Toil and Trouble: How we find out who we are

This show proposes a methodology based in conscious collective evolution, rather than self-determination, using conversation and rearrangement as an ethos for an exhibition that changes across its duration and becomes a catalyst for exploring how control of meaning is shared and surrendered in a group dynamic.

The initial installation of works will be agreed between three artists – Ali Darke, Lucy Renton and Sue Withers – whose practices intersect around axes of craft, the domestic and female labour, negotiate the boundaries of decorum; that which society deems appropriate in culture, language, behaviour and taste. Through the aesthetics of domestic decoration, the industry of grooming, and the unruly body they consider what is disparaged as feminine excess.

Invited to intervene in the show midway, Eric Great–Rex will have an open brief to ’disrupt’, to alter and re-stage it. This activity becomes the focus for a public discussion between the artists and the ‘Disruptor’ and the re-staged exhibition remains open to the public. There are effectively two shows, before and after the ‘Disruption’, with a public sharing of the critical process of its alteration.

Surrendering control is inherently risky and parallels the productive uncertainty of studio practice. We also see installation as a productive site, foregrounding our belief that the exhibition is the beginning, not the end of the work/s.