CONTROLLED ENCOUNTERS:
THE CONSTRICTION OF OPEN SPACE
(2024)
Controlled Encounter features two new commissions by artists David Rickard and Rafael Pérez Evans. This installation interrogates the interplay between autonomy and authority, prompting a critical reconsideration of our relationship with systems of control and their pervasive influence on our lives.
We all exist within frameworks of control, from travel visas and educational systems to governmental oversight and online surveillance. Through deliberate world-building, the installation forces navigators along a predetermined path with obstacles. Controlled Encounter: The Constriction of Open Space is designed to examine the complexities inherent in experiencing these controlled environments. Controlling mechanisms span from localised and intimate scenarios to geopolitical and global scales. These systems, whether social, political or economic, dictate our behaviours and choices. This is an analysis of restrictive frameworks that investigates personal recognition in the participatory roles we play throughout our daily lives within control mechanisms.
Rafael Pérez Evans’s Jammed juxtaposes institutional control and organic disruption. In a critique of the intersections of regulation and nature, a turnstile is rendered nonfunctional by the overflow of an anarchic pile of yams.
The turnstile, a ubiquitous fixture in urban settings like subway stations, sports arenas and corporate buildings, epitomises the mechanised regulation of human mobility. Barriers and checkpoints dictate everyday encounters with institutional systems. In contrast, the yams symbolise growth, community, nourishment, and the cyclical rhythms of nature.
Yam is the second most important root crop in Africa after cassava, and is extremely important to food security in regions of Southeast Asia and the Pacific, as well as the tropical Americas. In West African culture it’s also a symbol of fertility and resilience. Pérez Evans has been working with them as an earthly and robust symbol for sustenance. Their organic, untamed presence subverts the turnstile's rigid, industrial, metallic structure, suggesting a wilding and natural resurgence over mechanical constraint.
David Rickard's Limbo incorporates his architectural background, embedding inquiries of material and spatial perception into his art. The installation uses retractable queue barriers to
control the installation space and
shape audience movement.
These barriers are inscribed with quotes from anonymous participants featured in Steve Taylor and colleagues' 2020 research paper, Loss, Grief and Growth: An Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis of Experiences of Trauma in Asylum-Seekers and Refugees. The quotes offer a first-hand insight into the experiences of individuals awaiting asylum processing in the UK, imbuing the navigation process with a new sense of empathy and socio-political awareness.
By repositioning the barriers over the course of five days, the conventional static nature of traditional art exhibitions is disrupted. This reflects the feeling of uncertainty within a system of waiting, both within physical queues and institutional systems such as seeking asylum.
The exhibition catalogue was purposefully crafted with perforations positioned at each corner of its pages, accompanied by a fastening mechanism. This feature enabled the viewers to rotate, reassemble, or even dismantle the catalogue. Readers were prompted to utilise this deliberately crafted object to explore personal feelings when confronted with limitations on control. When engaging with this catalogue, one was urged to consider the extent of freedom granted to the viewer and to explore feelings when confronted with personal choice.
The deliberate choice of a challenging font for the catalogue title aimed to encourage readers to invest time in deciphering the text, as an attempt to control the reader and as an invitation to slow down. This catalogue further re-evaluated standardised publishing conventions to explore personal feelings when confronted with limitations on control.
ARTISTS
COLLABORATORS
CURATORS
WRITING TEAM
DESIGN TEAM
David Rickard
Rafael Perez Evans
Bingning Meng
Dahee Min
Gianmarco Gronchi
Nancy Whiston
Rachel Morgan
Xinqi Li
Yuci Dai
Steve Taylor
(Senior Lecturer in Psychology)
Rushtons Greengrocer
UK Harvest
Gianmarco Gronchi
Nancy Whiston
Rachel Morgan
Xinqi Li
Nancy Whiston
Yuci Dai