INTERFACE

REVIEW

Trying to Cope with Things that aren't Human (Part One)

Trying to Cope with Things that aren't Human (Part One)
AirSpace Gallery, Stoke-on-Trent
28 March – 9 May

Reviewed by: Rachel Marsden »

Next month, the AirSpace Gallery celebrates its third anniversary. Recognising a gap in the contemporary art scene in the city of Stoke-on-Trent and Staffordshire, and a lack of exhibition spaces for local and regional artists, Andrew Branscombe and David Bethell, the Directors and managerial partnership, opened a space in a disused pottery factory on the city's periphery. Its launch put the gallery on the map, presenting well-known performing artists including Turner Prize winner Martin Creed.

Assisting with the renovation of its apt original location, pointing trowel in one hand and concrete in the other, I was 'cementing their walls' literally and metaphorically, providing support and a firm belief in the gallery and its future. This urban warehouse space provided a haven for hungry artists and contemporary creatives in the area. In May 2007, the gallery was relocated to a historical council-owned building in the town-centre location of Broad Street, Hanley, with accompanying trepidation bound with ambition.

Today, the AirSpace Gallery has undertones of its directors' desires as artistic practitioners hidden behind the drive to present, support and nurture regional and early-career artists whilst bringing established national and international artists into Staffordshire. Maximising what was available to them, they have painstakingly dedicated their time, physical efforts and personal resources to its establishment and development, always showing a sense that nothing was too great a problem. They have established regular funding and dedicated colleagues who provide direction, support and artistic vision. They constantly reassess their identity and recently completed the interior renovation and expansion of the current premises, which has allowed larger scale exhibitions and artworks to be displayed.

The AirSpace Gallery has always had high aspirations and their most recent exhibition is no exception. 'Trying to Cope with Things that aren't Human (Part One)' is its first international conversation, presenting a thematic approach to the often incomprehensibly paradoxical relationship between modern technology and the overwhelming magnificence and beauty of nature. Through visual examinations and literal dialogues, many new commissions in video, installation, photography, sculpture and text, question how we comprehend the nature that created us (the natural world), and the technology that envelops us (the invented world). Previously exhibited at David Cunningham Projects, San Francisco, in January 2009, the exhibition is guest curated by artist Ian Brown, who is also editor of the accompanying publication. Produced almost as a sub-plot to the show, it stands alone as an artwork in its own right. The first edition, produced in a limited run of 300, acts like a collected series of commissioned textual responses to the materiality and physicality of the works on display, whilst reflecting each artist's primary concerns and artistic practice. In addition, each subsequent text responds to the previous one, exploring notions of 'intertextuality', linguistics and the play of semantics.

This exhibition is not a brash statement; it doesn? shout out its premise, objectives and wanted outcomes. It is an investment of your own time in the subtle parody of nature versus technology. Hidden wit and humour is contrasted throughout with the conscious seriousness and extreme of "staring at a recording of death"¹ referenced through Mariele Neudecker's 'silent' sculpture of a resin prototype model of a flight box recorder, Final Fantasy (2008).

Alan Currall's short video Word Processing (1995) explores our ability to understand human nature by presenting us with fingers instructing a microchip how to do its job. This witty dialogue demonstrates technology's control over our development and existence, and how we now cannot function without it. This piece is also referenced in the newly commissioned I am too complex, adaptive, apparently purposeful and beautiful to have occurred randomly or accidently (2009) where a wooden carved head engages in a technological argument with itself. Unbeknown to Currall in 1995, he would fourteen years later have to use that specific microchip to programme the technology used for this brand new artwork. This paradigm between these two artworks adds to the serious-humorous undertones portrayed throughout the exhibition.

The literal interaction of animal and human culture is reflected in Marcus Coates' two-screen video projection Journey to the Lower World (2004). Coates wears a full stag skin in front of Liverpudlian residents outwardly confused by this shamanistic ritual investigating the potential destruction of their homes. The absurdity and hilarity of his performance makes us consider our regression back to primal 'animal' actions.

The exhibition also features work by the artists Alex Pearl, Annika Ström, Francis McKee, Ian Brown, Johanna Hällsten, Heather and Ivan Morison, Paul Rooney, Richard Hughes, Richard T. Walker and Ryan Gander.

After three years, the AirSpace Gallery has no thematic dogma regarding how it selects, curates and schedules exhibitions. The present exhibition has worked differently to previous shows, helping it reassess its intrinsic mission, by presenting a new breeding ground for the development of relationships, future dialogues and international networks with guest curators, artists and the media. It will be interesting to see what follows and how this level of artistic endeavour will be sustained.

Personally, I hope this exhibition will continue cementing their walls for a stable future, presenting more collaborative aspects of display, starting a phase of new found professionalism and sense of their role in the Staffordshire, national and international contemporary art scene.

www.airspacegallery.org

www.thingsthatarenthuman.com

1 Brown, Ian, personal Interview (regarding Trying to Cope with Things that aren't Human (Part One)), 20 April 2009.

Venue detail:
AirSpace Gallery »
4 Broad Street, Hanley, Stoke on Trent ST1 4HL

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