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WILD PANSY PRESS PROJECT SPACE
Simon Lewandowski & Richard Price
HOTEL/MOTEL/MOTET
Private View Wednesday February 23rd 6.00-8.00pm
with a reading by Richard Price at 7.00pm.
Exhibition 23rd February to 20th March 2011
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HOTEL/MOTEL/MOTET from simon lewandowski on Vimeo.
HOTEL/MOTEL/MOTET is a work based on devices of storytelling and wordplay and was produced as a collaboration between visual artist Simon Lewandowski and poet Richard Price.
The installation consists of a television, cantilevered off the wall. The animation on the screen resembles a sign for a seedy hotel which spins gently but as it turns, the letters mysteriously change, spelling out a series of cryptic messages which build a fractured, implied narrative. The structure of the sign restricts the words to a maximum of five letters or spaces. These short stanzas work independently of one another and are rotated at random over the exhibition period. The animation has been designed for a public space and to show its texts continuously, allowing a passing audience to give it as much or as little time as they choose, and rewarding prolonged attention with a constantly-shifting cycle of possible combinations. The piece is one of a series of experiments in the re-staging of narrative within a form that blends the visual, the verbal and the physical – poetry, animation and sculpture.
Simon Lewandowski (b.1952) has shown extensively and the UK and overseas, including major projects in Brazil, Italy, Germany and Sweden. His work is often characterised by its exploration of obsolete, vernacular or inductrial technologies and by a dark and often surreal humour. His work with Richard Price is one of a series of projects which deal with collaboration in various forms. He is a lecturer at the School of Fine Art at the University of Leeds.
Richard Price (b.1966) is recognised as both an avant-garde and lyrical poet and has collaborated with artists Ronald King and Karen Bleitz on artists’ books and with David Annand on site-specific sculpture. His work is represented in the Tate collections. His poetry collections include Rays, Greenfields and Lucky Day, the latter shortlisted for the Whitbread Poetry Prize. His novel The Island is a tale of a father, a daughter, and a car theft. He is Head of Modern British Collections at the British Library.
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The Wild Pansy Press Project Space offers a public venue for experimental works which use the practices of reading, writing and publication as their medium and/or content and will be open to the public from 10.00-6.00 Monday-Thursday, 10.00-4.00 Friday. It is sited in the School of Fine Art, History of Art & Cultural Studies of the University Of Leeds.