Coming Out of the Woodwork

‘Coming Out of the Woodwork’ will bring together three artists who similarly identify with the exploration of architectural space in its formation and perception as a key component to their practice. The Nunnery, as a gallery space and its associated architecture, will be entirely reformed through a series of installations and constructions. Each artist approaches new ways of engaging the viewer beyond a ‘static’ looking experience; encouraging the physicality of experience through their work.

While not being a collaborative project, in the sense of working towards a uniform single work, each artists’ working process will link to create a narrative that is completed through a physical journey between them. The key concern of physicality, both in the performative act of construction and as a form of communication with the viewer, will make for an exhibition that reads as a playful, disconcerting and humorous physical experience.

By entering the exhibition, the viewer moves between the minimal intrusions of altered perspective offered by Joe Watling which seemingly emanate, deconstruct and cut through the regulated cube of the gallery, pass through Mark Selby’s dark, uncomfortable spaces containing objects suggesting both handmade technology and domesticity, as well as ascending tight stairways onto gantries that offer views of Richard Cramp's faux-utopian sculptural installation. There will be false walls, open rooms, enclosed spaces and layers of ‘new’ construction to the existing architecture.

In the Nunnery’s reconfigured state of fictional spaces, the viewer will be asked to relinquish any predetermined knowledge of how the space should function/operate, the rules that illicit safety, security and predictability. Instead, by returning to the state of a childlike adventurer and taking up the proposed physical ‘game’ offered by each artist, the viewer will question the permissiveness of interaction and move through a complex narrative.


This is an exhibition I helped to work on and design, curate and publicate over the summer with Mark Selby, Richard Cramp, Joe Watling, David Auborn, Chris Chalklen, Emily Hart, Edward Liddle and Martin Verrier