Artist talk with Leo Fitzmaurice featuring Tim Machin

Curated by Marie-Anne McQuay

// Date: Monday February 19th, 2007

// Time: 20:00

// in English language

// DETOURIST Poster publication on display 19 -21 Feb 2007

// Opening Times: 16:00 – 19:00

DETOURIST is a new commission by Leo Fitzmaurice. The artist has undertaken a series of public realm interventions whilst visiting London, Liverpool, Shanghai, Stavanger, Berlin and Zurich in 2006. Applying the techniques of appropriation and reduction familiar to us from his sculptural works, Fitzmaurice has subtly altered urban environments, adapting detritus already present or heightening existing forms through the placing of handcrafted structures that started life as commercial packaging. Created when inspiration and opportunity permitted, the works respond to generic street culture, countering the visual chatter of daily life by obscuring logos, brands and other textual and pictorial signs. These subtle aesthetic interventions claim attention via the peripheral vision, rather than head on and were thus never signposted. Ephemeral in their nature and delinquent in spirit, they lasted only hours or minutes before being absorbed back into the street; they are intended as the antithesis of made-to-order, site specific, biennial-style art that has become so prevalent over the last ten years. The interventions have since been documented in a limited edition poster publication, the only tangible outcome of DETOURIST.The poster also features a specially commissioned text by Tim Machin; Machin‚s text is not a description of the processes of the commission but a parallel work, a fictional journey that borrows from literary sources and imagined fleeting glances of the temporary art works. The poster publication will be hosted and distributed by MOT and partner venues in cities where works have taken place throughout February and March 2007, completing the cycle of the project.

DETOURIST is hosted by MOT International, London; K3, Zurich; Rogaland Kunstsenter, Stavanger; The Royal Standard, Liverpool; General Public, Berlin; Island6 Art Center, Shanghai and ChinaVisual.com.

Biographies

Leo Fitzmaurice displaces the familiar, creating a world in which form triumphs over the noise of information embodied in commercial design, a noise that perpetually instructs us to buy, consume or simply acknowledge brands and slogans. Through handcrafted adaptations and arrangements that remove or obscure visual and textual signs, Fitzmaurice transforms cigarette packets into Minimalist sculptures and flyers into ornate floor works; through his playful methodologies, generic objects become singular forms. The artist has operated out of Liverpool for the last 15 years and recent

exhibitions include Neat Stuff, firstsite 2005 (solo show), Paperworld, Transition 2006 (group show) and Walk On, Shanghai Biennale 2006. With Neville Gabie, he is co-curator of FURTHER UP IN THE AIR (2001-4) and is currently curating Stuff Happens for Angel Row Gallery as part of their Parade series and working on a solo project with Yorkshire Sculpture Park.

Tim Machin finds the monumental in the miniature and the epic in the everyday. Through subtly adapting carefully chosen objects, mountain ranges emerge from newspaper graphs and snow storms from plastic bags. Materials are transformed but at the same time maintain their integral ordinariness; poetry is always undercut by Machin‚s wry humour. Since graduating from Ruskin in 1999, Machin has exhibited widely, including a solo show at LOT, Bristol 2005 and group show The Owl of Minera at fa projects, London 2005. Winner of Emergency2, the Aspex Open, his specially commissioned solo show opens in their newly renovated gallery summer 2007. Based in Manchester, he has written on the work of James Ireland and guest edited Leisure Centre.

Marie-Anne McQuay is a freelance curator formerly based in Liverpool at FACT (Foundation for Art & Creative Technology) where she developed commissions with Nick Crowe, Kristin Lucas, Foreign Investment and Dias & Riedweg. Her research areas include the role of the amateur in contemporary art and collaboration as a mode of practice. She has written on the work of Craig Mulholland and Ian Forsyth & Jane Pollard and most recently edited a publication on the work of Jennifer & Kevin McCoy for BFI Southbank (Spring 2007). In January 2007 she joins Spike Island in Bristol as Programmer of Residencies and Associates.