COMMUNITIES UNDER CONSTRUCTION

Townley and Bradby, Helen Stratford, A Kassen show work and documentation from their residencies as part of the Communities Under Construction programme.

Communities under Construction is a three year programme of residencies at Wysing Arts Centre in which the selected artists work within and in response to the villages and communities surrounding Wysing Arts Centre. During the early part of this year, and throughout the summer, artists A Kassen, Helen Stratford and Townley and Bradby were in-residence together at Wysing, living and working at the Centre. This exhibition is formed entirely of work produced by the artists during their residency period and developed in collaboration with individuals and groups in the village of Bourn and in the new settlement of Cambourne.

After having researched Wysing and the surrounding villages the artist group A KASSEN, who are based in Copenhagen, developed a spectacular artistic idea in collaboration with Bourn Airfield and which resulted in the work Minus Roof. In Minus Roof visitors to the Centre on 18 July were taken to Bourn Airfield and flown over Wysing to look down into the gallery space from the air, aided by the fact that one third part of the gallery roof had been taken off for the purpose. Other visitors experienced an open gallery with a section of roof removed with the Cambridgeshire sky and flight activity on view from within the space. These two places and viewpoints were brought together in the double projected film currently showing in the gallery, also entitled Minus Roof. In recent years A Kassen have evolved their work into a collaborative playground for projects that seek to re-imagine the encounter between artwork and public; realising projects that have a comic book quality and in fact even producing a comic book of their ideas.

During her residency HELEN STRATFORD is using site-specific and audio-based interventions to make visible the practices that produce and maintain public space in the nearby settlement of Cambourne. Gathered during her residency, which continues until August, these practices include the voices of local residents, teenagers, groundsmen, road sweepers, light scouts, planners, and people working on their allotments. The table in the centre of Wysing’s gallery space works as a meeting point for talking and discovering what Helen uncovered during her residency. Her research reveals both the heavily maintained, and the overlooked and un-noticed public space in Cambourne, and proposes alternative uses for them. Through her residency Helen has drawn on the practices of on performance, architecture and writing to explore how places and identities are produced and performed through every day objects and activities.

TOWNLEY AND BRADBY’S work functions primarily as a framework through which others can reflect on their surroundings. This reflection is often playful and invites participation. For their residency, Townley and Bradby spent three months living at Wysing with their children. Often working in collaboration with their children, they created an intimate portrait of the landscape and the communities around Wysing Arts Centre. They developed and tested out a variety of tactics to inhabit open spaces in and around Bourn and Cambourne, as well as making journeys across South Cambridgeshire. One event involved chalking out the swift, complicated and coordinated patterns of car parking outside the village nursery at drop-off time. In another event Townley and Bradby took a 1.5 metre wide inflatable red ball to the edge of Cambourne. They used the ball to measure and activate fields that will be covered with houses within the next few years.
Townley and Bradby have left their giant red ball in Wysing’s reception to be used in the grounds of Wysing. Please ask if you would like to borrow it!
Exhibition runs until 23 August.

ArtReview Magazine, Laura Allsop:
http://www.artreview.com/profiles/blog/show?id=1474022:BlogPost:849999

Frieze Magazine, Jonathan Griffin:
http://www.frieze.com/blog/entry/heavens_above/