Art, like real estate, is often concerned with location. The provenance of an ancient vase, the nationality of an artist and the site of an exhibition all have a bearing on a given work - or at least our perception of it. But some art takes location itself as a subject, and questions the nature of here, there and the strange territories in between. For the exhibition Locale: British Artists in Residence, opening this Saturday at 1a Space in Cattle Depot Artist Village, six visiting artists aim to explore these themes in new ways. Emma Rushton and Derek Tyman, a couple from Manchester known for their collaborative partnership, have often worked with space and place, and helped to orchestrate this special programme. Last spring, they were 1a Space's first resident artists when they created Turf: Garden in To Kwa Wan, a site-specific project for which they invited locals from the neighbourhood around Cattle Depot to contribute plants to a collaborative sculpture. After some positive responses, 1a Space wanted Rushton and Tyman to return, but they wanted to bring along another four artists from their extended network in Britain. Rushton says the turf project was about 'addressing the local community', whereas Locale deals with the idea of the local in a different way. 'The artists draw on their own environment, and the way they understand the local, which is today very global,' she says. This local/global overlap appears explicitly in much of the work, such as Melanie Jackson's Root Entry. Jackson, whose multi-channel video Made in China screened at Videotage in 2005, took an image of a woman planting a seed from the UN website, and wanted to see how it would 'grow' if she invited others to animate her drawings for a commission of GBP200 (HK$3,200). Companies from around the world quickly responded, and the piece is composed of their results. 'I was interested in the idea of outsourcing, and what happens if an artist outsources an idea,' says Jackson. 'So many of the artifacts and products we live with are made in places we've never been to.' Jackson is also commissioning local printers to create a poster for every place where the piece is shown, to continue this international growth of her concept in non-virtual space. Artist and gallery director Kwong Lee also deals with this paradox of foreign/domestic with his piece Mr Francis, Mrs Lee and Me, a two-channel video featuring a British man who has lived in Hong Kong for 18 years, and a Hong Kong woman who has lived in the Britain for 30. Hong Kong-born Lee, who moved to Britain as a child, wanted to examine 'people who as adults have made their lives away from their places of birth'. Questions of international identity and commerce are muted in the works of Becky Shaw and Paul Rooney, who approach space and place through the lens of everyday life and detached fantasy. Shaw's Killing Time uses text and slides to examine the belongings of a woman who has recently died, while Rooney's Dust (Room 302) is a sound/image piece centred on a hotel room in Liverpool. His works 'use specific places or localities as their starting points', from a field in West Yorkshire to an abandoned circus school in Cuba. Although they take the view- point of the people who use the spaces every day (hotel maids, for example, in Dust), his pieces are also 'historical, poetic or imaginative encounters with place'. Ironically, most of the works are being altered in some way to fit their new surroundings. However, Rushton and Tyman are creating a site-specific piece: a set of entry gates, inspired by the tacky facades now seen on many old Manchester council houses. Constructed of local materials such as white plastic pipes and fittings, but with aspirations toward grandeur, the gates will call attention to their own temporary artificiality. They'll also be plastered with posters of recent exhibits of Chinese art across Britain, to reference the cross-flow of culture and commerce today and, more indirectly, in the past. Locale opens after a handover-related show, but the artists don't feel any special resonance with the event. As Cornelia Erdmann, director of 1a Space, says: 'My interpretation is that it gives a sign that this is normal now - back to normal life. British and Chinese artists work next to one other, and there's no statement.' The participants of Locale hope to bring Hong Kong artists to a reciprocal show in Manchester next year. Despite difficulties with funding, all agree on the value of such residencies and exchanges. Erdmann says Hong Kong should have more residency opportunities, and that 'art made for the site, presented in relation to or discussion with the space' could be exciting. Locale - British Artists in Residence, 1a Space, Cattle Depot Artist Village, Aug 11-Sept 2, Tue-Sun, 2pm-8pm (closed Mon and public holidays)
