Wednesday 11 October | Miércoles 11 de octubre 2017
In 2017, Art Licks was invited by Crispr to present an exhibition of work from UK artists: Leah Capaldi, Jeremy Hutchison, Lucy Joyce, and Tom Lovelace. Crispr is a project space sited in a domestic garage, run by artists Johannes Willi.
In my mind, project spaces offer a place for experimentation, for collaboration and testing of new ideas. When Johannes asked me if I would like to present an exhibition at Crispr [Bogotá, Colombia], I was keen to take up the offer as a chance to show the work of a selection of London-based artists whose practices I greatly admire, and at the same time, to try out a new way of working.
We were faced with a few obstacles – no budget, not a huge amount of time, and the issue of how to transport any works across a great distance: we realised we were going to have to be imaginative with the project. And so, when we invited the four artists to take part it was an unusual invitation. We asked each artist to give us a proposal for an artwork, and to trust us to then realise the proposed work at Crispr on their behalf.
To ‘get on board’ is an English phrase – to agree to the voyage, to be part of the team, especially for a special purpose. This is what Leah, Jeremy, Lucy and Tom had to do in this instance and the exhibition at Crispr is the result of this: the original four proposals are displayed, alongside the final artwork.
- Holly Willats, Curator
About the Proposals and Artworks
Leah Capaldi proposed the performance Overlay for the project, which requires two performers to follow her careful instructions displayed in the gallery. Leah presents the body and performance as sculpture, and intends to challenge the viewer’s role within the piece, asking you to question your position as spectator or performer.
During a very recent trip to Bogotá, Jeremy Hutchison came across an auto-repair garage in the centre of town. Here, they pull out the dents from cars and a woman called Lina is responsible for drawing circles around the dents and imperfections; these drawings then serve as instructions for the car body specialists to repair. For his proposal, GOLPES, Jeremy asked Lina to visit Crispr, to draw circles around the imperfections on the walls of the space.
In keeping with her recent architectural and public interventions, Lucy Joyce presents a drawing, Remote Gesture I, which shows the Crispr house with a proposed banner hanging from the roof down the front of the building. This fluorescent banner with directional arrows pointing up is now fixed to the front of the building for the duration of the exhibition. Titled Remote Gesture (Action) this work asks the audience to look up, and makes a public statement of how such a simple gesture can encourage the viewer to reconsider their surroundings, diverting their attention for a moment.
Malleable Matter, A Proposal is a new work from Tom Lovelace that centres around a mass of multi-coloured caps. Key to Tom’s work is an interest in the expanded potential within everyday materials, acts and matter; to muddle with the relationship between function and form. Lovelace’s proposal asked us to purchase 50 caps in Bogotá and display these at Crispr, and now asks the visitor to re-interpret and re-encounter this familiar object. Each visitor can take a cap of their choice and keep it. Please wear the cap in the gallery, and then once you leave, Lovelace asks that you do not to wear the cap again on your head, but instead, be inventive and use it for another function. Take a cap home with you and make use of it in a completely different manner. A cap, as a bowl. A cap, as a bag. A cap, as a picture.