Tomorrow Is Our Permanent Address
Convention House, Leeds, UK 2019
Devised and curated by Marion Harrison
Commissioned by East Street Arts
Words – Derek Horton
Photo Credits – Jules Lister
Website Design – Erik Winterburn/Studio Volk
Audio – Baile Beyai and Stuart Mellor
This project aimed to critically, practically and technically test the potential scope of this new space through innovative, idiosyncratic, exploratory and inventive uses and implementation of technology, digital material, image, construction, words, systems, encounter and group learning.
--tomorrow is our permanent address and there they'll scarcely find us (if they do, we'll move away still further): into now— E.E. Cummings – all ignorance toboggans into know. (1944)
Words – How will anyone know what is happening?
Convention House
Convention House is situated in Mabgate, Leeds. Formerly a convent and then used as an accountants for the last 37 years, this Victorian large-scale terraced building has recently been redeveloped into a unique creative space by East Street Arts.
Words – What makes a creative space?
︎ Laura Grace Ford
︎ Alex De Little
︎ Sophie & Kerri
︎ Marion Harrison & Stuart Mellor
︎ Jake Krushell & Alfie Kungu
︎ Marnie Simpson
︎ John Orlek
︎ Ben Dalton
︎ Sable Radio
︎ Village Pop up @ Convention House
Marsh Lane Billboard Project
Programmed by Marion Harrison and Alan Dunn.Words – Public art; art in public spaces, art in the public realm…
︎ Dominic from Luton
︎ Laura Grace Ford
︎ Sophie & Kerri
︎ Jessie Brennan
︎ Tara Colette
︎ Andy Edwards
Sophie and Kerri
Elsewhere, here, on the ground: 1
The ground. The place we sink our feet, dig for victory, dance, rest our souls. Host to cliches, celebration, lament, changing directions, patterns. Sometimes unstable, always shifting... in our memories scenes merge recalled through small details; crispy towels dried in the sun, the smell of animals, unspoken rules. Details where life accumulates. Delicate outlines the ground where life accumulates. The floor, the walls, the shape of the table, the bits where the varnish chips off that you colour in when left to your own devices, the overheard sounds, the awkward feelings. Bits on top of the definitive. The ground. Touched, therefore known for a split second. The underscore to the overture. Sometimes sticky, always dissolving. The background. Imposing order; soft glimmers / sharp shards. Not a lack that needs to be filled but an intangible inside that asks to be held. How.
Elsewhere, here, on the ground: 1 by artists Sophie Chapman & Kerri Jefferis is a digital collage of two ‘grounds’ - the glimmering remnants on the floor of Rowland Road Working Men’s Club the day after a (lesbian) wedding and close up details from a playground in Beeston, South Leeds that has been cut out in the wake of cuts and ‘antisocial’ behaviour. In some places the grounds perspective shifts, joins another’s fractured edge or appears to melt into itself, or to have been torn away completely.
“We were thinking a lot about space as social resource - who is welcome where, what maintains these structures and what they invite or allow outside cycles of consumption. We wanted to use the billboard to look closely, closer, at the details of these spaces, the remnants of pleasure and joy against the machine - stick them in people’s faces, massive, on a billboard, and ask what their wilful devaluation represents or signals to us or how it asks us to act.”
Elsewhere, here, on the ground: 1 is from a series of digital collages in production and part of a wider constellation of works informed by Sophie + Kerri’s time spent at East Street Arts Artist House 45 (South Leeds) through Summer 2019. This includes social sculpture (The Table), film (Idle Acts) and a public mural visible at Rowland Road Working Men's Club, Beeston.