A former Westminster student and
emerging artist's attempt to fly a purpose-built model
airplane up to 2,700 feet has suffered a set back.
But the artist Mark Clews remains undaunted saying: "It was
spectacular, everything I hoped it would be, apart from actually
flying".
The event on a rainy Surrey airstrip was part of an
innovative enterprise backed by the University of Westminster and
London Gallery West to develop, as well as support talented alumni
artists.
The exhibition LEARN TO FLY, by Mark Clews, featured
a precise full-scale version of the balsa wood rubber band
powered airplane of his childhood.
Fifty metres of rubber was wound up and let go at Dunsfold
Aerodrome in Surrey on a runway over 6,000 feet long. Like model
planes, this art work can be flat-packed and reassembled anywhere
in under an hour, ready for flight.
Says London Gallery West curator, Michael Maziere: "This
exhibition of sculpture, performance, video, photography and
painting was to showcase the plane alongside documentation of
the attempted flight and a specially commissioned mock-heroic
portrait of Clews flying the plane".
The artist said the piece has a wing span of 20 feet and
he's been working on it for the last 6 months, supported by
university staff and technicians.
"It deals with escapism, adventure and the inevitable failure of
childhood fantasy", added Mark.
A ground crew spent around ten minutes winding up the
rubber as the artist prepared for flight in the cockpit.
Maziere comments: "LEARN TO FLY makes reference to Panamerenkos
strange imaginary vehicles but its sensibility remains very
English.
Reminiscent of Stuart Brisleys arduous performances it is
effectively a stoic project, mastering passions and emotions to
create an empirical materialisation of our desire for flight. In
his previous trilogy The Great Escape (2003/2004), Clews attempted
to sail a paper boat, and fly a paper plane and helicopter".
He adds: "These works reveal the importance of failure as an
essential process of development - only by what has not worked do
we learn to create what does. For his Degree Show (2004) Clews dug
a full size POW WW2 tunnel in the middle of
his studio in the University in an attempt to escape from the
institution.
Showing persistence in the face of inevitability, these futile
gestures take the raw desires of our childhood fantasies to their
logical conclusion. Rather than signalling defeat, the ultimate
failure of the project gives our imagination
the currency of reality".
"In LEARN TO FLY", he concludes, "we may not take off but
we feel the desire to fly. The work is an impossible celebration of
the mechanical age, a gesture that ignores the real for the benefit
of an unfettered imagination".
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Events
Private View Thursday 9 November 2006, 18.00 to 20.30 at London
Gallery West
Flight Sunday 22nd October 2006, 12 noon (weather conditions
permitting)
Dunsfold Aerodrome
Godalming
Surrey
www.dunsfoldpark.co.uk/
Gallery Talk
Wednesday 22 November 2006 at 15.00
at London Gallery West
Mark Clews in conversation with artist Keith Wilson
_______________________________________________________________
London Gallery West
University of Westminster
Watford Rd
Harrow
Middlesex HA1 3TP
Tel 44(0)20 79115000 ext. 4771
m.maziere@wmin.ac.uk
HYPERLINK http//www.wmin.ac.uk/mad/ www.wmin.ac.uk/mad/
Opening Times
Daily 9.00 17.00
Press images available on request.
Please contact HYPERLINK mailtom.maziere@wmin.ac.uk
m.maziere@wmin.ac.uk
or
phone 07771 963064