Below are summaries of eight other Wrights & Sites projects.
Images: Stephen Hodge, Simon Persighetti, Piers Rawson.
4 x 4 screens
Multiple UK locations, published 2013.
Commissioned by the Live Art Development Agency, PAL-DVD (285 minutes, ISBN-13: 9780957393899).
4 x 4 Screens is a series of four evolving walking-video experiments (2005-2007) exploring time, distance and the framing of space and place. Each 60-90 minute video uses a split-screen format to capture different strategies for spatial reconnaissance employed by the four members of Wrights & Sites as they drift a series of parallel landscapes. Sometimes walking with guest camera-operators, sometimes carrying the cameras themselves; sometimes in different locations, sometimes together within one landscape; sometimes recorded simultaneously, sometimes one after the other… each exhibits playful tensions between walkers (who decide where and how to go) and camera operators (who decide what to focus on), as well as chance connections and collisions between each of the 4 screens.
Short sequences from each of the '4 Screens' videos (without sound)
North South, East, West
Northlands Park Neighbourhood, Basildon, 2007.
Commissioned as part of Art U Need - An Outdoor Revolution, a programme of new work for neglected open spaces in Thames Gateway South Essex, led by artist Bob and Roberta Smith.
Starting at 'Nowhere' on the Northlands Park Neighbourhood, each of the four members of Wrights & Sites led an expedition with a group of Basildon residents in search of one point of the compass. Each group of explorers used its compass point as a 'frame' for the walk - renaming locations and constructing new signposts on route - finishing by planting a new polar flag after 90 minutes. In the subsequent workshop, the map of Northlands Park Neighbourhood was redrawn with reference to things encountered in, and new names given to, parts of the landscape.
Exeter Everyday
Exeter, 2006.
Completely unique, with over one hundred thousand participants, hundreds of millions of pounds of scenery and landscape, extraordinary logistical resources and deep improvisational skills, Exeter Everyday was the biggest celebration in the city's history and perhaps will become a model for similar festivals throughout the world.
Most festivals emphasise the unusual and the extraordinary. Very rarely is there an opportunity to acknowledge the everyday. Exeter Everyday filled that gap with a week of day-long festivals celebrating different aspects of everyday life in Exeter. Anyone in the city could take part. It was not necessary to do anything special. Simply to take notice of the everyday, guided by or ignoring the theme of the day.
Blue Boy Walks
Exeter, 2004.
Commissioned for Homeland by Spacex Gallery and Relational Projects.
Blue Boy Walks was a series of five walks, each starting or ending at Exeter's Blue Boy statue:
•The Gift (Simon Persighetti). The displaced, shrapnel-scarred Blue Boy stands alone. To this orphan landmark for shoppers, we came bearing carrier bags of gifts, the colour of the sky;
•Suburban Homesick Blues (Cathy Turner). Caught between two versions of middle England, Exeter and Winchester, a blue girl dreamt of a blue boy and vice versa;
•Town Planning Consultant to the Corporation (Stephen Hodge). An audio walk on the anniversary of Exeter’s Blitz (1.36-2.50am, 4 May), inspired by a found, personal account of the post-war rebuild by an Exeter resident;
•Hat and Book (Phil Smith). Law courts on a volcano, concrete tunnels through abstract Princesshay: Middle Exeter's psychogeography and beyond... Walkers were asked to come dressed in blue and with plenty of time;
•You Are Here (Wrights & Sites). A presentation at Exeter Phoenix, followed by a walk to pay homage to the Blue Boy.
Homeland was a month-long project presenting artists’ work in everyday locations in the city centre of Exeter. This series of contemporary art exhibitions, interventions, performances and events essentially posed the question 'What is Middle England?'. It also featured work by Tariq Alvi, Ansuman Biswas, Jem Finer, Guillermo Gómez-Peña, Misha Myers and Grayson Perry.
Lost Tours
Exeter and Welcombe Barton, 2003.
Funded by Arts Council England.
Lost Tours 1 comprised a fortnight of experimental walking, mis-guiding and exploration in two phases. A series of R&D 'drifts' for company members and invited guests, entitled Tops and Bottoms, Allotment Drift, The Lost Mis-Guide, Gendered Drift, The Space Between, Outward Bound, Round About, Angel Dérive, Egypt Drift and Peripheral Vision Drift. It raised a number of important questions that may feed into future work concerning: male and female experiences of space, the role of the Mis-Guide in the flow of the city, the place for performance and visual art in the work of Wrights & Sites.
Lost Tours 2 was made for the Shed Summit, a hybrid mix of conference and mini-festival around the subject of sheds and similar dwellings, held at Welcombe Barton in North Devon. On the first day, we enacted a durational performance comprising: shed construction, destruction and reconstruction; a scarecrow that spoke fragments of Kurt Schwitters text; photo and object montage; writing with potted plants; a series of short repetitive performances related to autobiographical experiences in and of sheds. On the second day, we led a three-hour pilgrimage-cum-mis-guided tour, carrying a shed down to the sea before launching it onto the water.
Stack
Exeter Central Library, 2003.
Commissioned for tEXt Festival.
In 2003, we were granted entrance to the subterranean world of the Exeter Central Library stack. The public result of this exploration was a piece of textual archaeology, the theme of which was 'excavation of the word'. Stack comprised a mis-guided tour for small groups of people (involving the excavation of books to the main library floor), a video of journeys through the stack and a sound installation.
tEXt & the city
Princesshay, Exeter, 2002.
Commissioned for tEXt Festival.
A paving stone is a page or a stage, but it is also a public space and a piece of real estate. It is space for an intervention by the participant as collaborator. We invited Saturday shoppers to join us in writing messages from Exeter to friends and relatives elsewhere. The messages were chalked upon the paving stones of Princesshay pedestrian precinct.
The Dig
Exeter Phoenix, 2000.
Commissioned by South West Arts to mark to launch of the Year Of The Artist.
The Dig took as its inspiration the current and former uses of Exeter Phoenix, and the context of the Year Of The Artist. The resulting performance was both site-specific, and suggestive of the artist's process. It took the form of seven hours worth of excavations and interventions in and around the building.
