Rebecca Locke

Charting the Invisible
Rebecca Locke (New York) and Sayed Hasan (Lincoln)

up to where I am (2017)
Rebecca Locke and Sayed Hasan explore the theme ‘Charting the Invisible’ by reflecting on places they have lived. Having compiled a list that charts the towns and cities they have resided throughout their lives, they allude to the often hard-to-predict routes one takes in life. For both UK-born artists, the works are biographical and couched in wider discussions of home and migration, ties to elsewhere and circumstance.

Using the immediacy of their present home spaces as a canvas to display their journeys, the works stare out at the routes which have led them to the present moment and ponder the future. The works contain the presence of a window (onscreen or off), and familiar objects including furniture and family heirlooms, often brought from place to place, allude to a sense of home.

Referencing the subculture of ‘cosplay’ and cultural references established through contemporary media, the series we are paper, we are celluloid, we are digital explores the influence of media and technology in defining our identity. The series asks if the mythological stories of popular culture, crafted through technology and disseminated through the media, contribute to shaping our sense of self; or does the flow of information insulate us from the challenges of our era, the real stories.

This self-portrait based series is characteristic of the artist’s earlier work, Brooklyn / Bognor. The images were staged on New York City streets in locations reminiscent of cinematic scenes, echoing the idea of identity, in that this city, the city of New York, is identified and defined globally through film.

The images reference Dutch and Flemish painting of the European Renaissance (Pieter Bruegel the Elder, Pieter Bruegel the Younger) whose genre painting depicts complex scenes, suggesting to the viewer a narrative that is mid-action. In contrast however, to the everyday, once-familiar representations of genre painting, this new series depicts fantastical occurrences or scenarios.

In this performance-based series the artist cloaked herself in the iconic and distinctive costume of Star Wars heroine Princess Leia, to walk the streets of Manhattan and engage with the city.

this is worth fighting for
NYC soil, water, bucket, spade, leaves (2015)

The site-specific installation made for the Graft Art exhibition apARTment #2 uses soil as its primary material, and in so doing explores its significance. We imagine soil as limitless, as plentiful as grains of sand on the beach, yet it is finite and vital. Consistent with the artist's practice, the construction of the site-specific workincluded an element of performance, or action. Oglala poet Kim Snyder planted 'flags' in the installation's castles -- flags made from leaves. Snyder's recently published poem Who is Tiger Lily? laments the loss of the land, and the displacement of people.

Furthermore, the title of the installation this is worth fighting for refers to the defensive purpose of castles and fortresses, but made from earth and leaves, and constructed in a back garden, open to the elements, the sun and the rain, the work is fleeting, vulnerable and changeable in nature. In this context it references the ever-changing, uncertain and delicate eco-system of the world in which we live.

Reading list:

Graft Art, The Curator, 2015
Who is Tiger Lily? Kim Snyder, Four Winds Magazine, 2015

Gold junk pt. 1
Site-specific installation
Objet d’art: trash, 23ct gold (2011)

Gold junk pt. 2
HD Video, colour, sound, music, 4.58 min (2011)

The themes of redemption and the ascription of value, core to the series Brooklyn / Bognor, are further explored in Gold junk. Through Brooklyn / Bognor the artist contemplated how the avant-garde took something of
little value—discarded 1980s style—and, redeeming its value, influenced contemporary style and culture.

In 2010, the artist began making Gold junk, gilding pieces of rubbish—an old banana, the sole of an old shoe—transforming them into sought-after artifacts
and giving them value. Broken cuttlefish washed up on Bognor beach during a storm were given new life by the artist. In June 2010, one hundred of these unique, signed pieces were placed in slot machines throughout the amusement arcade on Bognor Pier. The arcade became a gallery, the amusement machines became display cases, the Gold junk—the objet d’art—became prizes won by holiday-makers who visited the arcade during a busy seaside weekend. This site-specific installation, Gold junk pt. 1, was part of the Urban Encounters Festival 2010, a partnership with Goldsmiths and Tate Britain.

As the prizes were won and taken away, the installation Gold junk pt. 1 dispersed, so the artist created Gold junk pt. 2 , a video and sound piece. Gold junk pt. 2 represents not only the installation but the rhythm and poetry of the seaside, —its sound and its music. The artist’s composition Fugue in Sea, made using sound recordings of the sea and the arcade is central to the work.

Brooklyn / Bognor pt.1
The themes of image and identity, the power of fashion, the myth of ‘self’, ‘place’ and one’s relationship to it, thread through this series by Rebecca Locke. Brooklyn / Bognor captures the artist’s experience of New York City in contrast to her roots by the English seaside. Her return to Bognor signifies a very different life, and an acute awareness of both unwritten social rules and the promise of ‘the city.’ In Brooklyn the artist's experiences included singing in Sufjan Stevens’ band ‘Michigan Militia’, as a drummer in a Puerto Rican country music band and participant of the ‘electroclash’ fringe culture. Whether using photography, mixed media, creative writing or performance, Locke’s practice creates new narratives, often constructed as large scale, hyper-real compositions, saturated with colour. This series of twelve staged photographs utilises montage, performance and lens-based media, long exposures and sunshine, combined with digital layering to construct the narrative. The artist herself features in the images, wearing her Brooklyn clothes—her uniform of freedom—now worn in a very different context, the seaside town of Bognor. The images depict the charm and beauty of the English seaside, but hint at the uncanny, something of Brooklyn echoed in Bognor.

