Space Interrupted brings together artists and film makers who will create new and engaging work, responding to and interrupting Fort Brookhurst in Gosport, an English Heritage fort. The six artists have been drawn to the fort to make site specific installations inspired by its fortifications, history and archives, interrupting and overlapping the space, layering and fragmenting, disrupting function and meaning.
Space Interrupted is a collaboration between Curator Clare Sheppeard and artist Sharon Haward. Artists will present site responsive work which will span Fort Brockhurst, creating an assemblage of real and imagined installations. Audiences will be able to explore this rarely open site through the artists’ response to the space, experiencing a sense of place through sculptural installations, sound and projections Each work will enhance highlight, or disrupt the integrity of the building.
The exhibition itself will be open on the 10th, 12th and 13th of September 2015, with opening times – 11-3pm and FREE.
The artists involved in the exhibition and project are:
Sharon Haward uses a range of media to engage with a sensory and narrative sense of place. Her practice is predominantly site-responsive and installation-based created to capture a slippery sense of the past and present, fragmentation and dislocation. At Fort Brockhurst she draws on the period of revoutionary turmoil in Europe around 1848 and the historically fragile relationship between France and Britain which led to the building of the fort, by interrupting the space with a precarious barricade, projections and sound recordings.
Patti Gaal-Holmes is an artist/filmmaker and historian. Her cross-disciplinary practice includes working with moving image (celluloid and digital), photography, drawing, artists’ books and performance. For Fort Brockhurst she will creating a new film on 16mm. Gaall Holmes is the author of ‘A History of 1970s Experimental Film: Britain’s Decade of Diversity’ ( 2015).
Kye Wilson uses moving image to create site specific films and video installations that explore space, self and other. Wilson will be making a film inspired by the forts location and function.
Eileen White is a craft based visual artist who will be responding to textiles in the collection at Fort Brockhurst and their provenance. White will be working with a writer, poet and painter.
Helene Kazan uses research and archival material to generate moving image and multimedia installations. She is currently a phd candidate at Centre of Research Architecture at Goldsmiths. Helene will be creating an installation and sound piece inspired by home shelters.
Lisa Traxler is interested in conversation, personal memory and environment – emotive references and the fundamental are the inspirations for Lisa work. For Fort Brockhurst Lisa will make a number of large scale paperscape installations using the funcions and narratives of each room choosen.
Clare Sheppeard is a curator who has worked with local, national and international artists in a variety of sites David Batchelor, Mariele Neudecker, Karin Van Pinxterern, Alice Anderson, Kate MccGwire and Emma Crtichley. Projects include Coastal Currents Festival Hastings, Jerwood Gallery Hastings, LIMBO Margate, Venice Biennale, Van Abbemuseum and Independents Liverpool Biennial.
There will be a series of events related to the exhibition where you can take part and get involved:
Saturday 29th August – Point and Shoot photo tours. Meet at 2pm outside the Discovery Centre, High Street, Gosport, PO12 1BT. Bring your camera, camera phone, disposable camera and join artists Sharon Haward for a tour of Gosport looking at the architecture and historical buildings. The resulting photos will be displayed as part of Space Interrupted at Fort Brockhurst.
Thursday 10th September, 4.30-6.30 – Discussion & networking event with bluemonkey net at aspex, the Vulcan Buildings, Gunwharf Quay, Portsmouth.
Sunday 13th September, 1.30 – Walk and talk around the exhibition.
To book a place on any of these events email: spaceinterrupted@yahoo.co.uk
For further information check the Space Interrupted website:
spaceinterrrupted.wordpress.com
Roy Hanney
10 September
Today I was reminded that Portsmouth is not like the real world when I cycled all the way to Gosport, hopped on the ferry and peddled to Fort Brockhust to see this exhibition. Where I was surprised to see no signs or any indication the event was on. I did meet a women who busily shut the gate barring my way. She seemed aghast at the idea someone had come to see this exhibition and was less than communicative as she locked me out of her crumbling monument to the industrialisation of war. It seems I was stupid enough to assume that an exhibition that opened at 11am might still be open at 2pm, that the people organising the exhibition might welcome visitors. It does say on the publicity the site would be open 11am to 3pm I just checked so clearly I was deemed as ‘not the sort of people’ they want wandering around unchaperoned. What I don’t understand is this… why go to all the trouble and effort of mounting an exhibition, organising the artists, marketing it, all just to run it for three days and even then for only two hours a day (the women told me to it wouldn’t be open Friday either). Still NFP (normal for Portsmouth) I guess! So sadly I can’t recommend wasting your time visiting this exhibition since there is a good chance you won’t be allowed in!