Negotiating a collective aesthetic

Preston Street Union | Work in  progress| 2019

I’m working with Preston Street Union on the second of two commissions for Exeter’s Royal Albert Memorial Museum on the theme of migration.  Our last piece for RAMM – SERGE/SURGE  – took place outside the museum walls and consisted of a series of live actions we had devised together over a number of months. This time, the curator specifically requested something with a more physical and enduring presence in the museum building – but also something made by us…quite a challenge for a collective with a largely performative approach.

Preston Street Union is a group of artists with widely varying levels of experience, diverse practices and different aesthetic approaches. Committing to physical processes and objects meant moving away from a situation where we are making work in a way none of us would have used individually, to a situation where we are reliant on the drawing, print-making, digital, research or textile experience of different members in order to create the work. And where we must negotiate a fixed collective aesthetic rather than one that comes and goes in the moment.

For this next piece of work, we are drawing on and complementing new research by local historian Michael A Patrick. We're using our making skills to investigate the construction and production of decorative tillet wrappers used in Exeter's historic wood trade (and so, we hope, to add something new to the museum’s understanding of related objects in its collection). Processes so far have included making a collective drawing and a joint prototype design in fabric. Progress has been slow, often painful, and definitely very stretching for everyone. But at its heart is the need to get along, to exchange expertise, to integrate skills and to make different approaches work cohesively together. It feels very appropriate to our subject matter: the way that Exeter’s prosperity was built on cooperation between people of different backgrounds, cultures, skills and expectations.

Preston Street Union's new work Anyone may come and go will be launched at Exeter's Royal Albert Memorial Museum on Saturday 15 February 2020.