On Becoming a Gallery II: Frances Richardson - Gary Colclough

Frances Richardson describes her sculptural works as “walk-in drawings”. The intent is that the viewer becomes part of an imaginary field within actual space. In this field tables, chairs, I-beams, floorboards, carpets, beds etc. are “drawn” using MDF/plywood in 3 dimensions. Paired down to structural forms they effect through their physical presence, denying the seduction of surface histories.

Gary Colclough’s practice encompasses drawing, sculpture and projections. Central to his work is the presentation of hand-drawn images combined with diagrammatic wooden structures. Through various formal combinations of these elements he explores how the image functions as an element within spatial and temporal arrangements.

On Becoming a Gallery When a new gallery space opens does it become into the world in the way an artwork does? The Deleuzian notion of becoming is not linear, but a simultaneous realisation of the constituent parts in the becoming of its nature. It is a perception not a process: “We are not in the world; we become with the world; we become by contemplating it. Everything is vision, becoming”. With a gallery however, there is a process over time too. This happens on many levels: the introduction of artworks, the trace of its former usage, the accumulative history of exhibitions that the space establishes, the history that each participant and visitor brings. All of these elements then create a context in which the artworks and gallery are experienced and understood, and it is this dialogue that then becomes the gallery’s nature.

When Fieldgate Gallery was asked to curate the inaugural three-exhibition residency at the Angus-Hughes gallery it seemed an interesting prospect to approach it from these different notions of becoming. By definition there will be a linear narrative – all processes take place over time (in this case over the three exhibitions), but the analogy of becoming as a curatorial device remains intriguing. With that in mind the exhibition programme addresses these aspects of realising the gallery over its given chronological time-frame, from its state as an empty space. Through this, each of the exhibitions in different ways, reveal the gallery space as a site of expectations and meanings.

There is no theme, no critical context, no text. It is about filling a space full of stuff over a three-exhibition period and giving it significance. It is about decisions and percepts, it is about “…the organisation of perceptions, affections, and opinions…that take the place of language”, and when words fail, as they will, then all that is left is to do is as Laurence Sterne describes in ‘Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy’: “When Corporal Trim flourishes his stick, we are given not the words but a twirling line on the page”. Richard Ducker, 2010

Part Three: Jan 15th – Feb 6th Aisling Hedgecock – Stewart Gough & Tom Ormond Paul Eachus with videos by Nooshin Farhid

Fieldgate Gallery www.fieldgategallery.com

ANGUS-HUGHES presents

On Becoming a Gallery
Part Two: Frances Richardson - Gary Colclough