Eleanor Clare & Dillan Marsh: The Travels of The Toucher
20th-29th Nov
With cardboard boxes over their heads, and two holes punched out for their arms, they began with wet clay, and without any other idea than to see what came by handling it. What they arrived at was not a sculpture, but a way to begin. The forms were destroyed and remodelled – the possibility to reform them was always there. It was a way to get to the thing.
On a wet and windy day, they journeyed out to Tigh na Cailleach, home of the Old Woman of the Glen, just before she withdrew into her shelter for the winter. They were not sure what they might find, or what to do when they got there. They were walking a path that had been walked for thousands of years. They were looking for the very beginnings of meaning and making: to connect thousands of years ago with today. They wanted to find it, but when they found it, they didn’t know what to do next. Not there at the shrine, nor in the studio with the clay.
About Time is a satellite programme of contemporary art running from October 2015 – January 2016. It is curated by a consortium of Leeds-based artists and curators led by Mexico, Pavilion and SPUR with contributions from Assembly House Leeds, Basement Arts, Black Dogs, Leeds Animation Workshop, Left Bank, Pyramid of Arts, Seize, Set The Controls For The Heart of The Sun and many others. Coinciding with the launch of the British Art Show 8, this city-wide initiative features commissioned artworks, texts and events which aim to highlight the work of artists, cultural producers and curatorial projects based in Leeds, alongside their international peers. The programme takes place across a diverse set of venues including artist-led spaces, museums and heritage buildings.
- collage with Francois Hugo dans son atelier and a stamp from the Album Nestle, Series 22
- role playing dice with the numbers removed and in the forms of the 5 Platonic Solids
- collage with Bulgari advertisement Eternal Values and bookmark with Vanitas by Jan van Huysum
- RUSH, Yikes and Power Promotions (1992) on a small white stool
- Collage with Odyssey, a Journey into Dance and postcard Urnascher Sylvesterchause
- Trophy, marble base, universal imperial spanner and chocolate wrapper
- Tomorrow is Born, Acidica Productions (Shepton Mallet, 1992)
- postcard of Arosa 1800m, Innerarosa, Alpentobel, Erzhorn
- digital machine timer Red Lion 202/95EC (counting the time in milliseconds)
- NEW AGE (Milton Keynes)
- a toy Halloween pumpkin
- mono-print on paper Mayhem in 1990 printed with an empty black ink cartridge
Collage with Francois Hugo dans son atelier and a stamp from the Album Nestle, Peter, Cailler, Kohler, Sciences, Decouvertes, Explorations, Avenures, Series 22
Comedy and Tragedy
text by Eleanor Clare, 2014, published in NEVERODDOREVEN, Deuxpiece and Buro fur Problem, Basel
I was frantic, feeling a little sick and dizzy, but determined to carry on.
What had to be done, had to be done. It was a desperate attempt.
It was a hollow action.
It was just doing for the sake of doing.
It was doing to find some momentary release from the feeling of total inertia, of being stuck.
Now I must talk of hollow laughter.
Some say it is the laughter of a psychopath: cold, hard, unfeeling.
I say it is simply laughter at the end of the tether.
They say, if you don't laugh you'll cry.
I have been laughing this way.
I cry until I laugh, and laugh until I cry.
There is not much in between, but for an empty and desolate expanse stretching out ahead.
When I am laughing, I do not know if the laughter itself feels unreal, or if I myself am unreal.
It seems like I have been caught by something I cannot quite grasp.
I am in its grip: the grip of humour.
Watching myself on a screen, I make myself laugh, for I am hysterical.
Here I am comedy.
I laugh a senseless, reasonless laughter that has no meaning, other than to shake and move in a way that is ridiculous.
It is laughter in the extreme, because it cannot end until it reaches the opposite pole: tragedy.
*
"Emotions exist beyond time, as the pulse of pure physical connection to the world and its music.
Like music, they are a form of movement _ the origin of the word emotion lies in the Latin, emovere, to move out, remove, agitiate."
(Little)