Wearing these clothes and making these images in Bognor became a performance, an intervention, an experience in overcoming an emotional resistance against standing out in the small town and a need to conform. Through the rich colours of these constructed scenes, the artist creates a fiction, or 'narrative of place'. Each image is a short story. A move to the city traditionally allows for the creation of a new narrative, a new self. Is it equally possible to reverse this, to create a new narrative of place? In these images, the photograph is an argument and Bognor is redefined, and the myth of place is challenged.

The myth of place and the power of story is further explored through:
Brooklyn / Bognor pt. 2

Brooklyn / Bognor pt. 2
New York City—place of discovery and a city of stories. In this city the artist was introduced to the power of story— the short stories of Flannery O’Connor, of Thomas Hardy. The images of Brooklyn / Bognor are a visual short story…a new narrative, a sense of possibility. Like imagery, words create expectation and perception.

This work has utilized an city guidebook, the city of that time and place, frozen and defined by words. Experience of the city, however overwrites expectations—bringing new stories, possibilities and a new perception. These new words and new associations of space override old definitions. (This work includes eight new short stories of New York City, creating a new myth of place, including ‘My American Father’).

Ninety-Four Miles
Collage, digital c-prints, hahnemühle paper (2014)

Ninety-four miles is the shortest distance between Cuba and the United States, a stretch of sea, across the Straits of Florida separating two very different places and their dichotomous political ideologies. The aerial photographs plot this distance, effortlessly crossed by air, yet a challenge to traverse during the embargo. The azure blue of the Caribbean Sea obscures the dangers such a crossing entails.

The images are divided in triptych form, left to right from Havana to the edges of Florida, with further pictures defining the approach to Miami, the first major metropolis and cultural hub on US soil. Top to bottom the artist marks the separation of culture with a wallpaper depicting cars photographed on Havana streets juxtaposed with cars parked on the streets of Miami. The work explores the myth of place, the lure and perception of culture or material possessions, and the division of political ideas and principals.

Lugares que fui
HD Video, colour, sound, 6 min (2012)

Audio, 29 mins (2012)

Lugares qui fui is a video piece fused with the artist’s sound piece Movement in Empty Streets, which is paired with the audio recording Emmanuel’s Car—together they comprise a complete work. The narrated audio of Emmanuel’s Car, central to the collective piece, is a story of life, of hope, of cars and driving, of a journey made. The narrator, who as a boy lived on the streets of Lima, tells his story; as taxi driver he becomes guide to the city of his former experience. His off-screen presence is felt throughout the video Lugares que fui, which loosely translated means ‘everywhere I’ve ever been’. The narrative weaves themes of redemption, of vibrancy emerging from rubbish—from nothing; the images reference the story, frequently shot from a child’s sight line. The short video Lugares que fui is a triptych of colour, woven from lo-fi footage made by the artist in and around Lima, Peru. The film collects scenes snatched from the mundane, from movement, and from a journey. Lugares que fui is a quilt of light, colour, and traffic—of the everyday, interwoven with music—the artist’s composition Movement in Empty Streets which re-uses sampled sounds of the city. The film builds a transient beauty from wasted video and forgotten moments, echoing the narrative, and evoking the theme of redemption from the artist’s recent series Gold junk.

and we all came in together
Immersive microscope-based installation (2013)
Microtext-printed slides, microscope, text, HD video, projection, found images

The immersive installation and we all came in together utilizes new digital media, analogue technologies, video, objects, found images and discovered stories to reflect New Yorkers’ ongoing relationship with the city, exploring celebration as memory and its meaning defined through the interaction of people. With the artist’s appropriation of microtext printing (more commonly seen as a security feature on twenty dollar bills), the core component is a
microscope-based installation with twelve microtext stories and projections, as the work vies between scale and perspective through which participants discover miniscule elements.

The piece is inspired by memories collected from New Yorkers who have known the city for five decades or more, memories then transformed by the artist into twelve New York City stories. These include traveling from New York for The March on Washington, the spontaneous Times Square celebration on VE day as news travelled across Manhattan that war in Europe was over, of going AWOL to visit loved ones in Brooklyn, the accolade of an ‘untouchable’, and the story of an old lady forever mistaken for ‘Katherine Hepburn on a bike’. Through these memories the work explores themes of migration, celebrity, tradition, the communal element of this city, and the city as a place of sanctuary.

This work was commissioned by the New York City-based Center for Faith & Work. At the premier of the new work, visitors were invited to search for micro-stories on the gallery walls, and a limited edition of microscope slides signed by the artist and containing one of twelve stories, were given away.