Pra IV revisited, video installation, Karen Heald, (2020).

Heterotopic Encounters: a visual conversation between artists considering spaces of otherness. UnDegUn | Wrexham | 28.02.20-11.04.20.

Tracy Simpson, Co-Director of Addo Creative and Alec Shepley, Professor of Contemporary Art Practice and Dean of the Faculty of Arts, Science and Technology at Wrexham Glyndwr University invited me along with other lecturers / artists to create work for Heterotopic Encounters. Professor Shepley started the dialogue with a quote from Michael Phillipson written in 1995:

“Under the intensity of creative experimentation (the situation and challenge of artists’ practice) each work asks itself (and therefore us, too) whether there might be a ‘place’ where culture has not yet reached; it hopes to be that ‘place’ – an elsewhere that is not yet a ‘place’ on culture’s terms”.[1]

Professor Shepley continues that it actually should not be at all that surprising to hear this, especially when considering how we are often deliberately breaking free from previous artistic conventions, pushing out into new terrain and challenging orthodoxy. This journey or process can feel even more perilous or precarious at best, when taking into account that it may not even be possible for it to be taught![2]

Considering Foucault’s socio-cultural spaces of otherness or ‘heterotopias’ as they became known in his essay Des Espace Autres[3], Professor Shepley put it simply that these are in-between spaces, such as the moment Gordon Matta Clark referred to as when you stop to tie your shoelaces or as Foucault referred to as the space of a ‘phone call’.

Professor Shepley vision for the show is to be closely associated to the notion of located practice but in the sense that the location is the practice and vice versa practice is the location. A space that is constantly coming into being – difficult, contested, awkward, unfolding and as yet nameless.

[1] Phillipson, M. (1995) Managing ‘Tradition: The Plight of Aesthetic Practices and their Analysis in a Technoscientific Culture. In Jencks, C. (Ed.) 1995 Visual Culture 202-203. Routledge, London and New York.
2 Elkins, J. (2014) Artists with PhDs 2nd Edition New Academia Publishing LLC; expanded edition (May 15, 2014).
3 Foucault, M. (1967) in Des Espace Autres. Architecture, Mouvement, Continuité 5: 46–49 (October 1984) it has been translated into English twice, first as Foucault, Michel (Spring 1986).

To put my practice into context, it has evolved out of working site-specifically and on international residences. I have engaged in a variety of collaborations with diverse practitioners such as artists, scientists, medical doctors and numerous other academics.

Through a variety of media primarily video, installation and photography, I have evolved my own poetic visual language that engages with the differences and similarities between painting, photography and film, creating a language of 'painterly reverie' that communicates difficult social issues with oblique, visual stanzas.

In responding to Heterotopic Encounters I am interested in the visual dialogues and conversations between artists who reside within the artistic space of UnDegUn, those collaborating, and visitors experiencing the event. Given the recent precarious nature of the location and its temporary life span and the early closure of the exhibition due to the COVID19 pandemic that has transversed the globe this is especially poignant and significant.

The two films exhibited have been brought together and re-framed for the first time at UnDegUn, in my hometown of Wrexham. The films shown explore the apertures and mechanics of the camera, the unconscious and the active / passive role of the female in the landscape.

Untitled IV (2001) is a silent video, filmed along the Irwell Valley Sculpture Trail in Salford. It explores Salford’s industrial heritage, the graphics of line, tone and form, Rosika Parker’s The Subversive Stitch, and the concept that when sleeping the brain is still active. Pra I (2004) is one of two films that reflect upon early experimental Czech cinema, it was filmed through a viewing device along the river Vltava that flows through Prague, whilst attending an international conference on sleep. Both are influenced by Julia Kristeva’s concept of the ‘semiotic chora’ and my notion of ‘transitory strata’.

The play with screens, the bleeding out of light and sound, the piano score, the grain and aesthetic tonalities of analogue films, and the objects themselves, sourced from artists and found in the space are all to be celebrated. The interactive overlaps are invitations for people to continue to play and experiment with the work throughout and beyond the exhibition. Enjoy! 

Artists’ works exhibited as part of Heterotopic Encounters at UnDegUn’s Arts Space, Wrexham, Wales, 2020. Photographic credits Karen Heald and Oliver Stephen.

Pra I, duration 3' 20", Karen Heald (2004/2020).

Performance along the Irwell Valley Sculpture Trail, duration 2' 00", Karen Heald (2001/2020).