Laura White
From a Moment to a Mass

It’s a Thursday in October and I’m visiting APT Gallery in Deptford where Changeable Beast, an artist collective are doing a project. A group of artists that met on the MASS Sculpture mentoring programme and continue to work together through shows, events and seminars. The groups’ focus for this project EncounterCulture is to have a discussion around sculpture and work collaboratively in the space. This is their fourth project, each one developing a deeper dialogue between their practices.

EncounterCulture started with the artists visiting the local Deptford market to make initial sculptural responses, a group of them then took these works into Deptford’s Addey and Stanhope Secondary School to run workshops, generating more ideas and further collaborations with the students.

Walking into the gallery for the first time I notice a black carpet on the floor, a pathway for studio holders in the building to travel through the space. This carpet, whether intentional or not, creates demarcated areas where smaller groups work together. I wonder, if the carpet was not there, whether the artists would gather differently. Will the carpet be a part of the final artwork?

Today most of the artists are in. There is a timetable on the wall listing days and people. One of the two absent artistsare working remotely and posting items to be included.

Deptford market is the inspiration, objects and materials purchased locally for the artists to use, abuse, build with and take apart. I ask if any ephemeral materials were selected from the market, such as fresh food. I am shown some bones hanging from a structure, the remains of an oxtail that was bought, cooked, eaten and then the bones brought back into the space.

The materials reflect a typical London market. Markets have changed so much in my lifetime, shifting away from fresh produce – fruit, vegetables, meat and fish to ready to eat street food, assortments of utilitarian and decorative objects and clothing. It makes me wonder how different the work would be if materials were sourced from a different market in another part of London or further afield. Or are these markets all a bit the same?

I notice the artists’ approach to making is primarily assemblage, building up, out and in with objects, materials and packaging, fixing stuff together with tape, string and wire. Some things are cut up, but many of the objects are left intact, still recognizable. No wet or sticky stuff, ready-mades that don’t dissolve, disintegrate or change material consistency, the plastics that will never degrade. Little extra stuff (not from the market) has been brought into the space, such as typical sculptural materials that might be found in the artists’ own studios – plaster, clay, cement, glues, so it feels clean, no mess on the floor or carpet, a prerequisite from the gallery organisers to avoid damaging the floor! Materials that can be used again and again without breaking down or leaving a trace or residue.

Although this is a working space, it is not a studio, it is a gallery pretending to be a studio with its own set of rules and regulations. The works in the space critique this environment and ask us to think about what a gallery space is, can be. How do we behave in a studio and in a gallery space and are they interchangeable?

These questions loom over the group, they grapple with how to be and behave in the space. Time is key – when will the residency officially finish and the work become an exhibition for an audience? Will someone ring a bell to stop and drop tools or will there be a more natural conclusion?! If everyone is ordered to stop by one person in the group, does the work then get tidied up? Do the tables where work is being prepared get removed and the tools left in the space – hammers, rolls of string and sticking tape left scattered on the floor?

There is a rhythm to the day that starts to unravel, artists come and go, tea and coffee gets made, a lunch break where everyone communes around a table to relax. I wanted to return later in the afternoon to see how the atmosphere would change. Will there ever be quiet in the space, no speaking, just the sound of materials? I have personally experienced working in a community of artists, feeling uncomfortable, not having my own head space, then it changes and loving the group around me, feeling supported without words, learning from others, watching how people do things differently and handle materials.

This project is about letting go and learning, not being the singular author to an artwork. How does it feel to make a work that is not your own, to let others contribute, even destroy what you have done? What is the valued experience? Is it in the process and to abandon the results? But this space will be open to the public at the end of the residency – what then will be the experience for the artists and the audience? An energy, a process, a collaborative practice and a lot of questions.

This is a group that is on a bigger journey than this individual project, their collaboration runs deeper and longer, involves friendships and sustainable practices – they are in it for the long haul, expansive practices evolving beyond this space. An exhibition can only ever be a moment in an artist’s practice and this exhibition really highlights this. Unlike most shows this project is determined to benefit from the whole experience, from making the work, sharing with an audience to dismantling the work at the end. It removes the emphasis away from the moment the artist steps away leaving the work for an audience, and instead places the importance in the practice, what it means to be an artist, working out ideas and materials, working in a studio and having a peer group to move forward with.

It’s one week later and I return to the space just before the private view. The work has been gathered; assemblages pulled in from the edges into the middle. The carpet on the floor that created walkways between the parts has gone and the parts have become a whole, except for three smaller parts, two in the front space and one in the corner of the back space.

The evidence of small groups working together has disappeared, although as I walk around the installation I can see the parts that had been worked on last week, and when I look even closer I see the details of individual hands at work, but which hands I’m no longer sure.

This work is full collaboration- letting go and giving over to the group. Do we as a culture, a gender, a nation find that easy? The individual giving way to the group. Artists often work alone in a studio having time to think and make on their own. To work with others can be a challenge if you have never done it before. So many opinions in one space. But what I find interesting – is it possible to be invested and really care about the outcome of something that you don’t have full authorship over? For example, if you work on a production line in a factory making teapot handles do you have investment beyond the part you have made? Do you care about the teapot, are you most proud of the handle or prouder of the teapot? Do we as artists need to see our contribution, our part, to really care and value what is being produced?

This group have worked with their ups and downs and disagreements. They have been very clever to set things up to protect the group dynamic. Two leaders and a small collection of curators to make decisions about the final placement.

The group of artists who curated the last stage of the project decided on the separation of the three smaller parts to be placed away from the main installation. Two of these parts have been sited in the front space, now two sculptures with their own autonomy. They are independent with clear edges. They did not belong to the main work and communicate different intentions. One is a table piece with objects attached and bound to it. It talks directly about the making process, a surface to work on and store materials. The other independent sculpture is a hanging work, and points to how everything might have started, from a small individual decision to hang something on a wall to large complex collaborations.

The entire project, work, sculpture, installation is embedded in its locality and speaks to the wider environment – Deptford, the market and the school where the artists ran workshops. The students’ work sits in front of house, the first thing you see when you enter the gallery. Some of the students from the school are at the private view with their teachers. This project might have a big impact on their future career choices. I hope so! I wish someone had done something like this when I was at school.

I’m sure it is difficult for the artists involved to understand what this project means yet, but over the months it will begin unravelling, make sense and feed their individual and future collaborative practices. The outcome shows the process and maybe can only be judged as a process, but there was a moment when the artists stopped making and the public came in and engaged with it with fresh critical eyes. Could they have just stopped, down tools? I don’t know. That would have been challenging, but I think the final curation shows professional artists making hard decisions and thinking beyond their immersive engagement, to how an audience can engage with the whole project, the journey. This generous approach is about inclusion – artists, collaborators and audience invited to engage with an artwork, a space and locality, and to ask lots of questions about what it is to make sculpture.