INTERFACE

REVIEW

Animated

Wysing Arts Centre, Bourn, Cambridge
18 January – 1 March

Reviewed by: Lorna Collins »

"Wear sturdy shoes," I was warned, when I rang to enquire about the obscure location of Wysing Arts Centre, which is placed in the quaint village of Bourn, in Cambridgeshire. One would not usually expect to find any radical new art, or a centre promoting it, way out here, but Wysing was apparently formed in response to an influx of artists that are currently emerging in East Anglia.

As it happened, getting to the Wysing Arts Centre was an easy bus ride from the centre of Cambridge city, and 'sturdy shoes' were unnecessary for the short walk. Although, such precautions might help make the experience more authentically rustic for the visitor, since the first impression of Wysing is one of a 'farmyard turned into art commune'.

It is an eleven-acre site that was converted from a working farm, and holds twenty-four studios with copious, fertile space for making and exhibiting art. Walking down to the gallery, the exterior is dominated by their 'Communities under Construction' projects, such as 'AMPHIS', a two-storey shack made from discarded materials, and the 'modular dwelling system' of 'N55-Walking House', which is a smooth, polyhydric building that perches in one of the fields. A few straw bails lie around like rustic ready-mades. It's all very hip.

Their current show, 'Animated', is the first in their 'Wysing Arts Contemporary' series; three exhibitions that propagate works by artists emerging in the local region of East Anglia. According to their press material, this series aims to bring forward a "radical new approach to the sale and collection of contemporary visual art". Such an intention might seem dubious in this rural setting and amidst the crisis in the global economy, but Wysing maintains that they "have launched a new business model through this show".

Whether or not they will be able to rouse the art market, the works in this show are at least animating to look at. The gallery space is furnished with an eclectic range of performative (and interacting) new media, biro drawings, iPod cartoons and video installations. Chosen because they manipulate and re-orchestrate habitual objects from our daily lives, these works provide a surprising reassessment of the place of these objects, and art, within our lives. Here, 'animation' is an aesthetic quest to enliven the everyday.

My immediate impression is set by the light, beguiling, cacophony of sound that cascades from several different works, and fluctuates through the clean space. The nearest comes from Simon Woolham's The Hollows; a video animation of an amorphous biro drawing that looks like a jungle of pubic hair, set to a mechanical soundtrack of the artist clicking his teeth with his fingernail. This noise brings on a disorientating sensual concoction, since it jigs out of time to the fuzzy sound of a lollipop circus accordion and saxophone that is drifting off other works on the far side of the room. With tones from different works bleeding into each other, the aura of this show is odd, but compelling.

Matt Cook's Map Wysing Event documents the artist's recent residency at Wysing, during which he spent five days walking around a five-mile section of the countryside, recording the sounds that he heard through the landscape. The finished work took the form of a live performance on the opening night of the exhibition, in which he used sound, photographs and string to map this experience. This map is now hung on the wall of the gallery, and the sounds that he recorded are available to buy in editions on CD, for 5p a second.

This work says a lot about Wysing Arts Centre: it exemplifies their focus on the portrayal and habitation of rural public space, whilst these editions of sound also offer a different way to invest in art. You can buy a '1 minute 51 seconds' edition of Map Wysing Event for just £5.55. Curator Lotte Juul Peterson asserts that by offering new ways to buy artworks, at more affordable prices, Wysing stretches the common view of what art is, and offers its "radical new approach" to collecting. "In this way," she says, "we are dealing very concretely with the credit crunch, and making it possible to share and be a part of the contemporary art scene".

However, it does not seem as transgressive a measure ("This challenges the notion of capitalism," Peterson also says) as claimed. You don't get a lot for your '5p a second'. The edition I listened to was largely filled with muffled silence, although a crow occasionally cawed. The Cambridge countryside is perhaps not so lively...

But there is something refreshing about the art shown here. I was particularly taken by Sarah Evans' Inflected with Something Beautiful, which is a pretty pink animation on an iPod (available to purchase by download). It is unexpected to see a moving image, which looks like an oriental version of Enid Blyton's Magic Faraway Tree, on an iPod, in a gallery. I wonder if I could download it from iTunes?

In this way, art becomes something you can buy easily and live with. The centre maintains that when you invest in art from Wysing, you are also investing in the mentoring and promoting of artists, since the resources raised from sales are put straight back into building the centre as a locus for supporting and nurturing their careers. So if you buy a work shown here, your purchase is to some extent philanthropic, since the money is re-invested back into the centre. Your collection is helping to stimulate the production of new art; it is an ethical investment.

Such an idea lends a clement tone to proceedings around Wysing, and there is a real communal atmosphere to the place, with artists milling around and working together here. Yet there is also potentially a conflict between ethical aims and financial ones. The original, "down to earth", hippy vibe of the art space is said to have altered upon receiving Arts Council England funding and its consequent upgrade. The sleek, black, new buildings look disjunctively sterile near the straw bails. There seems some discord lurking between the artists' need for free space, and the centre's professional marketing view that "We want to get away from the commune. We are moving away from piecemeal spaces. This is not a commune, but top quality spaces for top quality artists."

But perhaps the community spirit will continue to animate this increasingly slicked-up art centre. Whether their "new business model" proves fruitful or not, this show and the ethos of the place both excited me. The next show, 'Exotic Flora and Fauna Sauna Kiosk', brings an installation that opens its sauna to the public. Whip off those sturdy shoes and jump in; hot things are happening out here.

Writer detail:
I am an arts journalist, philosopher and researching literature and culture at Cambridge University. I write to communicate what can be gained from the sensuous experience of engaging with artworks; to ask what contemporary art is for and can do - within the terrorism and virtual reality of our modern world.

lpc29@cam.ac.uk

Venue detail:
Wysing Arts Centre »
Fox Road, Bourn, Cambridge CB23 2TX

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