In Base Camp Kate Beckingham revisits the physical activities she undertook while on a residency in Iceland in late 2013. Her difficulties and struggles when walking up a volcano crater, falling down into sulphurous clay and the disorientating experience of feeling both simultaneously high up on the earth and low beneath the massive scale of Iceland’s natural landscape are explored in present time using photographic images and sculptural forms. Gestures of falling, reaching and stepping up are implicitly referenced as a way of considering the time passed between her instinctive reactions in the Icelandic landscape and the act of making this work. By placing images of gestures alongside objects that have the appearance of being helpful but that are essentially useless, this exhibition brings into being Beckingham’s thought processes; compressing the distance between present art making and past accidents, time and space.
Beckingham’s practice contemplates how we experience in-between spaces from a perceptual body and in Base Camp she is interested in furthering this idea, considering the spaces situated between the viewer and the art object. When an art object is made, the artist has essentially created something out of nothing. By considering the time and space between the catalyst of work and final output, Beckingham is able to reference the intuitive processes and actions undertaken in the privacy of her studio. Therefore, this exhibition reveals not only Beckingham’s experiences in Iceland, but also what happened upon her return.
Photos: Docqment
