It went up and it came down again

Preston Street Union Galleries R Us  presents Pete Kingston Marshmallow Towers,
Exeter Central Station, May 2018 | Photo: Jonathan Price

Preston Street Union - Galleries R Us - Art Week Exeter 2018

“Could our problems become our practice?” we asked ourselves in October 2017 as we began to plan for Art Week Exeter. The continuing struggles of Spacex, the organisation that brought Preston Street Union into being, weighed heavily over the meeting. We wanted to revisit the political implications of being a ‘union’, to address our city’s increasing lack of gallery and studio space, and to use our time at Art Week to say something about cuts to the arts budget.

We settled on the idea of presenting an itinerant, portable gallery space. Drawing inspiration from Rebecca Horn, Ciara Phillips, Lucy Orta and Emily Speed, we decided on a wearable gallery. If the gallery was modular, and we each wore a part of it, we had to be there to make it happen. The more of us who met, the bigger the gallery would be. We decided to call the project Galleries R Us.

Working sessions involved old tents, bamboo canes, umbrellas, fishing rods, hula hoops, rolls of lining paper, waste vinyl, lengths of fabric. In the end we settled on a set of plastic aprons, some modified brewer’s tubing, some stretchy white netting and sou’westers made from IKEA bags. These would be brought together in different combinations to create different kinds of gallery spaces.

At the same time, we decided to do a call-out for other artists to join us by undertaking five-minute micro residencies. We knew that the conditions we were offering (no money, no time, no power supply, no hanging system, no weather protection, no guarantee of an audience) made the task extremely challenging. Many artists made enquiries and decided not to bother. But four brave souls - Nick Davies, Lucia Harley, Laura Hopes and Pete Kingston - offered us ambitious, interesting proposals and a willingness to join us in taking to the street. We also programmed in a number of our own micro-events to take place in the gallery space.

Our plan was to work with limited resources but not to allow them to limit what we considered possible. We would be inventive, determined and professional. We didn't set out to fail but knew that some element of failure was inevitable and would just have to be accepted by us, our artists and our audiences.

Although the logistics and choreography proved to be complex, the idea was simple. A few minutes before the appointed hour, the commissioned artist would meet in a designated public space with ‘Red’, a figure wearing a red lab coat in honour of one of our original mentors, Emily Warner. For Art Week Exeter 2018, this role was taken by former Spacex Project Manager Kathy Norris.

At an agreed time, the people making up different parts of the gallery would emerge from the crowd and surround the artist and the site of the work. Joining together, they would watch the work impassively for exactly five minutes, before dispersing again and leaving the artist and their work alone with Red. A theme of precarious architectures - and of building and dismantling - emerged both from the works presented and the formation and dispersion of the gallery itself.

Events ranged from Lucia Harley’s intense five-minute performance Up Down delivered to bemused drivers and passengers at Exeter Bus Station, to Pete Kingston’s Marshmallow Towers, a participatory activity involving the passing public. Laura Hopes set the gallery on the move as a marching, drumming army in Surrender and Nick Davies presented a sound and text work Reaching Out To Icarus (Architects) at a noisy building site. Other events included Daniel Cray’s Covert Karaoke and Tim King’s spoken-word performance The Big Pig. Each morning began with the gallery encircling Exeter’s much-loved blue boy statue in the busy Princesshay shopping centre, offering a perfect match for his bright blue hat and cloak. Preston Street Union’s own Group Show at the quayside, was attended by two older ladies who, touchingly, inspected every single piece of work, each of which was held in its maker’s hands.

Interestingly, as an event without a venue, we were not considered worthy of the attentions of Art Week Exeter's official photographer. Or perhaps he just found it hard fit our - admittedly brief - events into his schedule.

The programme concluded with a sombre vigil outside the locked doors of Spacex's former home at 45 Preston Street.

Galleries R Us took place on 24th and 25th May 2018 as part of Art Week Exeter. It was created, worn and performed by Bettina Amtag, Megan Calver, Gabrielle Hoad, Kathy Norris, Becca Nutt, Janet Sainsbury, Felicity Shillingford and Stella Tripp, with contributions from Daniel Cray, Nick Davies, Lucia Harley, Laura Hopes, Tim King and Pete Kingston. Supported by Exeter Phoenix and Stormpress.

Full Programme