‘History’ – art installation in Hyde Abbey GatePosted on 00:40, April 21st, 2010
‘History’: a Hyde900 combined Inter-faith and Re-imagining Treasures of Hyde Abbey event Discover a site-specific art installation by Stephen Cooper in the side chamber of Hyde Abbey Gate. This is a combined Hyde900 Inter-faith and Visual Arts ‘Re-imagining’ event.Please note that the side chamber is normally locked, but you can view the work through the railings. On site talks with the artist April 11th and 18th at 2pm. “From the outset of this project, I wanted to set up a contrast between my work and the history and architecture of Hyde Abbey Gate Chamber. I did not wish to construct a narrative that illustrates the building’s history. “The building encloses an almost cubic space embedded with history, both past and contemporary; the graffiti, the contextual panels all adding to the character of this ancient site. My work attempts to make a comparison between the historical and the present. One of my central concerns is to map and integrate different spaces and ideas: a landscape is contrasted with a molecular system, which is in turn compared with a diagrammatic black hole. The fusing together of these spaces is involved in the art of imagining. I attempt to use a mixture of systems, the subjective and the distant, the personal and the objective, the autobiographical and the scientific. “For me, this project represents the placing of my work within the historic and the actual, and attempts to extend and embrace the question of memory, whether it is public or private, secular or sacred, or historic and imaginary.” – Stephen Cooper, April 2010 |