Journey to the Lower World by Marcus Coates
21 April – 7 July 2007
Unititled, Chair, Silhouette by Andy Lock. C-type print - part of the Orchard Park Series. Image Courtesy of the Artist.
Press Release 12.04.07
42 New Briggate, the gallery sited next to Leeds Grand Theatre that unites contemporary visual art and opera, opens a new exhibition showing works by two exciting artists Andy Lock and Marcus Coates.
Andy Lock’s Orchard Park series of photographs, accompanies Opera North’s new production of Katya Kabanova. It depicts the nearly empty rooms of an apartment building just before its demolition. The objects appear just as they were found, sealed off from the outside world; they show thick shafts of light falling on shabby walls. Their painterly texture adds an element of mystery to the dramatic and isolated images, which embrace the past without nostalgia.
“The Orchard Park images flooded with green light give a sense of Katya’s isolation and emersion in guilt-ridden thoughts before her suicide.”
Stuart Leeks, Marketing Officer at Opera North
With a similarly melancholic backdrop of a condemned tower block, Marcus Coates’ film Journey to the Lower World documents his performance of a faux-Shaman ritual, whilst sporting a full deerskin. Local Liverpudlian ladies make up the audience uncomfortably seeing the comedy of his ritualistic journey down the tower block's lift shaft; the film’s emphasis is on their response, drawing viewers in the gallery to identify with the viewers in the flat. Journey to the Lower World accompanies Opera North’s new production of Les Noces. Coates’ work has strong visual and musical references to folk and tribal rituals like the wedding in Les Noces.
Notes to the editor:
Andy Lock has recently undertaken a residency at the Visual Studies Workshop, Rochester, New York and is currently developing new work for exhibition. He is a Senior Lecturer in photography at Lincoln University’s school of Art and Design. The Orchard Park series, created in Kingston Upon Hull in 2003, has been exhibited at venues across the U.S. and is now held in the permanent collection at George Eastman House, Rochester, U.S.
Marcus Coates Journey to the Lower World was made during a residency on the Further Up in the Air programme, 2004. The work has since been part of the ambitious ‘British Art Show 6’ survey of UK art. He has exhibited extensively across the world, and this year had an acclaimed solo show at the Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art, Gateshead.
Journey to the Lower World by Marcus Coates. Photograph: © Hayward Gallery
Created in a council flat in a condemned tower block on a housing estate in Liverpool the film ‘Journey to the Lower World’ documents Marcus Coates’ performance of a Shamanic ritual undertaken to help the local community that was being re-housed.
The artist offered his services to try to locate information for the audience from the Lower World via animal spirits. He uses a very specific Shaman procedure, that of the Tuvak Shamans from Siberia.
He didn’t tell the audience this was an artwork, although they did know he was an artist. Because the final work is documentation of the performance the artist has framed the image so viewers in the gallery identify with the viewers in the flat, in that way you can experience the same questions and doubts about the process he is undertaking.
‘Journey to the Lower World’ accompanied 'Les Noces'. Although this is a one-off Shamanic ritual, Coates’ work has strong visual and musical references to nature and to folk and tribal rituals.
Photographs taken by Lucy Gibson and Yvonne Carmichael.