Jimmy Cauty’s “Aftermath Dislocation Principle"

A view through one of the peep holes

Today is the final day that you can get to see Jimmy Cauty’s “Aftermath Dislocation Principle” at the Chemic Tavern in Leeds.

'Aftermath Dislocation Principle' is described thus…”Housed in a 40 ft shipping container, The Aftermath Dislocation Principle (ADP) is a monumental post-riot landscape in miniature. This dystopian model village is a charred landscape of broken windows, flashing strobes, and collapsing buildings where only the police and media teams remain in an otherwise deserted, wrecked and dislocated land – all in 1:87 scale and viewed through peepholes in the side of the container”.

If you haven’t been to see it do go along tonight. The 40-foot spray-painted container is parked in the pub car park at the back and you look at the installation through peep-holes that are put in at regular intervals around the container.

I have posted before on the relevance of making models in relation to the concept of drawing, see but this particular piece opens out a host of other issues not least  in relation to its location in the Leeds suburbs, rather than in the grounds of an art institution.There is a long and particular history of making illusions that can only be seen through peepholes, such as Van Hoogstraten the 17^th century Dutch painter who used his knowledge of anamorphic perspectives to construct "peepshows" or "perspective boxes", which like Cauty’s “Aftermath Dislocation Principle” were viewed through peepholes in the sides of the box like container. I will be posting something on these at some point in the future, as they are an important aspect of the history of uses of illusion in art. 

The installation with the top removed

The address is:

The Chemic Tavern

9 Johnston Street

Leeds

LS6 2NG

Travel from Leeds centre out past the university until you get to the Hyde Park pub. Turn right down Woodhouse Street and go straight down the hill, the Chemic is on the left just before Woodhouse Street elbows right.

The Jacqueline and Jonathan Geststner collection of paper peepshows has just been donated to the V&A museum, this is a huge collection, beginning in the 1820s with Austrian and German peepshows, it mainly covers landscapes and historical events, not perhaps unlike Cauty’s giant version, which relies like all these objects on the special feeling we have when peeping into a closed off world. This feeling is something very special to us and may even go back to our time of being hunter-gatherers, time spent silently peeking out between the leaves of a densely foliaged bush or through a chink in a pile of rocks, there is power in being the unseen observer, especially when you are the hunter and not the hunted.

See also:

Drawing into installation

Cinematic drawing (reflects on drawing and the camera obscura)

Drawing devices

Making models and drawing

Drawing and politics