INTERFACE

REVIEW

Meet Pamela

Project Space Leeds, Leeds
20 November – 27 February

Reviewed by: Lara Eggleton »

Each time I visit PSL it appears to be another space entirely, its generous proportions sectioned off to adapt to its current exhibition. Recently, upon entering, one can choose between two spaces: to the right, 'Signs of Life,' a joint show of work by Jim Brogden and Matthew Shelton exploring the hidden life of the city; and to the left, 'Meet Pamela,' displaying the work of four artists that highlights and investigates the processes of art making. Each direction offers the visitor a distinct experience, though presently I will focus on the latter. Tellingly, its title refers to the 1973 film La Nuit Americaine by François Truffaut about the making of a film called Meet Pamela. Reflexivity form and process thus form the basis for the selection of work.

Passing through a dark set of dividing curtains, The Producer by Amy Stephens immediately arrests the eye. The crisp, angular lines of a star-shaped frame are hung from a set of gleaming bronze antlers, giving striking visual impression. The antlers are referenced in the adjacent room in Nervous Energy, which sports the original of the bronze cast (with clay still adhered), and a similar use of black lock fabric to clad the thin wooden outlines of geometric shapes. I must admit I was strongly taken in by these works and their subtle reference to process, but also by their confident aesthetic.

Back within the darker spaces of the exhibition, Bronwen Buckeridge's To the Memory of MA Vorontsova emits a softly imposing audio sequence, with appropriated laboratory imagery mapped onto a halting, yet dramatic, narrative. A visual sequence of images from lab experiments and documentaries are projected onto a set of audio speakers, from which low a series of hauntingly poetic sound fragments originating from a 1956 audio recording of Soviet scientist Maria Vorontsova. Mesmerising in its layered sensory impression, this collaboration with choreographer Janet Smith is well worth its five minutes and thirty-one seconds.

A second video piece, Laura Buckley's Balfron, is so heavily immersed in the mechanics of its own process that the viewer's perspective is at times completely obscured. If this is a measure of the impact of Buckley's work, it must be said the projection and the related photograph, Four Prism Aspect, succeeded in frustrating my attempts at apprehension. that is, the moving or still images of the four Perspex triangular prisms that form the basis for the works operate well as a formal reference to the medium, but give little insight into the underlying message.

On a grander scale, Laura Morrison's imposing Mirage Homage to Morris Louis stands over three metres from the floor and displays a rainbow of draped latex strips which form a double-sided wall of lat colour. This sculptural 'canvas' is a nod to a painting by Morris Louis from 1960, a work that he had hoped would distinguish his flattened application of non-representational colour from the expressionist brushstroke that has since come to characterise the movement of Abstract Expressionism. An endearing counterpoint to this imposing formalist statement is Morrison's unassuming but poignant Leap, a photograph set within a white Gothic arched frame. I suppose I was drawn to this piece for its fragility; an image of the artist on the studio floor with what look to be wings splayed out in an expression of defeat, post-leap. The figure of Icarus comes to mind, as it often does in relation to inspiration and faith - both subjects that Morrison explores in her work. Like the rest of the work in 'Meet Pamela', Leap bares its bones and shows us the gestures and movements of ideas that make up the works presented.

Writer detail:

Lara Eggleton is undertaking a PhD in the History of Art at the University of Leeds, and writes independently on the subject of contemporary art and theory.

Venue detail:
Project Space Leeds »
Whitehall Waterfront, 2 Riverside Way, LEEDS LS1 4EH

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