Welcome to the House of Fun

Thrills and spills at one of the city's strangest galleries. Just don't take a wrong turning, or you never know where it'll take you.

SevenStreets loves this installation at The Art Organisation’s Wolstenholme Square Creative Space…up close you can see the keyboard, at least, was once part of a.P.A.t.T’s gear. Nice to know that, when you’re in an experimental art-music collective, you don’t just stop at trashing your guitar.

The piece - Stereo-tastic, by Carol Ramsay plays music recorded at the gallery. The piece reacts to the music, creating a kind of 3D after-shock of the live music experience.

The piece is part of the gallery’s second Biennial strand. It’s a collection of 12 artists selected by open submission – Michael Coombs (UK), Henrietta Simson (UK), David Eveleigh and Melissa Evans (UK), Su-Chen Hung (USA), Andrew Brookfi eld (UK), Junichrio Iwase (Canada), Ulrike Oeter (Germany), Cait Walker and Robin Heap (UK), Carol Ramsay (UK) and Hannah Wiles (UK) who’ve all responded engagingly to the gallery’s cracked and peeling walls, creaking stairways and general air of dereliction.

There’s something of the cottage at the end of Blair Witch about the Wolstenholme Creative Space. And, similarly with this exhibition, shadows flicker, ultra-violet projections create an alternative, meta-exhibition, and glistening streams run over transparent brickwalls. In one room, a silent, snowy forest is projected onto the paint flaked walls, turing the crumbling emulsion into a silent snow fall. Never has a long- neglected room looked quite so lovely. In another, a grubby washrooom, tiny mahogany drawers are carefully stepped up in a corner, daring you to peek inside.

Hallucinatory, disconcerting and ever so slightly unnerving: it’s like a Fun House operated by Tim Burton.

If you’re in Wolstenholme Sqaure (Parr Street) and you’ve got your back to Cream/Nation. Wolstenholme Creative Space is - appropriately enough - the last house on the left. Enter if you dare…

Image: Carol Ramsay: Stereo-tastic

With These Walls We Are Shaped
28 October–28 November
11 Wolstenholme Square

16 November 2010

« Corridor 8: The Borderlands Edition

End of a Gaming Era? »

Share your view

Welcome to the House of Fun

Thrills and spills at one of the city's strangest galleries. Just don't take a wrong turning, or you never know where it'll take you.