Recently, I explored the delightful sights of Nottingham where I visited the exhibition House of Fame at the Nottingham Contemporary, as well as artist led spaces - Primary, BACKLIT and the Surface Gallery.
The exhibition House of Fame was convened by Linder Sterling, the first artist in residence at Chatsworth House who engages with gender, commodity and display by creating photomontages and carefully selecting key influential artists and artefacts from the Chatsworth collection. Whilst appearing to be a random assortment of work, this eclectic mix provides an insight into the complexities of an artists mind and their subsequent influences, whether that's other practitioners or the environment they are working in. In celebration of her achievements spanning 40 years, Sterling provides a platform for artists that she is inspired by to share the limelight from Moki Cherry to Heidi Bucher, the latter of which, called to me the most.
Artist Heidi Bucher creates "room skins" that preserve architectural spaces through the use of latex and gauze (see image below).
“These experiments in fixing the forms and volumes of once-inhabited spaces predate a similar attempt that won Rachel Whiteread the Turner Prize in 1993 (the year Bucher died) by almost two decades. But whereas House was a public monument to overlooked and uncelebrated normality, further immortalized in the collective consciousness by the council’s decision to demolish it soon after it opened, Bucher’s room-skins, laden with the autobiography that they drag with them, chart a much more intimate psychogeography. By making skins from her childhood home, Bucher wasn’t just asking how we inhabit spaces but how they inhabit us; how we carry them with us, even after we have left them. The notion of ‘home’ is not something that can be so easily shrugged off.”
In addition to the Nottingham Contemporary, it was a pleasure to visit artist led spaces Primary, Backlit and the Surface Gallery. This provided a wonderful opportunity to see how collectives have set up spaces to work and exhibit. For me, Primary was a fantastic example in how an art community can be formed where people have the opportunity to be creative, collaborate and give back to the organisation by delivering workshops, organising exhibitions and engaging with the community. It is my hope that something similar might be formed in Lincoln in the future, fingers crossed!