INTER-CHANGE
Opening / Wed 4th Nov 6.30-8.30pm
Film Screening / Vanishing Point / Fri 13th Nov 6.30-8.30pm
Closing / Thurs 19th Nov 6.30-8.30pm
Gallery Open 12-6pm
A sequence of new works exploring road travel, the architecture of road systems and the ideal of the automobile. The exhibition is split into four rotating parts, the changing configurations of works drawing on the multiple junctures between them.
The opening night of Interchange coincides with the 50th anniversary of the opening of the M1, the first full length, inter-urban motorway to be built in the UK. The opening of Motorway One was, at the time, a cause for celebration and excitement, bringing Britain into the modern age of speed, travel and increased connectivity.
Works in Interchange approach the road as something to be traversed, measured, disrupted or admired.
David Stearn
For Interchange, David Stearn has produced a series of sculptures using the automobile and the road as his main source of material, presented in photographic form. By inverting the normal rules and regulations of road use, the car has been directed and positioned at particular intervals along the road and at an opposite to the normal direction travelled by road users. By strict process, the car is stopped, abandoned and photographed in its parked position and then returned to with each new sculpture/ position lasting the duration of the process.
Mathilda Fowler
Mathilda Fowler examines the relationship between the aesthetic and kinaesthetic experiences of the road, exploring the conflation of visual and physical experience and how it influences the form of the road network. For this exhibition Mathilda has devised crude instruments that measure the effect of centrifugal force on objects/ matter within a moving car. M4 - (Clothoid) Curved is the Line focuses specifically on mathematically plotted transitional curves, used in road design to ease the sensation of acceleration on curved roads and to improve the visual experience for the driver. For A1. The Inert Object Travels in a Straight Line, used engine oil spills onto card as it is driven around motorways.
Louie Rice
Climax Denial / Intersecting Form to Restrict Road Travel is a study into the duel state of submission and empowerment that road travel has allowed. Designed from standardised dimensions and functional graphic language, the form represents an implied violence where the variable restriction of movement is combined with the threat and consequence of a vehicle crashing into and through the structure. The work attempts to re-instate the fear of progress associated with the construction of road systems and the fetishization of speed that they have created.
Sybella Perry
For Interchange Sybella Perry has produced video works that displace the mundane, everyday experience of British motorway travel into the realms of the (American) road movie genre. Spaghetti Junction contrasts the freedom suggested in the open roads and landscapes associated with American road movies, and the overbearing architecture of Gravelly Hill Interchange which tends to induce a feeling of dizzying disorientation. Parodying Spielberg's Duel, LGV Duel edits the spectatorship which we partake in on car journeys, focusing on the passing of large goods vehicles. By isolating this particular idiosyncrasy the monotony of the journey is emphasised.
