Our upcoming exhibition Is This What We Have Left?  featuring never shown and new works by artists Kate O’Neill, Marta Dyczkowska and James Thompson. Show opens 19/09/2024 at our  home Hyde Park Book Club, and focused on the current dialogues we are having as creatives around space.

'Ephemeral traces and physical records of cultural spaces and spaces for making art, friends and dancing cross the boundaries between places and memories to create a new fictional space at the Hyde Park Book Club. These traces tells us the stories of buildings, but also about the people that designed them, how they were built and lived in. The works on exhibitions tells us the story of the people in these buildings, in particular fellow artists and their communities at large. They ask us to reflect about the changes in our cities whether they are physical, concerning the built environment, or socio-economic, dictated by specific dis/investments that attract temporary communities and more permanent residents while pushing others at the margins. After having spent years to build spaces for arts, culture and communities, when alternatives cannot be imagined or supported, is this all that remains from those experiences?

Or, is this what we have left to start again from? Personal and collective memories, shared energies and desires are infused in the installation space and activated by social interactions. After 10 years of activity as a gallery and cultural space the Tetley building is going under redeveloped and James Thompson spent five months to capture the essence of this space in flux with clay pressings, video and sound recording, rubbings and casts. His video recording make us look out the window at the new constructions outside. By contrast, Marta Dyczkowska’s films take us out of the house to look in, at the demolition of her studio at Havelock House.

After making Belfast her home, Dyczkowska has witnessed the loss of important spaces in the city and started to impress their memories through photograph etchings. While these works run in parallel across two cities, Kate O’Neill’s works direct our attention to what went on inside these buildings, focusing the attention on the craft and time spent with the artistic practice. Careful, long-processes give form to the casting of a wooden fireplace and more than 60 porcelain crotchet squares. These objects nod at her grandfather’s skills in making in wood carving and textile that she is now re-discovering and learning. Brought together in this installation, they create a living room, a new social and exhibition space, which crosses the boundaries between places and memories. You are invited to just sit in and spend time with the work, before the exhibition changes too.

This exhibition and related programme will be  delivered in partnership with No Space Left To Play, funded by Leeds City Council through the Leeds Cultural Investment Programme and support by East Street Arts.