'...Yet I Know This Much Is True', Leo Fitzmaurice (UK), 2009

Leo Fitzmaurice's work has long been looking at the relationship between space and information. Information, as we are all aware, is carried by numerous objects and placed around our visual environment, a walk around most urban environments results in being bombarded with offers and promises. Fitzmaurice's work focusses on these urban situations and particularly in the area of advertising, where information is at its highest pitch. Most recently, at Art Gene, he exhibited a floor-based landscape constructed from 'de-texted' packaging. Elsewhere he has made sculptures from blank road signs and 'drawings' by eradicating the text on flyers. In each situation his aims seem to transcend the original message of this material thereby leaving us the opportunity to enjoy it in its own right; The opportunity to think our own thoughts. His intention seems not to confront this material full on but to obliquely and quietly undermine it.

“On a visit to any gallery one is faced with the gallery's relationship to regeneration in the surrounding area. With Art Gene this is a facet that is positively highlighted and responded to as part of the programme. A tour around Barrow's bleak charms was, for me, an oddly uplifting experience. Like Liverpool, Barrow seems far bigger than it needs to be, and similarly it appears to be spread quite thinly. I got an odd sense that it was going bald. Not surprisingly, a memory of recent losses here seem to override potential for developments. Perversely all new developments bring with them a fear of loss and this is particularly true in Barrow where subtraction rather than addition looks like the mostly likely starting point. For me though, this point, the potential for removal rather than addition, is precisely what I find interesting.

Walking around Barrow I became aware of 'for sale' boards: many had been up so long they had begun to fade. I was interested in these simple wooden frame and ‘correx’ board structures whose sole function is to hold up words. What if these frames were put to another use?: Could they be used to create a dwelling rather than simply advertise one?”

 
Matthew Houlding

'Warrior on the Edge of Time', Matthew Houlding (UK), 2009

Matthew Houlding takes the idea of the architects model but subverts both the material and the function, taking us on an adventure into uncharted territory. The works celebrate the idea of concept architecture and the pursuit of personal utopian ideals.

Houldings works summon desire and hope, intricately constructed from disparate found materials gathered over time: cardboard packaging, weathered timber, found postcards and colour photocopies from forgotten books on holiday destinations, all of which have landscapes written into their surfaces, reminding us that everything and everyone has the potential for another life.

With an instinctive feeling for material, Houlding shifts meanings and creates new forms. In addition to his critique on architecture, he creates dreams of spaces, backdrops for stories and new ideas, neither of yesterday nor of tomorrow but set in a time of their own.

This work is dedicated to a synthesis of art, design and architecture, a belief that art is capable of leading mankind to a brighter future. Matthew Houldings art offers models of thought. It invites us to reflect on our experience and environment and unveils our longing to retreat to a man-made haven.

Matthew Houlding lives and works in Todmorden, West Yorkshire.
He has exhibited widely in Britain and Europe.
He is represented by: Ceri Hand Gallery www.cerihand.co.uk

See the 'Terrace on Tour' at sites around Cumbria including the Barrow streets during May. For details of the tour - http://www.tulliehouse.co.uk

Research Design Architects

'Useful Beauty #1', Research Design (UK), 1993-2009

‘Useful Beauty #1: traps’

The most important thing about a building is not how it looks but how it provides a setting for the activities happening within or around it. A really good building enhances activity.

It is by working with and for artists that we have learnt that observation of the small details of human life and interaction create the unusual and exciting incidents in a project. Artists have taught us the value of skills developed in our professional training: close observation and analysis. We are limited, however, in the expression of these insights by our formal training.

Our collection of traps is not a work of art. It is not presented as a group of 'ready made' sculptures nor as a contemporary installation nor as houses in miniature. We have several collections: a collection of cuttings and packaging started an interest in disposable ephemera that says a lot about who people are and what they were doing at a certain time. The mousetraps, by accident, are a focused study of the same interests. Other collections including wooden spoons, technical instruments and fishing floats (all cheap, disposable and varied) reflect the same interests.

The first trap was bought in a market in southern Spain (March 1993) because it was an unusual take on something familiar. It suggested different ways of killing (garrotting not chopping: this in turn is culturally specific) and making (drilling and slicing a block with minimal metal parts). Since then every trip we make has to include the purchase of new traps.

The holy grail of invention is the mousetrap: every year 400 patents are filed worldwide for new designs. Our interest is more mundane: collection requires hunting out shops and streets that we would not otherwise see; it involves talking to people or drawing if there are language barriers. It has lead to donations. We learn strange (insignificant but interesting) facts: most of our French traps are cages made by French prisoners. Some of these are lovingly made, others not so with key trapping parts missing.

The French traps lead us back to architecture. The French defined architecture in the eighteenth century as a series of typologies (types of forms of buildings: square buildings, buildings with columns...) and we can now see our collection in the same way. The traps can be arranged in typologies of function: choppers, garrotters, and entrapment with their sub-typologies of material and making (punched, cut, folded metal…) You may see them differently.

Ultimate Holding Company

‘Paradise’

"Paradise is exactly like where you are right now, only much, much better." – Laurie Anderson (Language is a Virus)

Ultimate Holding Company are a designer/artist's group from the UK, Sweden and Holland. They are based in Manchester and work collectively across multiple disciplines on socially engaged projects, which critically interrogate urban regeneration and neoliberal control of public space.

'Paradise' was created to launch UHC's residency project "It's Not As Rough As It Used To Be". It was the first work to be made for the then unfinished new Art Gene gallery and is a response to the group's exploration of the places of Barrow, the gallery itself, and our interest in local hidden assets as geographical points, places in time and opportunities.

The map pin or 'push pin' has become a symbol for the whole UHC residency project, referencing geographical place, the transformative journey from A to B, and when used in large numbers to create 'Paradise' - co-production and the collective.

Special Thanks

To Clinton Rimmer (volunteer) for all his hard work in helping to make 'The weight of history is crushing me in my bed' and in assisting the artists and architects in installing many of the works in this show.

To Carla Nizzola (MA placement from Lancaster University) for bringing new audiences to our recent events with UHC around Barrow and its islands and for helping us promote and capture our recent programme - pen and video camera in hand.