I think I’m going to feel like I’m cheating writing this, because nearly all of it’s been said, and language used to explore the themes and processes of this exhibition are about as accurate as it gets. Landlines Studio’s Un/Earthed, at Williamson Art Gallery & Museum is a celebration of the alchemy of pigment making, the inquisition of artistry and of how relationships are built with spaces through the eyes of artists.
But it is. It’s alchemic in the literal and metaphorical sense. Every single canvas and hanging is crammed with the history of the place it immortalises. Every vitrine offers a view into the process behind the work, but somehow, I’m still utterly mystified by it.
Stone, slate, coal, rust, plant life, and a vial slyly named “the sexy wall”, build a picture of Bridewell Studios in the scale and form of the building itself; represented here by the arched windows in the main gallery space.
The weight of the canvas changes the architecture of the Williamson, and transports you whole headedly to the Bridewell. And you could, and they could, have hidden the process and just lived in that magic, but we didn’t. They didn’t. Through Landlines, Angela Stringer and Nicky Perrin, offer you evidence. You see the mirrors. You, as a reader of these scribbled lines, are witness to the alchemic miracles of turning rust, slate and “the sexy wall” into this spectacular monolith.
And Bridewell hasn’t been chosen at random, it’s one of several sites the artists have worked with from the last few years, so this isn’t random, it’s a record of a time spent with purpose towards an exhibition that preserved Bridewell on that day, in that season, in that year.
Sharing the room at the Williamson is a documentary of canvases made from Plas Bodfa in Anglesey, where the artists spent three years exploring the spirit of the building and the surrounding area. And there are records of Ron’s Place, of Lockdown, of Irby Quay, and of the seasons themselves.
Bridewell’s presentation is of weighty architecture and urban history, Plas Bodfa’s canvases are documents of nature interrupted by industry, and Ron’s Place offers domestic motifs, aged to match the house as it is now, waiting for its preservation.
For every hanging work, there are vitrines, plinths, tables and an apothecary cabinet, sharing samples of the materials used in each, celebrating and inspiring creation and materials exploration as a craft in itself.
Landlines Studio now lead workshops on pigment making and botanical printing from their Hamilton Square studio as well as producing these ambitiously scaled botanical exhibitions. If you see the show, and want to go deeper into their process, you are quite literally invited, and even then, I doubt it would diminish the magic.
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Un/Earthed – A Retrospective by Landlines Studio is open at Williamson Art Gallery & Museum until June
Words, Patrick Kirk-Smith
