One World Week Exhibition At Chaplaincy Centre
A wheelbarrow and tools covered in newspaper is one of several art installations on show at the Chaplaincy Centre for One World Week from Monday March 10.
The artist-in-residence Christine Dawson has added 150 papier mache bricks labelled with the question “How will YOU save the planet?” for the installation entitled “Sustainable Future?”
Another installation “Balanced Earth?” shows a pair of scales balancing bricks labelled Exclusion and Inclusion, while a pile of bricks labelled with words like “Hate” shows how people create their own barriers. The title of the exhibition is “Watching Walls”.
Christine said: “It’s about asking people how you can change the wall within yourself to make the world more balanced, peaceful and harmonious and that’s very much in line with One World Week.”
This wall within is depicted by masses of knitted bricks covering real “unyielding” bricks, knitted by several women connected with the Chaplaincy Centre.
Another installation, “Brick Books”, was made with the help of students from the International Study Centre.
Christine said: “These students told me they are faced with “a real wall: one that stands between them and their mastery of the English language. Breaking through this wall will enable them to continue onto a Degree Course at Lancaster University.”
She said she wanted people to interact with all the installations.
“I have asked questions of the viewer to be answered on labels throughout the exhibition. I really like to democratise my work, involving as many people as possible. To this end I have invited another artist, Lisa Letch, to exhibit one of her artworks which I felt complimented the ethos of my work. Lisa’s installation addresses the barrier of personal grief.”
Other artworks include a creative brick carving project and a yellow brick road completed with the help of REAP, a Lancaster University based organisation aimed at widening participation in HE, and Marsden Community College in Nelson.
Christine said her work is inspired by the writings of the art critic John Berger.
She said: “Berger defines the present historical period as “the time of the Wall” noting that although the Berlin Wall came down in 1989, many have since been erected – concrete, bureaucratic, surveillance, security, racist, zone walls. In conjunction with these he believes that walls of separation exist within us all.
Within this Residency, I have used bricks to symbolically dismantle this dark nature of walls.”
The exhibition, which runs until March 14, is the last one at the Chaplaincy Centre for Christine, whose Residency finishes on March 21. This also the final chance to see her earlier exhibition “Sweet Dreams”.
She will also be showing installations in Alexandra Square on March 10 and 12.