Exploring Place with Locate at Jerwood

Catch the final days of Jerwood’s summer show, Locate, which continues until Sunday, 12 September.

Locate features three new commissions that respond to the concept of “site”. Although, very ambiguous, the “site” sets the stage and can change, develop and foster alternative meanings. The exhibition features the work of artists Mel Brimfield, Sarah Pickering and Aura Satz. Each artist was asked to propose ideas for new works that responded to the idea of "site", be it a geographical location, institution, collection, a fictional or conceptual space. The selected artists then undertook a five month research project to develop their ideas and the resulting works will be exhibited at Jerwood Space in August. Locate is curated by Sarah Williams.



Mel Brimfield has produced a film that seeks to reconstruct a fictional lost performance artwork. She has worked extensively on a new script which was developed with a group of actors. A series of four characters provide contradictory eyewitness accounts of a live art event bringing into question whether it is possible to locate a transient performance after its completion. This is a really interesting subject, because of performance art’s nature; one thing that I always think about considering some of the longer durational pieces is this: if no one is there to see the performance is it still a performance. Does a performance need an audience? Marina Abramovic spoke candidly about recoding performances, and in her recent MoMa show, The Artist is Present, there were a series of re-performances. Read the feature here and in the current issue Stuart Brisley discusses his relationship with the art form.



Sarah Pickering, one of Locate’s artists, has created a new body of photographs in response to a museum exhibition on Fakes and Forgeries organised by the Art and Antiquities Unit of the Metropolitan Police. She has accessed the Fakes and Forgeries archive at Scotland Yard allowing her to further research one of the most notorious art forgers in history, Sean Greenhalgh. The aim has been to deepen her ongoing exploration of the photograph’s relationship to the real, and the notion of authenticity in the subject; is it possible to locate reality through photography? Photography has always been subjective, the image-maker can show the viewer their point of view and skew opinion, seeing isn’t always believing.



While Aura Satz has explored the notion of how we locate sound. Working as artist-in-residence at the Ear Institute, UCL London, she has developed a new intimate, immersive sound sculpture that creates a physical and psychoacoustic sonic experience. A large brass horn, appears like a giant hearing trumpet suspended in the gallery space. Visitors are encouraged to place their head inside the sculpture which plays a sounds piece written and recorded by the artist and played on a multi-channel soundtrack which outputs in a spiral sequence.

Jerwood Encounters provide emerging artists with new exhibition opportunities and the chance to explore issues and ideas across disciplines and art forms. Locate is the third in a series of experimental exhibitions curated by Sarah Williams which have supported collaborative and experimental new commissions within the Jerwood Visual Arts programme. The other exhibitions par of this series include: An Experiment in Collaboration (2008) and Laboratory (2009).

You have until 12 September to see this timely and relevant show. www.jerwoodspace.co.uk

Images (c) the artists.