BLACKOUT April 30th- June 11th 2005 Plymouth Art Centre
‘Forgive me if I laugh; I never could take building seriously. Concentrated baked dust, dust metamorphosed into an edifice; an optical illusion, fata morgana, doomed to be reduced to rubble…’
Extract from ‘Billiards at Half Past Nine’ by Heinrich Boll 1959
Inspired by Plymouth’s turbulent history of destruction and regeneration (huge sections of the city were devastated by bombing during WW2), Tabatha Andrews created new work for a solo show at Plymouth Art Centre exploring memory and amnesia, the creation and destruction of form.
Using salvaged debris from the 2005 demolition of Charles Cross car park in Plymouth, she constructed a kind of alternative mapping of our memories of architecture. Like early life forms trying to articulate a new language, these painted fragments of twisted concrete and metal occupied a totally white, very brightly lit space.
During the show, artists Jason Hirons and Larry Lynch made performances in response to Andrew’s works and the changing city of Plymouth. Elsewhere in the Art Centre was the ash installation False Floor, and the projections Interference and In The Presence Of.
Blackout 2005 (detail)
Involuted screen of blackout curtain into which In The Presence Of was projected in 2005
