- Venue
- The Old Registry Office
- Location
- South East England
The Importance of Elsewhere
An amazing thing has just happened in Chatham…
…. artists and workshop participants have collaborated bringing skills, strengths, vulnerabilities, inhibition, layers of life, perceptions of the world together in a transitional space.
Once an institutional building The Old Registry Office, Maidstone Road, Chatham, Kent was made temporarily available by New Arts Centre (www.thenac.co.uk & Halpern Charitable Foundation) and Curious Planet (www.curiousplanet.org) it is a building in transition, not a blank canvas, waiting to be re-developed into sheltered housing, making it the perfect space to explore the Importance of Elsewhere. Developing out of a day of collaborative interventions earlier in the year artists Wendy Daws & Peter Cook took Phillip Larkin’s poem with workshop participants & local artists to make collaborative work which transports the visitors on layer upon layer of journeys looking for elsewhere, through text, image, sound – marks on every available surface (windows, stairs, walls, banisters) and interventions (sound, light, shadows, emotions) in every nook and cranny. The investment of creativity, time and energy was palpable, no more so than on the night of the Private View where crowds spilled excitedly through the front door, drawn in by the smell of lavender as we were welcomed in and invited to explore each floor at our own pace or guided, everyone welcome, everyone talking to whoever they found themselves next to, exploring together experiencing the mix of skills and ideas that have inhabited the space. All the works had a ephemeral quality, an awareness of their temporary nature, that they would be joining the layers of history already laid down in the space, traces left for the next inhabitants.
Re-visiting the house a few days later it was quieter and I had to ring the bell, the atmosphere was hushed, I missed the bustle of the public although I’d come to experience it in a quieter way. It was as if the inclusive nature of the project required a public. However the work still had strength and a sense of the people who made it, which the House has now claimed as its transitional identity.