A Strange Affair
A review of Walden Affairs at One Thoresby Street, 21st February to 6th March 2010
Walden Affairs is a collaboration between Joost Nieuwenberg and Mischa Poppe. They offer a two storey project space in Holland with an emphasis on contemporary art in its different forms. Temporaily relocating to Nottingham the curators selected work discussing displacement and new ways of seeing. This was a reciprocative theme in response to an exhibition curated by Tom Godfrey at Walden Affairs, 'Indoor Life' (2009), which brought together artwork that exists within or represents the domestic.
'Walden Affairs at One Thoresby Street' is an odd prospect for an exhibition. Cultural exchanges generally occur in educational institutions rather than independent art organisations. This was not a residency for the group of artists from Walden Affairs, the curators inverted the theme of 'Indoor Life' to consider the exterior, leading to borders and changes in perception. I feel under-informed in having one half of a dialogue between an English curator and a Dutch curatorial partnership, but over-informed in being able to compare the two through press releases and images.
I am interested by the idea of rather than being site specific this is an exhibition that is context specific, tied to the previous show and the relocation of the artists involved to a new country. All works pre-date the exhibition, the curators assembled artists that consider boundaries and new horizons, reinstalling their artwork in the Nottingham site.
On entering the project space, located in the attic of the newly re-branded One Thoresby Street building, the audience is met with a considerable amount of empty space. Whether it is the overly busy floor plan creating misleading preconceptions or the large and unusual dimensions of the peak roofed room at first there seems to be an absence. The open plan attic has been restructured a number of times for events and exhibitions, the most successful in my mind being for screenings organised by Annexinema and the collaboration between Tristan Hessing and Mark Harasimowicz for Hinterland. The character of the space lends itself to dramatic minimal lighting but less well to the glare of strip lighting.
The minimalist works by gerlach en koop, first on the left, were not instantly engaging. While I never fully considered 'Ground' (2009) two wooden sections listed as two bent bookshelves inverted, 'as if' photocopy without master (Staples, Huntingdon Street, Nottingham) and its non-duplicate, identically titled but with the alternative address (Post Office, Kerkplein, The Hague) I came back to. Walking past 'opschuiven', a promotional poster attached, removed and reattached to a temporary wall began to fill the space as I was led directly through the centre of the exhibition. In both the masterless photocopies and the reposting of an appropriated image (an advert, a plane across blue skies) I began to see the nature of authorship as the focus. The works were minimal and playful but the ideas were important rather than their visual manifestations.
The long blank walls, though a necessity to create screening areas for both 'Schattenfarht' (2009) and 'la construction du ciel' (2001/2) felt like an attempt to reduce a difficult large space. 'Scattenfahrt' is a video work in which a notebook is transported around a garden space, allowing the shadows of the plants to cross the pages and draw without the direct intervention of the artist. In this I was able to make connections with seeing in new ways, allowing processes to occur and create while removing the artist partially from their authorship. On the other hand 'la construction du ciel', with its stillness and silence of a grounded airport created more interest through the spoiler that the photographed stills were of models rather than of planes. While this trick slickly demonstrates the theme I felt very little while watching still images for long lengths of time, waiting but knowing nothing would happen.
The 'Nine Portraits of unknown people' (2007) at last intervenes in the long thin strip of space left by the dividing walls in a sculptural grid across the floor. It demanded a physical engagement from the audience that I saw crouch and reach out to almost touch partially concealed objects within stacks from the lost and found. The neat grid format broke up the room and moved me from the entrance to the back wall as nothing else presented did. The installation, although obviously easily transported in its compacted state, felt more considered in its transition to its placement in this exhibition than many of the works. Peering in to belongings, thinking of moving across borders and the incoherency of others' possessions when removed from context, this was the work I spent the most time with.
Having missed a first sculpture by walking directly into the room and feeling guilty for not staying longer with an audio work that I imagined may be quite long, I still feel unsure that I saw the whole show. I preferred the three books installed to the rear of the exhibition space when I imagined a reckless and joyful editor, inventing their own story with another author's work, rather than as was explained a failure in translation rendering literature almost incomprehensible. The artist Nishiko's painstaking work in creating 'Record of Fact' (2006) seemed wasted on me after my disappointment and I feared that apart from showing conceptual rigour it may remain unseen by people unsure whether to leaf through the pages.
Having considered this exhibition for a number of weeks since my first and second visit I am still unsure whether I missed something important. The premise of the exhibition to resite works through physical and cultural borders dicussing the thoughts of Proust on travel, was not quite lived up to for me. Something in the translation and removal from the context of the artist and their interests made relating to what I saw feel difficult. Having followed up a number of the artists online I have seen ambitious realisations of conceptual ideas that may have been hindered by transportation.
While the exhibited works succeeded and failed on their own merit, the exhibition felt too empty in the space despite their number. Comparing to documentation of another exhibition is unfair but the images available of 'Indoor Life' at Walden Affairs makes me feel that I have missed out. Having a project space with unusual and attractive features as the One Thoresby Street attic has is, in the main, a very useful resource for the Stand Assembly studio group and their invited guests. However, in this instance I felt that a white space would have been equally if not more appropriate for this exhibition.
