Byte of a Flood (From The Northern Echo)

Byte of a Flood

12:59pm Thursday 8th July 2010 in Features

Four tonnes of new technology has been turned into an art installation. Steve Pratt talks to artist Susan Stockwell.

"When you first saw it, did it look like it was pouring down?” asks artist Susan Stockwell. Days before the opening of her new installation, Flood, at York St Mary’s in Castlegate, she’s canvassing opinion on the piece which “floods” the nave of the deconsecrated church with a mass of metal and wire.

The piece is made of four tonnes of computer power supplies, sourced from Secure IT Recycling (SITR) in Cheshire, where they’ll be returned to be recycled after the piece is removed at the end of October.

Flood is a remarkable work by an artist who employs everyday items to create works of art – Memory Stack in Taiwain used circuit boards, Paper Tiger in London was a large paper dress and Tea World in the US featured a map of the world painted with tea on teabag paper.

A recent commission for London’s Victoria and Albert Museum ,called Chinese Dreams, used recycled Chinese money notes, cotton thread and red ribbon to make a quilt for an exhibition. Flood is the fifth installation commissioned by York Museums Trust, funded by the Arts Council. “It was just come and look at the space and your response to it, and come up with some ideas,”

she says of the project.

“I had quite a few ideas and settled on this one because it was unlike anything done here before. My other ideas were more like hanging things or something in the middle of the church which seemed much more like other things that had been done before.

“I thought this also used the height and the space. At one point I was going to bring the computer components out into the nave but it didn’t really work. It looked like they were coming up rather than coming down.”

Flood, which is eight metres high, is probably the biggest thing she’s done. The space in which she was working both excited and inspired her.

“I was very drawn to that end of the church with the window, the altar piece end, and had the idea of doing a stack, this kind of flood. I thought also the computer components were very good because they are redundant as well as the church. They’re about communication really, a different kind of modern-day communication as opposed to the kind of communication the church would have been used for.

“This idea works on so many levels. I’ve worked with these components before. I hadn’t done anything as big as this with them, but knew how to work with them and had an idea of what was possible, which is important when you’re working on a big scale.”

A red screen has been erected behind the tower, picking out the colour from the stained glass window.

Stockwell is pleased with the way the components go with the church’s stone blocks. “It’s amazing when you put it with the stone how ancient it looks, how archaeological. You get these crossovers, which is quite nice. This is something very contemporary in an ancient space. I like bringing the new into an old space, of mixing the old and the new, the contemporary and the ancient.”

The installation took three weeks to construct. She worked with a structural engineer, who made an armature as a base for the mass of computer components. “I had help from assistants because six tonnes of material were heavy, dirty and awkward so I needed the physical help. It was pretty tough going up and down the scaffolding,” she says.

She’s keen to hear other people’s reactions to the piece, and has yet to formulate her own opinions of how well it works.

“It’s quite a raw piece, a sort of uncomfortable piece. A lot of my pieces are very beautiful so it’s new territory for me.

It’s good to go outside your comfort zone as an artist, and this has pushed me to do something different. You end up repeating yourself if you’re not careful. I feel doing this has opened up new doors to me.”

She’s also pleased that visitors will be able to see a stop frame animation film of the installation process. Cameras took shots of the work every minute which has been edited down to a five minute film.

“It’s nice to have that element of the work recorded properly because that is as much a part of it. I think people will be as interested in it as much as the actual piece.”

■ There’s a chance to meet Susan Stockwell in an Artist Talks session on October 20 at 12.30pm. And on August 30 children’s art workshops will offer youngsters the chance to have a go at making recycled art, inspired by the new installation.

■ Flood is at York St Mary’s, Castlegate, until October 31. Open daily 10am-4pm, free admission.

For further information phone 01904-687687 or visit yorkstmarys.org.uk