‘Back to Normalism’
Micklegate Social/Fossgate Social, York, 2023.
“Back to Normalism”, was a solo project that used a collection of works that span the last 14 years, to look at the idea that we have been in a state of repeatedly trying to get back to ‘a normal’ since the 2008 financial crash. More noticeable since the 2020 pandemic, it is about an age that has been uprooted and disjointed by a series of disasters and distorted by the consequences of trying to repeatedly return to a`before´ moment.
The exhibition was based around drawing, and a sculptural installation that was built around a spoken word/sonic performance collaboration between myself and Adam Denton.
‘A Radical Redemption’
Bloc Projects, Sheffield, 2022.
I initially cancelled this project on its initial exhibiting date in January, but thankfully Bloc Projects in Sheffield gave me a second chance to proceed, in May time.
A Radical Redemption was a solo exhibition with curatorial support from the Retro Bar at the End of the Universe.
A Radical Redemption was a solo project that developed ideas through the artist-led collective The Retro Bar at the End of the Universe, but it was my solo exhibition since the Covid 19, and was largely an introspective exhibition informed by social restrictions and limits to offline communication during this period.
I intended to bring visitors into a very introspective space to talk about ‘lived in’ vantages on notions of privilege, toxic masculinity, addiction, and criminality’ in the attempt to create constructive conversation about topics that can often be deeply divisive.
2020/21 – lockdown works
With limited technology I developed a series of ‘self-portrait’ video works, whilst finding a new lease of life in my drawing practice. The works more closely interrogated inner conflicts, inner criticism in the open, as a way of making an intervention into a divided, unforgivingly judgemental culture.
‘Wall, i’
‘School of Fine Art, History of art and Cultural Studies, University of Leeds, 2019’
‘Wall, i’, is a young male born into a post-industrial world that promises him he can be whatever he wants to be. An odyssey of emotional states, set to the backdrop of 1990s and 2000s culture, a soundtrack of pop songs narrates ‘Wall, i’ as the protagonist goes from early life mis-endeavours into a spiral of mental health crises, loneliness, addiction and hatred, and ultimately seeking forgiveness, within an eerily familiar 21st century context.
‘Wall, i’ was a highly collaborative project, involving film-makers, actors, musicians, and much pier support. It has been by far the most ambitious project I have ever instigated, and by far the most rewarding.
‘the Retro Bar at the End of the Universe’
Although currently inactive for the foreseeable, the Retro Bar at the End of the Universe (RBATEOTU) a unique approach to an artist collective, which at its heart was always concerned over what it means to manifest, and what nature that manifestation will take, in a time where to paraphrase Mark Fisher, the century we inhabit doesn’t seem to arrived yet.
Our most notable projects took place between 2017 and 2018)
The RBATEOTU formed with an unspoken intent of being spectral, amidst not only a context of political posturing and geographic limitations, but also remaining spectral to the command to self-actualise within art.
Our greatest expression of this came in 2017. In a disused pub lost in place, an old road turned into endless commuter flow, the RBATEOTU staged ‘Will the Last Person To Leave The 20th Century Please Turn Out The Lights?’.
The General Election of Governing Emotions (‘#GE18’) was the beginning on two projects that, perhaps in vain, were attempts to manifest in our own true nature, as if immune from the accumulated historical bruises that inform the present.
Instigated by a smaller project based on the ‘what if’ of a ‘Mental Health Strike’, #GE18 aimed to be somewhere between fictional and actual. At its core it was trying to circumvent the deep divisions fragmenting our shared experiences of contemporary life, in order to ask people how they would ideally like to feel and how they would like their society to feel. The chosen method of voting tried to take this beyond the realm of mere day dreams and place it in the environment of an actual voting station, which, for the majority of us, is the only place we get to participate (even if tentatively) in democracy.
A sum of many parts, including, a video channel (British Psyche) a call out for cassette tapes for election day/songs that give us a fighting spirit of carry on (‘Songs for our Punch-drunk idealism), #GE18 ultimately led the ‘The Public Secret’, an even larger interactive project embarked upon by the collective. The Public Secret was motivated by a sense that there was a necessity in times that seem so socially fragmented and isolating, to locate what we believed were hidden shared experiences in relation to contemporary life, such as shame, guilt, loneliness and especially anxiety and depression.
This collaboration with collective member Ben Parker was a spoken word soundscape that mimicked the 1999 Baz Luhrmann ‘Everybody’s got to wear sunscreen’ track.
‘Fighting For Crumbs (Art in the shadow of neoliberal Britain)’
Gage Gallery, Sheffield, ‘The Redshed’, Wakefield and the ‘Black-E’, Liverpool.
Fighting For Crumbs was a group project that I was central in organising. The aim was to explore the structure of feeling within society during the ‘austerity’ of the 2010s. The exhibition focussed on the role of the artist within society, and the pressures that can influence the modes of artistic expression.
The project was situated between Gage gallery in Sheffield and ‘The Redshed’ (Wakefield Labour Club). Our aim was to create a series of events that highlighted our collective concerns whilst marking the 50th anniversary of ‘The Redshed’. We were then invited to bring our project to ‘The World Transformed’ an event organised by the political organisation Momentum, at the Black-e in Liverpool.
Myself, fellow artists John Wilkinson, Rebekah Whitlam, Corrine Deakin and poet Jonathan Butcher, worked with photography and film-maker Connor Matheson (Dead Idea films) to develop a exhibition and film documenting not only the impacts of austerity, but the impact of austerity on the sense of what is possible, especially creatively. The Writer JD Taylor gave a talk at the Wakefield event, which he wrote about here:
The working class revolts
Stories From Forgotten Space (2013 – 2017)
Stories From Forgotten Space (later stories from Time-locked space) is a project that although beginning as a more direct psychogeographical exercise, also became closely related to ‘the Retro Bar at the End of the Universe’ and it’s the collectives preoccupation with hauntology; using pale to investigate a time that doesn’t seem like time at all; a ‘forever-afterwards’ moment, haunted by political and personal lost futures. Although an indefinitely ongoing project, it was a project I had to partially sideline because I found the specific psychogeographic skills I developed overly self-reflective, and often unhealthy practices to upkeep.
The work I undertook, often with others, can be found in book form both here https://www.waterstones.com/book/the-retro-bar-at-the-end-of-the-universe/john-ledger/john-wright/9781527206014 and here https://www.blurb.co.uk/b/6306069-stories-from-forgotten-space.
‘An Unofficial Alumni’ (2013)
Northern Young Artists, Redbrook Business Park.
This was one of my first attempts to co-curate a show. It was a simple concept:
An Unofficial Alumni was one of my first attempts to co-curate a large exhibition of over 10 artists, including myself. The exhibition was based around artists continuing their practice after completing their degrees at the local university Campus. The event was hosted by the artist-led collective Northern Young Artists an organisation set up to help support practicing artists in the north of England.
Fiona Halliday, of the collective said that ‘the artist-curators have a conviction that individual efforts, brought together, show that a strong body of intelligent and challenging work has been created by artists who studied or taught within a building situated in the very centre of Barnsley. They are committed to celebrating this in the town where it was cultivated. Barnsley is a northern English town that has often been overlooked as an area for generating art/artists; any attempt to help shift this status is important to further development of the town’s culture ‘(Alternative Barnsley, 2013).
https://johnledger1984.wordpress.com/2013/09/25/upcoming-exhibition-an-unofficial-alumni/
John B Ledger 