An immersive installation exploring toxicity, liminality and displacement as held in our built and unbuilding environment.
THE EXHIBITION: NewBridge project February 2019
The exhibition included INTRUSIVE WORKS – discussed below
and REMEDIATION – click to view work
For three years, DAWN FELICIA KNOX has been inhabiting, exploring and disrupting a derelict, post-industrial building that was once home to the Star and Shadow Cinema. Using scientific, mythological and artistic methods, she has pulled back the layers of time to investigate the toxicity, liminality and displacement that is held in our built and unbuilding environment. She created a series of interventions then invited artists in to map, to question and to trouble what was done and being undone. All the while the building was moving closer to demolition – archaeologists dug down to the remnants of Hadrian’s Wall, works crews bore down 40 meters past the glacial drift searching for bedrock and the volunteer force of Star and Shadow harvesting what could be reused in their new venue. All works have been recorded as moving image and sound to be re-configured during this immersive installation.
Dancer NICOLE VIVIEN WATSON and musicians ADAM DENTON created a site responsive performance – their visceral, immediate yet deeply considered work drew from project narratives and their own unearthing. The event was live broadcasted to Northern Charter, an arts venue located in the cultural sector also slated for demolition.
MAREK GABRYSCH has recorded all aspects of work from the deep subterranean rumbling of the bore holing and the micro-sound of the building being prepared for demolition via a series of contact microphones. His sound installation will map the previous explorations onto the ‘meanwhile’ frame of NewbridgeProject, inhabiting the basement of the Carliol House.
PHALICTITE featuring RICHARD JAMES HALL enacted a primal dredging of sound spiraling through the dust of time and memory released.
THE SITE:
The site was once home to the Star and Shadow Cinema, Artworks and an environmental monitoring service, bisected by both Hadrian’s Wall and the Victorian Tunnels as well as going through many other industrial incarnations. Marks of the shifting uses are evident in the building as well as the dust that has settled beneath the floorboards, behind the walls. Pulling back the layers, Knox has investigated what is revealed during ‘regeneration’, what is unearthed.
Knox facilitated a dialogue about toxic histories, those hidden and revealed; the way artists inhabit liminal spaces both physically and societally; and the external and internal structures we construct to create a sense of belonging – the rituals, structures and objects that tether us to our past and act as maps to chart our way forward.
This project was funded by Arts Council England. It is supported by Star and Shadow, NewBridge Project, Northern Charter and Calmont Group.