Schio (VI) is an Italian town with an important industrial history linked to the wool-mills. The contemporary site-specific art event "Insito" was organised at an old wool mill in Schio from 22 Nov. to 22 Dec. 2024, which was inspired from its industrial history.
Image below shows the story board of an installation by Anne Grebby from this exhibition (you can click on images for a bigger view).
Insito exhibition brought together 5 artists - 4 British (Emma Critchley, Anne Grebby, Kara Lyons & Maryanne Royale) and an Italian (Marta Martino).
The exhibition was curated by Monica Pirani, with whom I had a long and interesting conversation about the contributions of all these 5 artists and this event. For this post, I must thank her for taking the time to accompany me through the whole exhibition and explain at length the different facets of the artists' works.
I am planning to write two posts about this exhibition. This first post is about the four British artists, while the second post will focus on the Italian artist and the work of the curator.
Let me start this post with some information about the exhibition site, The Conte Wool Mills building, which provided the background to this exhibition.
The Conte Wool Mills Building
This mill building is located next to the old city centre and its main water-canal, Roggia Maestra, which passes through it. The mill first started operating around 1757. Its buildings were renovated in 1886 and its roof still carries the bell which used to mark the work-shifts of the mill workers. It was one of the first buildings in Italy to use electric light. The building is now used for holding cultural events. Insito was organised in the mezzanine floor of the old mill.
Now lets talk about the works of the 4 British artists.
Kara had two art-works in the exhibition. The first was a temporary sculpture called Arteria created near the window underneath which the main water-canal, the Roggia Maestra, passes, which was used to power the Conte Wool mill. When the exhibition was being inaugurated, Kara looked at the water rushing below, and reflected its movements with her feet on a wet-clay surface, walking for about 2 hours, leaving her imprints on it. As the exhibition came to an end, that wet-surface slowly dried, creating fractures and breaking down into pieces.
Kara explained, "Arteria is performative sculpture, a durational installation made in situ at the Lanificio Conte. The window exposes the water below, revealing the force of its flow, serving as a testament to its essential importance in the development of the textile industry around which it was founded."
The second work by Kara was a long rectangular artwork, 10 metres long and one-and-half metre wide, over which she walked for days, her feet wet with graphite and clay, looking at the the water passing below the factory in Manchester, which is very similar to the canal passing underneath the factory in Schio, reflecting its movements in her walk and creating a map of her foot-prints.
She had presented a similar work at the Venice Architecture Biennale in 2023.
Kara Lyons & Maryanne Royale
Maryanne, a sound artist, drew inspiration from old historical ties between Schio & Manchester to develop a sound installation in collaboration with Kara Lyons. She collected recordings from Kara's interactions with wet-clay in Manchester. By changing the speed and tones of the sound recordings, she created a soundscape, which formed the background of the exhibition.
Maryanne Royale
The artist was also present in this exhibition with a video installation titled “The Tension That Holds” which was previously commissioned for an exhibition at Leeds Industrial Museum. It was made at an old abandoned industrial building in Manchester, very similar to the Conte Wool Mills building in Schio.
While making this video, she interviewed some of its old retired workers and recorded their voices.
Personally, I feel that sound-installations are a tricky area. Most of the time, we are hardly aware of the background sounds including music (unless we like a specific piece of work, when we may become aware of it). Soundscapes are also background noise-music, they can't be too intrusive. This means that we might not even notice them. I also wonder if among us, there may be some who are attuned t sounds and perhaps sound-installations make more sense to them?
Emma Critchley
Anne Grebby
Anne's work in the exhibition is titled Fluid Body and is a complex opera composed of different parts. It included an art performance lasting 3 days creating a word-map on the floor.
For this performance she first created a story-board (first image at the top above). She started by marking and creating a circular space around herself. Standing at the centre, she designed a circle exploring the limits with words written with a chalk, and the words expressed her ideas about concepts like culture, emotions, intuitions, and psychology.
During the performance, she kept writing those words with a chalk fixed on a stick, new words over old words, again and again, creating a kind of web of knowledge and beliefs, that represent our inner worlds.
About this installation, Anne explained, "I write the words on the ground till I lose awareness of my own presence. I write towards the centre of the circle, defined by my own extended body, and then I turn and trace my path towards the outside."
In the exhibition, she also had an installation of archive photos showing 2 of her old projects and performances (image above). One was a work done in Germany where she had used red-clay to cover room surfaces, which would dry and fall down and then the next day she had to reapply it. Another, was a work realised in Oregon, USA, which ended in a fire destroying everything she had created.
Finally, she had prints of her designs and images from her ebook on a transparent paper, which were placed on the window-panes in the exhibition hall, where the water from the canal running behind, was being reflected and creating patterns.
Conclusions
Insito was composed of different multi-sensorial installations. It was an opportunity to see the works of these four very different British artists and to experience a special soundscape.
Such exhibitions, introduce you to a different idea of art - art as an immersion in different sensations and sensory experiences, helping to focus your mind in the present and now. As we increasingly spend more time in virtual cyber-worlds and AI, such art experiences can reconnect us to our deeper physical and emotional cores.
I think that these are developing forms of concept art, which are more about the inner worlds, thoughts and emotions of individual artists. Creating a connection with them and finding meanings which make sense to the audience is very subjective.
*****
Check part 2 of this post about the works of Marta Martino and the exhibition curator, Monica Pirani
Thank you for the perceptive response to all the works in 'INSITO'. Very best wishes, Anne Grebby
ReplyDeleteThank you Sunil for your attention to our exhibition and for your insightful response. It was a pleasure to be part of the project. Kara
ReplyDeleteThanks Kara for reading my writeup and appreciating it. I really love the artists I talk about can read it. 🙏🙏🙏
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