that connect to elsewhere.

In the most forgotten unnoticed fenced-off and dirt-accumulating corner of all - yet in full and public view of any primed to see those parts of a scene which for most are edited-out by habits of practical use - I decided to install a work which contradicts its site's character and 'fulfills' its primacy of location.

This filthy rat-ridden corner holds a psychological fascination for me and seemed to fit the Biennale’s theme of 'Change'. The space is strangely overlooked by a single domestic window which gives it a feeling of a courtyard which hardly sees the daylight. Gigantic steel railway beams on cliffs of Victorian yellow brick encase its dirt floor. The space is filthy from years of uselessness and neglect, yet spatially contiguous with the bright, colourful, vital and thronged Green Market, and incongruously facing across it the tree-edged close of Southwark Cathedral, an enclave of relaxation, calm and reassuring gothic styling. 

I made a fragile and ephemeral floor of unfired porcelain pieces, propped against each other, moving out from the rear of the space like a luminous flood or a fleece thrown down in the gloom. Bearing down from above are massive rivet-studded girders, skirting a small triangle of bright sky that mirrors my triangular floor. My addition to this site must be viewed with its context - some of its relations with the site were foreseen, others (even obvious ones) have emerged - the subconscious, initially perceived as fascination with the 'atmosphere' of the place, has apparently also been influencing decisions while I made the work.

It is the extremes that I am interested in. I hope you see that I have changed the site's dynamics, cleaned and purified it, possibly given it the feel of a side-chapel with an inclosed peace. It looks towards the cathedral with its blossoming trees, honeysuckle, and passion flowers growing on the walls. Perhaps the rats, grime and the smell of urine recedes for a moment.

 

 

 

 'CHURCH-WORK 4'  -  DORCHESTER ABBEY,  DORCHESTER-ON-THAMES,  OXFORDSHIRE
 
silver-plated copper jewellery wire 
10 Sep 2005 to 24 Feb 2006

Photos: Patrick Sweeney / David Carr-Smith

A braided and knotted wire installation, developed from the Keyworth '"50 Degrees North" [see below], was suspended in the nave of this huge Gothic church.  

Dorchester Abbey is a beautiful and inspirational place. I chose to install a suspended work, consisting of a number of large woven and knotted nets, made from more than four kilometers of reflective silver plated copper jewellery wire chosen for its colour and sparkle, assembled together and hung from the rafters beside twin high windows in the northern of the two parallel naves. It was important to see the work's interaction with the changing light - throughout the day its character and form were transformed by cool northern light from its adjoining windows, gold sun streaming through the windows of the east end, light from the south windows cut by the arcade of arches between the two naves into sunbeams that sliced the work into diagonal sections, and finally the orange of the night-lamps.

The work was light in weight and at times almost invisible; hovering overhead as people walked under it, seen or partly glimpsed from different locations within the vast building. It had a sense of delicacy, rhythms and tangles.

 

 

 

 'CHURCH-WORK 3'  -  ST GILES' CRIPPLEGATE,  BARBICAN,  FORE STREET,  LONDON,  EC2

torn and knotted tulle strips and monofilament
May 2005 to Dec 2006

Photos:  David Carr-Smith

This is a reuse of the material remains of 'Church-Work 2' [see below] but this time enclosed quite tightly in a narrow tall space, the bell-tower, at its base a doored enclosure used by children at the west end of the nave. 

 

 

 

"50 DEGREES NORTH"  -  KEYWORTH CENTRE ATRIUM,  LONDON SOUTH BANK UNIVERSITY,  KEYWORTH STREET,  LONDON,  SE1

knotted stainless-steel wire
dimensions (approx): h: 4m / w: 3.5m / d: 3.5m
Apr 2005 to Oct 2013

Photos: David Carr-Smith

LINK: making and installing the work

This work was promoted by its sponsors as "... part of a new arts initiative launched by London South Bank University as its contribution to the development of contemporary cultural activity in the South Bank area - it will be the first major art work displayed in the Keyworth Centre and will inaugurate a programme of art exhibitions and events across the university".

On my first encounter with the Keyworth's atrium I was immediately attracted to the huge eight-story bank of gridded windows which form the facade of the building and the height and vastness of the atrium. I chose to add a suspended cube of nets of knotted stainless-steel wire, which interacted with the assertive forms of the location yet remained separate, delicate, and even seemingly ephemeral.

