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 the installation by Anne Grebby (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 the different ideas of this event. For this post, I must thank her for taking the time to go 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. In this first post, I am planning to write 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 had influenced and guided the contributions of the different artists. This will be followed by the contributions of the each of the four British artists.
The Conte Wool Mills Building
This mill building is located next to the old city centre and the main water-canal, Roggia Maestra, 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.
Emma Critchley & Maryanne Royale
Emma is an artist from Manchester. Together with Maryanne Royale, they are in the Insito exhibition with a video. This video was commissioned by University of Leeds, made by Emma in an old abandoned industrial building in Manchester, very similar to the Conte Wool Mills building holding this exhibition. While making this video, she interviewed some of its old retired workers and their voices talking about their working lives in those factory spaces were recorded. This work was shown in Leeds Museum for about a year.
Emma is also an artist, photographer and director, and works with scientific committees, biologists, specially related to water - lakes, oceans, rivers. She develops artistic works as a part of much bigger projects, to bring attention to the situations related to oceans and water-bodies. She also had a video-installation titled "Sirens" in this exhibition, composed of 3 films of 7 minutes duration, in which a dancer performs along with the creatures from abysses of the ocean. The videos of the sea-creatures are from an American research centre, and it tries to create a dialogue between those creatures and the performer.
Emma says, "Sirens is a triptych of short films where we witness an encounter between a dancer and three creatures of the deep sea. The music and performer's movements offer the audience a portal for connection."
Maryanne, a sound artist, has taken fragments of their voices, mixed
them with other factory sounds to create the sound installation which
forms the background sound of the video and the exhibition. The sounds of water, of the old mills, of people talking, all combine to create her soundscape, which accompanies and enhances the exhibition-visit, not just for Emma Critchley's work but all the different installations.
Kara has two art-works in the Insito exhibition. The first is a temporary sculpture called Arteria created near the window underneath which the main water-canal of Schio, the Roggia Maestra passes, which was used to power the Conte Wool mill. When the exhibition was being inaugurated, she 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 comes to an end, that wet-surface has been slowly drying, creating fractures and breaking down into pieces.
Kara explains, "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 is a long rectangular canvas, 10 metres long and one and half metre wide, over which she has 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.
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 creating a space around herself, which gave her an expanded area as her limit. Standing at the centre, she designed a circle exploring the limits, in different terms (of culture, emotions, intuitions, psychological), to which she could reach and define. She took those terms from outside and brought them inside her expanded periphery, by transcribing them in her circle. During the performance, she kept writing these with a chalk fixed on a stick, new words over old words, again and again, creating a web of knowledge and beliefs, which can be both protective and suffocating. From this confusion and accumulation, we need to go back to our core and eliminate all that which is superfluous, so that there is space for new and renewal.
Anne says, "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."
Her story board also had images from other performances as well (image above). For example, 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 reapply it. Other images presented a work realised in Oregon, USA, which ended in a fire destroying everything.
She also had prints of her designs and images from her ebook on a transparent paper, which were placed on the window-panes, giving them possibility of moving, where 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 3 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 reconnect us to our deeper physical and emotional cores.
*****
