Topographic Translations Iteration 2 
Utrophia 
120 Deptford High St, 
South East 
London
Fri 18th - 25th May 


'Topographic Translation: Iteration 2' brought together four artists whose work emanate from the translation and interpretation of their physical environments. From map-making to embroidery, surface duplication to object production, a wide range of practices offer  individual impressions of inhabited environments. Shared by each artist, is the notion that our surroundings are in a sense constructed.

Topographic Translation: Iteration 2' further develops the dialogue established in ‘Topographic Translation’ (Bristol Diving School), influenced and elaborated by a new locality. Cityscapes are re-interpreted as bodyscapes; romanticized perceptions of landscapes are reconfigured, while the cold, unforgiving nature of the pavement beneath our feet is transformed into microcosmic urban topographies, where nature inevitably finds its niche. 

Locations have been discovered by geographic limitations and then presented in Nic Marshall’s sculptures. A clean cut square frames a textured surface that has been replicated and isolated from these locations. The viewer is invited to simultaneously interpret both the location his work references in the outside world and the scaled down, adventurous landscape it portrays in the exhibition.

Lizzie Cannon investigates the interface between biological forces and the human desire for control. Through pencil rubbings she maps the urban terrain, producing a landscape reminiscent of forested mountains or fluvial plains. Drawing is used as a process of organic growth, the pencil taking the path of least resistance along weaknesses in the pavement’s surface. Hand embroidered details draw the viewer in, mirroring the experience of finding a miniature world within a crack in the pavement. In her sculptural work, Cannon re-configures fragments of found pavement. Embroidery is used as a subtle transmutation from the hard, unforgiving surface of this urban substrate to seemingly organic growths that colonize cracks and crevices within the pavement.

In her series of Bodyscapes, Poppy Pitt explores the fluid nature of boundaries between the body and its immediate environment. Using a mixture of hard and soft materials she creates sculptures and installations that represent the landscapes created by human bodies as they move through urban spaces. Her work invites an intimacy and creates a delicate and soft encounter with the viewer whilst at the same time imposing a weight on the gallery space, and making the encounter with the viewer a physical interaction. Her work presents the body as an entity, which both impresses and is impressed upon by its environment, and maps that interaction.

Tom Johnson’s abstract paintings offer pixilated geometries, which question our perception of traditional landscape construction. Colours may be borrowed from a remembered scene, a classical landscape painting, or a hyper-real video-game environment. The process of pixilation removes recognizable points of reference to subvert logical comprehension of the landscape, in favour of a subjective delivery. Tom’s combination of digital techniques and rudimentary framing reiterates the human element of their construction in order to allude to the notion of the landscape as a cultural construct.

Artists:
Lizzie Cannon
Tom Johnson
Nic Marshall
Poppy Pitt

http://www.utrophia.net
Topographic Translation
 06-10 October 2011
as Part of MADESCAPES
http://www.madescapes.com/

You have arrived at your destination

Topographic Translation

Bristol Diving School, Bristol. Oct 2011.

In advance of my journey here, I entered the postcode of Bristol Diving School into Google and clicked maps.  I was then able to preview my entire route, culminating in the approach along Cumberland Road and the turn-off into Hanover Place.  I even picked out the best place to park my car.  Forty eight minutes later, as my satnav correctly predicted, I arrived at my destination.  Entering the gallery I found an exhibition floor-plan: every step of my journey had been mapped out before me; from the moment I pulled off my driveway, to my arrival in front of each specific artwork.
Maps are ubiquitous.  It is no surprise that mapping finds its way into the work of many artists; a map informs our experience of a space, the elements within it and the relationships between those elements, and in doing so, a map removes the element of surprise.  By examining a map in advance of its represented location, mankind has been able to plan great expeditions; proud parents have navigated theme parks, and scientists have selected the best locations for landing robot explorers on distant worlds.  Not all maps are representative of the physical features of a landscape; in medieval times a map was a tool of the tax-collector, containing information such as land ownership and resource production, it allowed him to keep tabs on which citizens owed how much; a matter of far greater importance than the relative location and dimensions of buildings, borders and pathways.
Nic Marshall’s two plinth-works, 51.446104, -2.599461 and 51.44838, -2.593282, conflate the frame and the work into a single object.  Sections of earth appear cookie-cut, miniaturised and dropped into the gallery space.  Atop the plinths sit moor-like landscapes of places that should have names like Jacobs Ladder and Devils Dyke.  A quick revisit to Google maps reveals the titular grid references to be Bristolian locations; one a few hundred yards up the road, the other right here in the gallery itself.  From the detrital matter of the city – metal piping, rubble and dust – the artist has fashioned the visual clues that remove us to these semi-fictional landscapes.
Tom Johnson’s topographical works never go as far as sticking a pin in a map; rather he redirects the established visual language of landscape and mapping to create believable yet indistinct locations.  The lack of any concrete referent has the viewer thinking they may have been there; our mental visual reference-libraries contain fictional sceneries, constituted of the many landscapes we have stood in, or looked upon.  It is to these places that we go when we gaze on such works, whose pixelated appearance imparts a digital quality that is set against the brutal honesty of their rudimentary framing.  MDF board and untreated timbers as supports for the work are also used in Re-iterated Geography.  Three large-scale map drawings are removed of identifying factors such as place-names and coastlines, again allowing the viewer room to set themselves within the topography.  Any urge one feels to look up these maps in the accompanying AA Illustrated Road Atlas of France is dashed by the artists positioning of another block of timber, across the book, nailed to its plinth.
Perhaps the most literal map presented here is Lizzie Cannon’s Interstitial; a 1:1 depiction of a section of pavement.  The scope of the piece appears to have been determined by natural limiting factors such as the artists reach, and the interruptions of her jutting knees or feet.  This 1:1 map is elevated to the gallery wall, opposed to Poppy Pitt’s Impressions; a series of hanging plaster casts with the appearance of fleshy appendages – one can almost make out the curve of a hip or buttock – but as the title of the work implies, these appear to be casts of the hollows created when a body leaves a space.  Lined by a faint striping of red fibres, the casts bear a trace of a large sheet of fabric, perhaps bed linen.  Impressions constitutes an altogether different kind of mapping to the other works in the show; it is a mapping of the echoes of human spatial interaction; the traces left when a body is removed from a surface as forgiving as a duvet cover.  Which brings us back to topography; for who among us has never looked out over our bed-sheets and imagined a miniature landscape unfolding before them?  Each night, as we settle into our beds, our shifting bodies conspire beneath the surface to create new landscapes of hills, ridges and glacial valleys for our imaginations to discover.
As I drove home in the darkness of the evening, I noticed that my satnav could see a greater extent of the road ahead than I could make out with the headlamps of the car.  I was reminded of Jacques Luis Borges, and his fable of the ancient civilisation that became so obsessed with map-making that they elevated its status to the most important job in the land.  Maps of increasing accuracy were commissioned, until eventually the entire territory was covered in a map on a 1:1 scale.  Such was the importance placed on the upkeep of this most revered status symbol of empire, that beneath it the civilisation crumbled.