Last year, Material Matters took over Birkenhead’s Williamson Art Gallery & Museum. Of everything I’ve seen at that gallery over the last ten years, this stood out as a change-maker.
The exhibition was led, curated, managed and programmed by four artists; Angelo Madonna, John Elcock, Patric Rogers and Silvia Battista. The gallery stood back and trusted them to build a programme that reflected their work, and challenged the existing format and programming of the space.
Its first iteration, Nature, which we wrote about in August, was curated by Patric Rogers. It was a raw curatorial triumph that transformed every preconception of the gallery space.
In its second, Chivalry, curated by John Elcock, we got to know the story and its setting in a way that prompted deep exploration of materials by artists who had been encouraged to experiment towards new ways of conceiving narratives.
Through the whole thing, Silvia Battista managed a series of performance, gallery interventions and symposiums, unifying the shared education of each lead artist, and the twenty-seven artists responding to their prompts.
The final showing, curated by Angelo Madonna, was the realisation of not just the research process before it, but the exhibition itself. Work was made in direct response to the work of others through the exhibition’s run, as well as to critique from audiences and collaborators.
The result was profoundly moving from any view, but for me, knowing these artists, and knowing the gallery, I found that Spirituality offered a moment of reflection on how and why we produce art at all.
Of the three exhibition segments of Into The Wyld, this was the one that evidenced the relationships between artists, their processes, their rituals, in their bluntest forms.
From entering the space, shapes, canvases, screens, and sculpture become motifs, which guide your whole experience. It is, as the title suggests, an experience in spirituality. It is also, perhaps by virtue of being the final offering of Into the Wyld, the clearest representation of the story of Sir Gawain, the Arthurian knight whose journey through the Wirral inspired this exhibition.
Physically connecting the exhibition to the Wirral, is Margaret O’Brien’s ‘Earth’s Breath (Spiritus Terrae)’. The sculpture uses Arduino boards to translate the electrical energy of microbial fuel cells, active in soil samples from across the peninsula, into a live audio work.
This is the final offering of Material Matters at the Williamson, and one that grounds you deeply, spiritually, and physically into the earth – the thing that remains a link to the steps of Sir Gawain.
But that grounding works because of the experience leading to it. Because, entering gallery one, and transitioning into gallery two, we are toured through recreations of the Arthurian tale.
Angelo Madonna’s own video sculpture, ‘The Three Blows: A View of Life and Death’, shows Sir Gawain (played by Craig Sinclair) facing death with humility, honour and humour. The laugh echoes through all three rooms of the exhibition every few minutes. The silence, and the weight of the sculpture itself, hold time in the gaps between manic relief.
It is a reminder, from all rooms, that the contemporary exploration of spirituality, is not unique. Expression of the self, and a relationship with your mortality and physical being, is as potent today as then.
‘Tairmtheacht’ by Oak Luca, explores a passage in the story of Sir Gawain, where the protagonist crosses over. Oak reflects their own transition in relation to the supposition of bravery; where to transition without a choice is no braver than breathing. Here, the transition is of a body, between genders. It is a route to understanding the emotion of Sir Gawain, the indignance at being lauded for an essential crossing.
To be having this conversation at all in an exhibition inspired by a poem about an Arthurian night, shows the freedom that artists were given to respond to the tale.
Into The Wyld is a shared reading, chaired by Angelo, Silvia, Patric and John, to draw out more meaningful, more personal explorations of the artists’ selves.
I’m writing this for an issue of this newspaper that will be published several months after the exhibition ends, not because you should have seen it, or to highlight what you missed, but because it’s essential to understand how these spaces can be used.
Galleries, regardless of their scale or standing, are labs. They have always been that. From the early days of the Pre Raphaelite Brotherhood challenging social access to the arts, to the recreation of arts spaces under the Museums 3.0 future, where cultural buildings become useful to all, these spaces should be there for artists to take risks, and it’s the responsibility of galleries to let them.
Because when they do, we change what is expected. Regardless of the story this exhibition series pinned on, audiences were offered a bold approach, by an organically occurring collective of artists, who developed new work for a live exhibition with a freedom of expression typically held for conversation behind closed studio doors.
Everything about Into The Wyld filled me with joy, but Spirituality helped me to understand why.
Material Matters: Into The Wyld was at Williamson Art Gallery & Museum 1st august – 21st December 2024.
Find out more and explore the archive at www.materialmatters.org.uk/into-the-wyld
Words, Patrick Kirk-Smith