I’m pleased to have been involved with Seymour Arts over the past few months – a collective of artists based at the West London Day Centre. Over recent weeks the group has been collaborating with the Showroom Gallery on its project with Brazilian artist Ricardo Basbaum: re-projecting (london).
The project involves a geometric shape designed by the artist, superimposed onto a map of the area surrounding the gallery (see image above). Seymour Arts were assigned point 4 on the map as it was close to their base. The group went on several dérives of the area collecting historical information, photographs, frottage and exploring the route prescribed by the shape. This resulted in a risographed annotated map showing points of significance along the route – a collective guide to the area unlike any kind of tourist map.
I contributed some photographs and a cut-up of text about the Paddington Borough Control nuclear bunker which is on the route. These are included in the publication and the exhibition at the gallery. I’ll also be in attendence on a public dérive on Monday 15th July – see below for full details.
re-projecting (london)
The Showroom
63 Penfold Street
London
NW8 8PQ
Exhibition Opening Thursday 11th July
Join us from 6-9pm
Exhibition Open: 12th July– 3rd Aug 2013
Mon 15 July 3–5pm
Walk | Seymour Art Collective NBP diagram walk from
The West London Day Centre, Seymour Place
Ricardo Basbaum’s commission re-projecting (london) at The Showroom (July 2013) takes as a starting point the projection of an abstract shape onto a map of the area around the galley. Point 4 of this diagram falls close to The West London Day Centre on Seymour Place. In 2011 The Showroom met with a group of artists who meet at the Centre, and a dialogue and working relationship has continued since then.
The Showroom invited the self–titled Seymour Art Collective to contribute to re-projecting (london). The group has used their individual art practices, collective methodologies and various relationships to the diagram area as a point of departure for producing this map.
Seymour Art Collective is a group of creative individuals from different walks of life who make and show art together from the street up. The collective meet weekly at a course run by City of Westminster College at the West London Day Centre. The day centre provides essential services for homeless people in Westminster.
In the summer of 2011 Seymour Art Collective had a residency at The Showroom during which they spent a week experimenting with new ways of working and meeting new artists. Artist Liz Ellis led the Collective and members of the public to produce a manifesto for the Collective. The Collective have returned in 2013 to The Showroom to contribute to re-projecting (london). Since May members of the Collective have been meeting, researching and walking the re-projecting (london) diagram as a way to develop work around ideas of collectivity, public space, recorded and personal histories in relation to place and the potentials of the concept of dérive. The Collective have worked with Hato Press to produce a second diagram and map which visitors can use to walk the neighbourhood.
On Monday 15 July the Collective will lead a facilitated walk departing from the West London Day Centre (134-136 Seymour Place, London, W1H 1NT) at 3pm and finishing at The Showroom where the collective will present a new video documenting the processes behind their project.
For more information and a full list of exhibition events, please visit:
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Graham Dunning 