60|40 Starting Point Series 2010

About

A textile artist, a furniture maker and a potter are the latest artists to showcase new work at Siobhan Davies Studios this summer. Linda Florence, David Gates and Chris Keenan are creating work which explores the relationship between the Studios' activities and their own practice. This is the second in theStarting point series at Siobhan Davies Studios, devised by 60|40, a crafts collective which encourages new thinking in the applied arts and expands the environment for experimental applied arts. The exhibition opens on 9 July and admission is free. Textile artist Linda Florence has designed a series of three zoetropes to hang one above the other in the stairwell of Siobhan Davies Studios. She says ‘I was interested in making a piece for the staircase as I found that visitors often stopped on each landing to remove shoes and could not see the visitors above or below them on the other floors at that time. I wanted to make a piece of work which would link visitors on each floor together by one person turning a zoetrope at the top of the staircase and this making the lower zoetropes also spin.' Furniture maker David Gates has made, One Hundred Legs — wooden legs or struts which will be placed around the building: ‘On my visits to the Studios I have been struck by the rhythms set up visually by the dancers. Whether rehearsing or moving around the building their poise, posture and balance against the linear framing of the architecture. In some settings the legs need the walls for rest and balance, in others they appear almost as scaffold, in their turn supporting the building. I am intrigued to see whether users of the studios will engage with the legs, move them, carry them, re-place or even work with them.' His second work is Liquorice Straps, a sound piece made from recordings of the building. ‘I made audio recordings of the internal resonances of the steel and wood structure; the clangs, the steps, the silences, scrapes and squeaks. These are set against the echoes and ambient bubbling sound of the playground that leaks through the stark walls of glass and steel along with the quiet sirens and overhead jets.' Potter Chris Keenan is presenting a piece where viewers become curators and may arrange the work as they wish. He has crafted a number of clay forms which will be grouped together. As Keenan says: ‘The work I am making for Siobhan Davies Studios is diametrically opposed to the work I have been making up until now in that it is joyfully and resolutely non-functional. The three forms - column, cone and sphere - can lean, stand or lie; beside or atop one another; huddled all together, alone or ranged in groups. Choices made by the onlooker determine the content of each temporary installment of the narrative.'