Out of Place
3 March – 31 March 2007
Angel Row Gallery, Nottingham - UK

Curated by Mary Doyle, Out of Place brought together a group of artists who share ideas around intervention and action. By playing on our knowledge and expectations of a given architectural structure, the artists disrupted the way in which we navigate through, or behave, in a traditional gallery setting.

Developed in response to this exhibition, Moved Storeroom involved emptying a gallery storeroom in order to make it accessible to the audience, before building a replacement storeroom (of equal internal volume) in the adjoining gallery to house the material that was displaced and made homeless.

The newly accessible old storeroom is left empty, whilst the new storeroom draws attention to its contents - that once moved, become objects of interest, and perhaps due to their location in a gallery are even deemed bound by accessibility - however any such interest is frustrated by the fact that the locked storeroom door has also been moved to this new reproduction.

The work created additional exhibition space through the emptied storeroom, whilst at the same time actually reduced available space (due to equal internal volume + the width of the newly constructed storeroom). In an approach that is analogous to 'giving with the left hand and taking it back with the right hand', the work took a little more than it gave.

By manually engaging with the gallery, choosing an activity that mirrored other work going on in the surrounding area (gallery technicians installing other work), the activity is at first glance both productive and in the right place. However by moving a storeroom that didn't need to be moved, this activity was only a temporary displacement (with the material contained within it having to be carried back to the original store again). A issue that is further compounded by the fact that this ‘help’ was not necessary and inevitably not really desired. Heightening the ineffectual nature of the activities that allow the movement of a storeroom and its contents, only to then move them back.

To read a review of the exhibition click here.