Going back to my old school

Volkhardt Müller – Memory Lane (2012) Work in progress

In 2007, a year after I graduated, my old art college relocated from Exeter to become part of the University of Plymouth. Its former site at Earl Richards Road North (ERRN) was left to decay. Five years later, with demolition imminent, Revisions & Propositions (Sarah Bennett, Andy Klunder and Volkhardt Müller) were allowed to open the building to the public for just one weekend (31st March - 1st April 2012). They used the opportunity to show site-specific work to an invited audience, many of them former staff and students.

Derelict buildings - particularly those that are steeped in history or memory - often seem perfectly capable of speaking for themselves. When artists attempt to interpret or engage with such sites, there's always a risk they will be upstaged. The work at ERRN also had to compete with a whole array of personal memories triggered by the visit: most of us had taught or studied here and knew we were probably seeing inside the building for the last time.

The three artists wisely allowed the building to be part of the experience of the work rather than merely the setting for it. If they resented the attention given to former workspaces and other people's anecdotes, they didn't show it. Andy Klunder's work Opera Lignum was particularly generous in this respect. It allowed us time in the old wood workshop to pick our way across the damp-rippled floor, to inspect redundant safety signage and to ponder disconnected ducting and cables accompanied by his found and reclaimed recordings of active saws and lathes.

Meanwhile, Sarah Bennett’s Institutional Traits (Series 1) stepped beyond the inherent nostalgia of the event to ask some deeper questions about the organisation that was being celebrated. It featured 'mugshot' images enlarged from workplace swipe cards. These scratched and partly obliterated portraits, marked by repeated interaction with the workplace security system, become striking metaphors for the way we are changed by our complicity with institutions, sometimes to the point of self-erasure. I was left thinking of the mark the institution had left not only on myself, but also on the many people unknown to me who inhabited this building over the years

All of the work focused in one way or another on the notion of traces and residues and allowed the audience to imagine themselves as a cohort of ghosts moving through the building.

More than just an exhibition, it was an immensely social experience. Groups of people who had a connection to the institution met for the first time or were reunited after a long break. The exchange of memories - both spoken and unspoken - was incredibly powerful. 

Unfortunately, safety and security requirements meant that our tour was closely supervised, with artists talking about their work as we viewed it. With so little room for discovery and reflection, it became a rather closed experience. It was only when I broke ranks at the end of the tour and went to view the wreckage of my studio space that I began to feel a true sense of loss.

Revisions & Propositions: ERRN took place on 31st March and 1st April 2012 at the former Exeter College of Art & Design, Earl Richards Road North, Exeter.

Revisions & Propositions: http://revisionsandpropositions.newsandmediarepublic.org/artist-2/

Sarah Bennett: http://sarahbennett.org.uk/home.html

Andy Klunder: http://www.klundera.com/index.html

Volkhardt Muller: http://vm.newsandmediarepublic.org/