Exhibition: 'Pagoda', as part of Vitrine's 'Trajectory', opening 30th Jan 2006

Trajectory
featuring Lucy Gibson, Meriel Herbert, Matthew Houlding, Pippa Koszerek and Simon Le Ruez

30th January - 19th March 2006

At all Vitrine venues in Leeds’ city centre – see www.vitrine.org.uk for map

"Lucy Gibson intervenes in one of the Merrion Centre windows facing Wade Lane, with her mythological ‘Pagoda’ installation inspired by shapes found in the shopping centre’s existing architecture. The pagoda suggests a halfmemory in the history of the city, or a story that hasn’t quite been told, and also contains a sound piece: the bells on the unseen pagoda spire will be audible through the vitrine, perhaps at night or in a rare moment of calm amongst the hubbub of the city streets.

‘Trajectory’ reflects Vitrine’s journey into another year, with a new group of artists based mostly in the wider Yorkshire region, showing a range of work including wall-based collages, site-specific installation, and sound and video pieces. An illustrated full-colour catalogue with a text by Robert Clark, made possible by kind assistance from Leeds Art Collections Fund, is available from Vitrine at Patrick Studios or to pick up FREE from Leeds City Art Gallery and Gateway Yorkshire Tourist Information Office inside Leeds Rail Station."

For the full Trajectory press release which includes details of all the artists' work, as a PDF, please download here

**Special event:
Supper walk in association with Leeds Civic Trust, Wednesday 1st March.Cost £5 per person, limited to 30 places.

A walking tour of the exhibition with participating artists, who will talk about their work and Vitrine curators Pippa Hale and Kerry Harker, who will talk about the project. Departing from the Leeds Civic Trust building on Wharf Street at 6pm, followed by supper afterwards.
Booking essential on 07752 733 076.

More information about 'Pagoda'

My new work, 'Pagoda', is now installed in the Vitrine on the ramp leading into the Merrion Centre on the corner of Wade Lane with Merrion Street, in Leeds. Click here to see a map

The press release is above but I have been asked to describe the work as it is hard to ascertain excatly what form it takes from the catalogue and press text.




The piece is made up of 66 separate wooden components. All shapes derived from the photo of part of the Merrion Centre that you can see in the entry above. They were then scaled up and cut out of oak veneered MDF. The wood pieces were cut by a CNC machine from PDF's that I gave to an excellent and very helpful company called MultiMount in Kirkstall, Leeds. Each piece was then sanded and varnised and hand painted with enamel paint.

The installation is designed to resemble the construction of a Buddhist pagoda, it is not supposed to replicate any one in particular, but suggest the form and construction in these buildings, whilst also taking into account the reflections in the window itself. If you look at the window straight on, the reflection of the shopping centre roof continues the roof line of the pagoda.

The surrounding environment reflects into the window and the empty spaces around the installation, allowing the city to become part of the work as the black background emphasises the reflections.



The sound is generated from a CD player and it is played through a Soundbug which is a small device that plugs into the CD player's headphone socket (mini jack) and then you sucker it on to the window and it vibrates the glass and turns it into a speaker. The sound is of bells ringing, the bells on the unseen spire of the pagoda (the sound is actually a recording of me ringing a small feng shui pagoda wind chime). It is set at a volume which allows the sound to come and go in waves with the background noise of the city, only really being audible when there is a lull in the activity around the window. This is particularly noticeable when the pedestrian crossing is activated. It is out of sight but the chiming of the bleep sychronises with the bells as it stops the traffic from passing for a few moments.










With very big thanks to Stuart Bannister, Pippa Hale and Kerry Harker and MultiMount for all their help in making this work.

New video work now showing on Park 4DTV

Leeds based Artist/Director Dave Lynch has curated 'TimeCycles' currently being shown on Park 4DTV, an Amsterdam based web site with an innovative programme of new work. The technology on the site allows you to view the showreel as a webcast, full screen on your computer, at TV quality.

Time Cycles
The past, present and future of yours, mine and theirs in a droplet of time within the ocean of lives.

About my work:

Lucy Gibson
‘Across Lake Geneva 1976’
2005

Time does not fall in a straight line, past jumps into present when we least expect, the fabric of our memories constantly interwoven by our shifting experiences. Memories are constructed from both our experiences and other people’s, their stories become our own and images from photographs make us think we were in places we’ve never been.
‘Across Lake Geneva, 1976’ is made from two slides being placed in the projector together and the lens alternatively focusing on each one. The slides are taken from boxes my parents kept. I thought for years that I was the small girl holding my mother’s hand, but actually its my cousin.

Click here, to see the webcast select the webcast link on the top of the page. This then launches into a full screen version of the showreel which is broadcast on a loop 24/7.

For more information about the other artists featured in TimeCycles, follow the above link.

eBook series available FREE to download

Two past works 'Past Standing' and 'Silence Dropped' are available as free PDF downloads. Developed using the Diffusion eBook format, you are invited to download one or both PDFs, print on A4 white paper and follow the enclosed construction instructions.

Past Standing

Two figures stand motionless in a courtyard. The City spins its daily routines around them as they stare fixedly at each other. Locked by a shared past but without any present, these two near strangers exist for each other only in memory yet their physical presence in this place is heightened because of their chance meeting.

Taking the hybrid public/private space of an office courtyard, ‘Past Standing’ is a fictional narrative that addresses the conflict between remembered time and real time. Moving between past and present tense, between memory and reality, it creates a space in which we can exist for a short time as we read. We join the other users of this square, spinning around the central characters, observing them from the varying perspectives of him, her and the CCTV camera.

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Silence Dropped

We cannot read the traces we leave behind as we walk in the urban sprawl, yet there is a recognition imprinted on the cognitive stratum that associates what we see before us as somewhere we have been before. Unlike the topographical representation of the map, the mind recalls these places within a framework of memory and association. Collating information and throwing back a flicker of a time passed when least expected; the human mind creates an emotive map of the urban centre, fabricated from stories, traces and chance occurrences.

This eBook was produced in repsonse to this site for the ARTitecture 2004 exhibition at the Collins Gallery, curated by Daisy Watson. It takes the site of the Rottenrow Maternity Hospital in Glasgow, Scotland as a starting point for this site-responsive text.

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