Wolstenhome Creative Space - The Inhospitable Landscape

Visit: 8th November

(Installation)

 Today we visited The Inhospitable Landscape at Wolstenhome Creative Space and I found it really exciting and new. Unlike some of the things I have seen in the Biennial that have seemed a bit "safe" and conventional, I found the scale and interactive element of the work really unusual and overwhelming. The installation of trees and video in the same area reminded me of something out of a music video for The Cure or a Tim Burton film. It was quite eery, and quite unoriginal, until I noticed the TV screens dotted within the foliage and the specifically made for exhibition music. What I did think was unusual about the exhibition was that the literary inspirations that were noted by the artists were made available in a kind of mini-library within the work so that you could take it home and see how it related or inspired it perhaps. I glanced briefly over the titles and saw "Nineteen Eighty-Four" by George Orwell, as well as "Great Expectations" and "Mrs Dalloway". I found that quite fun within the exhibition to try and see the links there. For example, I thought the presence of the beat of the music and TV screens hidden within the trees were quite evocative of "Nineteen Eighty-Four" I liked how the artists had taken the theme of hospitality and reversed it within this exhibition as so far I've seen quite safe and friendly interpretations of the theme, although here the space was very inviting and not "unfriendly" as one might assume. 

Along with some wallpaper designs, there was also another room containing video art that portrayed differences between natural and man-made (shots of forests contrasted with architecture or urban life). I liked this and I thought the size at which it was projected was really effective and almost all-consuming. The shots of buildings and tower blocks, reminded me of the work of Hilary Lloyd, ("Tower Block") that was in the 2011 Turner Prize show, especially with the way the camera scanned up and down the buildings. The same shots and them of architecture within nature also reminded me of the Cyprien Caillard film "The Smithsons" that was on this year at Manchester Art Gallery. I think for the theme of hospitality and the unexpected guest this idea is quite relevant as, in my opinion, it conjures ideas about where we as humans fit into the world and how we effect it. Architecture is probably an unexpected and perhaps unwelcome guest in nature. The shots of urban life were very grey and dull and quite oppressive/depressing, in the same way that tower-blocks blot out life, in the same way that cities perhaps block out nature, in the same way we become so wrapped up in ourselves and our own creations/habitats that we become oblivious to the beauty that exists beyond us and our egos and our creations.

(Film Projection)

I found the visit really invigorating. The old industrial building it was set in was a really effective gallery space and I thought it was really successful, especially for a group of young artists!