Portsmouth is synonymous with ‘the Senior Service’ and home to at least five museums dedicated to the Royal Navy and all things nautically linked. Happily for the culture-loving landlubbers, it is also home to a good selection of art galleries including the Aspex Gallery under the Aspex Visual Arts Trust. The Aspex Gallery has been serving the local area since 1981 and the early work of many established British and international artists has been shown here since the gallery’s opening.
It also dedicates a small exhibition and project space to the development of local artists based in the Portsmouth and South East region and has a full and varied programme of education activities including the free of charge ‘gallery talks’, links with local schools and the excellent, and reasonably priced, Arts Clubs for young people.
Over the past five years Aspex have enjoyed growing popularity evidenced by their increasing visitor numbers, and they have now outgrown their current space in a converted church on Brougham Road. As they approach a landmark 25 years in the business they are planning to leave the converted church and set up anew in the Vulcan Building, Gunwharf Quays in which, funding permitting, they hope to be resident by the end of 2005.
In January of this year the gallery ran an open competition – Emergency, the first such competition that the gallery has run for a number of years, the selection panel included: Sarah Shalgosky, Mead Gallery, Nick Baker, fa Projects and Helen Maurer, winner of the Jerwood Applied Arts prize in 2003. Out of over 350 submissions from all over the world the winner was Susan Collis and whilst the decision was unanimous, as the gallery explained, it was not without its risks because her work is largely very site specific, ‘her sculptures and interventions are subtle and discrete manipulations, most often of the surfaces of the furniture, fixtures and fittings of the spaces in which she exhibits.’
Collis graduated her MA only two years ago from Royal College of Art and has received many awards and prizes in addition to the Aspex Open including, the Student Jerwood Drawing Prize, the Pizza Express Prospects Contemporary Drawing prize and a British Cement Association Award, all in 2002; her work is in the private collections of Hales Gallery, Paul Smith and London Institute.
Following on from the competition, Aspex invited Collis to create their current exhibition – I KNOW ALL ABOUT YOU and since January they have maintained an ongoing dialogue with multiple visits to the studio and gallery in preparation. This, according to Collis, was ‘a very positive experience, [she feels] very supported by Aspex, especially as I only left college two years ago – to have a solo show is great; I have no complaints!’ Of the 5 works on display, four were created especially for this exhibition, only one has been previously on display elsewhere. The Guardian reviewed the exhibition and explained:
‘Susan Collis tampers with the surface of banal, inanimate objects such as tables and chairs to make them appear as if they have experienced an unhappy accident, bestowing upon them an inner life or mysterious history.’
To put this description into context her works have previously included, (although not necessarily in this exhibition) a small stepladder with paint splashes next to a casually discarded dustsheet and a nondescript wooden worktable, similarly marked with coffee cup rings. Such prosaic objects will not fit everyone’s idea of ‘art’ but such is the canvas of conceptual art and it is the stated mission of many contemporary art galleries to challenge the public perception of what art is. In a recent exhibition in South Africa, museum curator Andrew Lamprecht infuriated many regulars by hanging the paintings of 17th century Dutch old masters from the Michaelis Collection facing the wall and not the visitors!
You would do well not to leave your sense of humour behind when you visit a gallery these days.
Aspex is hoping to hold the ‘Emergency’ competition as a regular biennial event, the next to be in 2006.
In a totally new direction for Aspex, and one that they are very excited about, is COURT, a dance installation choreographed by Angela Woodhouse with designs by Caroline Broadhead. Woodhouse approached the gallery with this piece on the recommendation of Stuart Olesker who is a lecturer in Creative Arts, Film & Media at the University of Portsmouth and an Aspex Gallery regular.
Woodhouse trained in both dance and visual art and has produced site and installation works before. Her 1997 piece, THE WAITING GAME was also in collaboration with artist/designer Caroline Broadhead.
Woodhouse creates intimate and unusual dance. Her choreographic events challenge the very idea of performance including the relationship between audience and performer. COURT typifies these themes. It is a dance event for 2 dancers and 3 viewers set within a layout of architectural ‘rooms’, delicately created by white muslin. Josephine Leask has described it as:
‘…a dance collaboration which challenges the status quo of dance performance… …because it poses some fundamental questions about space, intimacy and the audience/performer relationship, and it redefines a refreshing dance/art aesthetic.’
First seen in London at The Barrett Marsden Gallery in June 2003, it caused quite a stir. Reviewers have commented on the intense intimacy of the piece and the uncertainty that such proximity, and possibly interactivity, provokes within the viewer. Just using the word ‘interactivity’ can be enough to strike terror into the heart of even the most hardened theatre critic; how might the traditionally more passive art galley visitor be affected? I asked Susie Clark, Exhibitions & Marketing Co-ordinator for Aspex, about the reactions that this event may elicit in their regular visitors.
‘We are not entirely sure – it’s a bit of an experiment! Some of our recent shows have perhaps asked more of the viewer in terms of their ‘interactivity’, for example: Faisal Abdu’Allah’s installation Garden of Eden, and the MEDIATE project – which was actually a research (rather than art) project, comprising an interactive environment for autistic children, developed by the University of Portsmouth. Hopefully, our visitors won’t be too traumatised…’
The work of Aspex Gallery and other galleries like it throughout the UK has great regional significance in the development and support of local artists. Of national significance is its willingness to take a risk on works such as COURT and its commitment to supporting an emerging artist like Susan Collis, bringing a wider audience to contemporary art events that were once only to be seen in the capital.
With thanks to Susie Clark and Jo Bushnell at Aspex Gallery.
