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Áine O'Brien , 22 April 2022
There is something seemingly implausible about Isabel Lima’s exhibition, Gresham Wooden Horse, currently showing at Newcastle Contemporary Gallery (17 Nov-10 December 2022). For the orientation of socially engaged art practice is mostly rooted/routed in and on place-based social relations, ‘participation’ and ‘process’ rather than via ‘object’ production in the context of a gallery aesthetic.
Having spent several years working alongside and with different communities in Gresham, Middlesborough (a series of neighbourhood projects navigated through collective making and public performance, workshops, relationship-building and urban planning), Isabel Liam has chosen to ‘translate’ this significant body of work into and beyond the context of the gallery. In so doing, she follows (though with different aims) international artists such as Suzanne Lacy, Pablo Helguera, and Tania Bruguera in moving the politics of social practice into the museum and gallery space via installation and public conversation – a trajectory strategically deployed through the lens of pedagogy.
Image credit: Isabel Lima, 2022
