Liz May:
A Personal Perspective

To re-enchant matter is to enact a metamorphic transformation. In the artist’s studio or, in light of recent events, possibly in a living room, artists are constantly navigating the matter of their practice. Ideas and material are transformed from one state into another as they are dismantled, dissected, doubled, only to be re-configured as the maker’s own. Once the process is complete, something new has hatched. Eighteen years is a long time - a great deal can change in eighteen years. As we now know, a great deal can change in eighteen weeks. And yet, sitting on the little platform outside the tea-hut in the yard behind APT, looking down the creek towards Greenwich as the tide recedes one can’t help noticing how much has stayed the same.

So, imagine a Thursday afternoon in early October. A bank of grey cloud hangs low in the west over Deptford and the Bird’s Nest wears a white crown. Two ducks crash noisily into a pool of sunlight on the creek, laughing at the hull of a boat keeled over in the mud. Low-tide.

With a reluctant sigh a train glides over on the DLR, a red-grey movie unspooling into Greenwich, shedding silver fragments into the water.

The office is a terminal moraine of boxes, stacks of paper, artworks frosted-up with bubble-wrap and a random scattering of tools and clothing. A keyboard shivers out its text in a rapid clattering of words that stitch the world together like a ship’s rigging and the printer whirrs as it wipes a fresh white plate onto the hull. An artist enters the room and asks whether mice should be trapped and released or treated with poison – words fill the air pushing the other sounds away before floating quietly to the ground once more.

A snappy little salsa dances from the gallery through the clutter in the back corridor and in through the stockroom door. A woman’s voice with cavernous distortions makes a personal statement before falling into a brief but fizzing silence. Then the music returns, on a loop, the same snappy salsa. On the gallery wall in the shadows of the rear room a blue figure walks towards the camera holding a bright orange fruit. She turns, dances away and is replaced by a carnival of colours and the word ACTION spelled out in capital letters. On the wall nearby hangs a large painting of the facepaint of a clown next to a small painting of a parakeet.

The glass door from the street swings open and a man comes in attracted by the red silk banner and the barrow-load of earth. He enquires if the show is open and is told about the private view at 6:30. He mumbles his thanks and walks slowly down the line of fifteen broken objects fixed to the wall.

Later, while the glasses clink and kiss, the spot-lit air will be warm and bright and filled with a baggage of voices. The congregation by the gallery desk will be introducing their oldest friends and familiars and the pavement will be crowded in the gallery lights. The DLR will still be running but the night air will be turning cold. The yard behind APT will be dark and the birds will have fallen quiet. But the tide will be coming in. 

Thank you for all of this Liz.

Text by Patrick Semple