In Transience – incidents & interventions…

NL – UK Touring Exhibition

‘one lump, or two?’ is a unique replica of a cup, saucer, spoon and sugar lumps. Wherever you go in the Netherlands, be it a café, a workplace, an airport or train station, this universal cup and saucer design is ever present including the laboratory where it was replicated during my residency in Groningen. The idea behind this work attempts to evoke and encapsulate a seemingly endless narrative as much as the events of everyday experiences, such as the hospitality of others and the depth of conversations which inevitably follow.

“Working in installation, the moving image and ever emerging technologies, Manchester-based artist Gary James Williams enquires into the creative potential of the narrative, exploring the representation of the self, perpetuation of the everyday and ‘real-world phenomena’ in contemporary art practice. In his exhibition at Yorkshire ArtSpace, entitled In Transience – incidents & interventions…, Williams presented a new body of work inspired by a 3-week residency, supported by the Arts Council of England, at the Van Dijk Maxillo Faciaal Tandtechnisch Laboratorium, a prosthetic laboratory in Groningen, the Netherlands. The aim of the residency was to research specialist moulding and casting processes and techniques employed in the production of prosthetics, and to develop a series of unique hyper-real sculptural art works. Within the artist’s continuing research, the residency set out to explore creative opportunities arising from the art/science interface and artists working in collaboration with scientific institutions in the research, development and production of contemporary art.

“An atmosphere of buoyancy, lightness and clinical cleanness arises within In Transience – incidents & interventions, encouraging the audience to let their imaginations roam through a kind of archival journal that tells of being ‘in transience’. It is a kind of archive of the mind – thoughts give rise to plans that lead to artefacts being made which lead to thought, and so on – that invents a new fictional geographic / cultural space.“

Jo Manby, Manchester Editor Contemporary Magazine.

The works in this exhibition take various forms and use what ever means and processes that I considered appropriate in communicating my own subjective experiences. The moving image ‘Flight’ captures a moment of expectation and uncertainty during a journey across an apparent no-man’s-land.

In the Gallery Oldham iteration of In Transience – incidents and interventions…, an artist’s intervention of the Nield Herbarium (that is part of Gallery Oldham’s natural history collection) was initiated by Williams and assisted by the Nield Herbarium curators. As a work in progress it was an intention to explore and present preservation methods and processes of recording the annual cycle of flowering plants. Titled ‘retaining an unquestionable intimacy’ this gallery specific installation work welcomes the viewer to browse through the gallery’s own natural history archives and the newly created additions concieved by Williams and discover how the beauty and mortality of perennials are represented and encapsulated through various methods in art and in science.

In Transience – incidents and interventions… was premiered at Galerie Forma Aktua in Groningen, Netherlands in February 2007 and was exhibited at Yorkshire ArtSpace in March 2008 and Gallery Oldham in Greater Manchester in September 2009.

©️ Gary James Williams