I bought 3000 meters of stainless steel wire coiled on a drum; this was cut into 3m lengths and knotted into 20 nets that were raised into the space between the pairs of tree-like columns that flank the atrium's entry level..

During the day the work responds to the changing light through the glass facade: in dull light it is seen only as grey wire; in sunshine the nets glitter with tiny rainbow refractions through the wires' transparent coating and their knots sparkle like a rain of dew; in the shadows cast by the mullions it vanishes - they project diagonally through it like bars of emptiness !  At night it blazes in the atrium spot-lights like a firework frozen in the sky.

 

 

 

"YELLOW-BLIND"  -  AREA-10 COLLECTIVE,  EAGLE WHARF,  PECKHAM SQUARE,  LONDON,  SE15

plastic binding-tape, staples, paint, potted-pansies
Nov 2004

Photos: David Carr-Smith

"Area-10" was an enormous timber-yard shed, squatted by artists. I made two works in Area-10 using materials from the rubbish in its courtyards. This second one started when I found a large roll of bright yellow plastic binding-tape. The tape was stapled into a huge net. The smeared and dirty 'OUT' door was smartened up and painted inside and out and the net hung from it like a curtain; within the limitations of this overall form its stiff tape was allowed to lie as it wished. In the external porch (set in the dreary yard facade) I made an orderly display of bought potted pansies. The whole installation physically blocked, but mentally mediated a surprisingly contrary direction 'out' from the squalor of the industrial shed.

 

 

 

"BIRCH-CUBE"  -  AREA-10 COLLECTIVE,  EAGLE WHARF,  PECKHAM SQUARE,  LONDON,  SE15

broken wood-slats, white-paint, wire, rope; plus roof-light
May 2004 to Sep 2004

Photos: David Carr-Smith

My first piece of work in "Area 10" was made in response to its huge abandoned timber-yard shed, lit only by skylights and a couple of dirty windowed doors. From its courtyard I scavenged scrapped wood-slats, which were broken, whitened, wired together into new lengths, and hung from a suspended frame beneath the roof-trusses and infesting pigeons. Daily, in this gloomy space, the turning sky-light briefly filled the cube with an intense lantern-glow of inner reflections.

The object was hung in two positions: near the ground like a swing, close to its shadows, and raised between the trusses and the floor.

 

 

 

'CHURCH-WORK 2'  -  ST GEORGE'S,  IVYCHURCH,  ROMNEY MARSH,  KENT

torn and knotted tulle strips and monofilament
Sept 2003 to Mar 2005

Photos: Patrick Sweeney / David Carr-Smith 

The installation in St. George's Ivychurch is made from 200 meters of wedding tulle, torn into strips and joined with about 10,000 double-knots.  Because of the nature of the tulle the strips clutch each other rather like the sticky wild weed which grabs you as you walk through undergrowth. I chose tulle for its transparency and associations with ceremony.  I wanted this installation to lightly float above the nave like a dandelion clock or a swarm of mayflies, to appear to have just arrived in the rafters and settled there. I cannot hold on to the work, its short life reminds me that nothing is for ever ...

 

 

 

'CHURCH-WORK 1'  -  ST THOMAS MORE,  PATCHAM,  SUSSEX

porcelain clay
May 2003 to Jun 2003

Photos: David Carr-Smith

This is my second use of the unfired shrink-cracked remains of porcelain-clay weavings; originally made in 2001 for "Economist Carpet". This church 'carpet' was a response to the austere 1960s architecture and space design. In particular it extended the huge slatted window, complicating and completing its mediation of the dramatic conjunction of bright outer courtyard with the black-tiled floor.

 

 

 

"ECONOMIST CARPET"  -  ECONOMIST BUILDING (FOYER),  ST JAMES ST., LONDON,  SW1A

porcelain clay and lamp
23 Oct 2001 to 11 Dec 2001

Photos: Patrick Sweeney / David Carr-Smith

LINK: Making and installing the work

In July and Aug I wove porcelain-clay nets that dried and shrank, cracked and broke - what was left was what was used.  The 'Carpet' - thousands of edge-propped pieces of unfired clay, wandered around the L-shaped foyer. It changed continually: yellowish in the night bulbs, in sun glaring white and black, in scattered daylight tinted pink and turquoise.  At dusk a lamp beside its apex saturated its 'heart' with red, creating multiple reflections of 'ruins' / 'skyscrapers' in the glass walls - (although conceived long before, during its installation the Manhattan tragedy seeped into it!).

 

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