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Exhibitionist tendencies: Looking for fall out
A debris field is the technical term that is employed, often by geologists but increasingly by accident investigators, to describe …
A debris field is the technical term that is employed, often by geologists but increasingly by accident investigators, to describe fall-out. And it is this term that the Bolton Museums, Art Gallery and Aquarium's exhibition officer Sarah Teale, in tandem with local artist and academic Phil Mouldycliff, have used to title their inventive and intensely concentrated show.
For them, the Debris Field - a 13-artist exhibition built up of found sounds and objects - is a local affair, although its consequences are wider ranging. The particular debris field that informs this show is one focused mainly on the North West of England.
We see items found on seashores (for example, within the six panels of Mouldycliff's Tide Frames) and hear soundtracks from Loren Chasse, Colin Potter and the artist and musician Keith Rowe. Visual artist Paul Mason assembles careful boxes of tiny objects - bones, ceramic shards and fossils included (he had the run of the museum's extensive archive) in a manner that recalls the surreal Wunderkammer of Joseph Cornell.
Some exhibits, such as the Cumbria-based Russell Mills's object and sound installations, are troubling, deeply layered events. The artist's Deep Uncertainty Of Knowing, a family Bible studded with razor blades, is at the extreme end of this tendency; it is a book that has become impossible to handle. It is a fascinating work, not least because, close to the large gallery that Debris Field occupies, there is a splendid case filled with Bible volumes.
There are many balances here: between internationally known artists (not only Rowe and Mills, but also Max Eastley and Tom Phillips) and regional ones (Colin Fallows, Glenda Lees and Mouldycliff himself).
There are multiple uses suggested: Tide Frames and Phillips's page from the opera Irma are also graphic scores, capable of performance. There are many stories contained in the scenes on show: Peter Oakley's detailed oils of detritus - things abandoned, things lost - are flavoured with the history of this region's economic decline in the 1980s; Rowe's Guitar Retrospective - three guitars mounted on panels and surrounded with the flotsam of a life spent touring and playing - are arrangements as formal as a still life.
Teale and Mouldycliff recognise that their Debris Field is very much Bolton's. To tour it would be to impart different meanings to it. This is by no means a weakness, for Debris Field shows, in its range of activities - from the concert that opened the season to the attitude towards looking at the museum's collection anew - that it is also an attitude of curatorship. And that always travels.
www.boltonmuseums.org.uk
For them, the Debris Field - a 13-artist exhibition built up of found sounds and objects - is a local affair, although its consequences are wider ranging. The particular debris field that informs this show is one focused mainly on the North West of England.
We see items found on seashores (for example, within the six panels of Mouldycliff's Tide Frames) and hear soundtracks from Loren Chasse, Colin Potter and the artist and musician Keith Rowe. Visual artist Paul Mason assembles careful boxes of tiny objects - bones, ceramic shards and fossils included (he had the run of the museum's extensive archive) in a manner that recalls the surreal Wunderkammer of Joseph Cornell.
Some exhibits, such as the Cumbria-based Russell Mills's object and sound installations, are troubling, deeply layered events. The artist's Deep Uncertainty Of Knowing, a family Bible studded with razor blades, is at the extreme end of this tendency; it is a book that has become impossible to handle. It is a fascinating work, not least because, close to the large gallery that Debris Field occupies, there is a splendid case filled with Bible volumes.
There are many balances here: between internationally known artists (not only Rowe and Mills, but also Max Eastley and Tom Phillips) and regional ones (Colin Fallows, Glenda Lees and Mouldycliff himself).
There are multiple uses suggested: Tide Frames and Phillips's page from the opera Irma are also graphic scores, capable of performance. There are many stories contained in the scenes on show: Peter Oakley's detailed oils of detritus - things abandoned, things lost - are flavoured with the history of this region's economic decline in the 1980s; Rowe's Guitar Retrospective - three guitars mounted on panels and surrounded with the flotsam of a life spent touring and playing - are arrangements as formal as a still life.
Teale and Mouldycliff recognise that their Debris Field is very much Bolton's. To tour it would be to impart different meanings to it. This is by no means a weakness, for Debris Field shows, in its range of activities - from the concert that opened the season to the attitude towards looking at the museum's collection anew - that it is also an attitude of curatorship. And that always travels.
www.boltonmuseums.org.uk