IN THE SAME PLACE - Gustavo S Ferro
IN THE SAME PLACE
By Gustavo S Ferro
The first time I travelled by myself to another Country was in 2010 to do a residency in Spain. I remember waking up after hanging out with my new flatmate and realising that I was in another place, listening people speaking other languages through the window of the bedroom. I think that since I made this first residency, I started a new process in my artistic practice, which was to walk without plans, just going to bend the corners and explore the surfaces of the city. I started to do interventions using found barriers on the streets, and experimenting the idea of ephemeral sculpture and collaborative situations with other people.
From Spain I went for the first time to the UK to stay one month with my brother who was living in London at the moment. It blew my mind being there in such a fast-paced city with all its cultural diversity and so many things happening. I went to see the installation The Coral Reef by Mike Nelson, which was on display at Tate Britain and I had the most intense experience in art. The installation was a space that operated like a maze with a sequence of rooms. Each room was a different environment composed by specific characteristics: a garage, a shop, a waiting room, corridors and places that I couldn’t draw any parallels with anywhere else. When I opened one of the doors and I saw another person walking in the installation, for a moment I forgot where I was. I didn’t know anymore if I was invading a place or if the other was playing a role in the installation. It was like getting inside a scene in a movie, but where could I find the exit?
I started to understand this feeling of misplacement as taking part in an important process of self-acknowledgement. Adapting to another culture and being in a place that doesn’t belong to you, allow us to interpret the reality through different perspectives. I think that art is the capacity of playing with these new possibilities, establishing situations of connection between individuals, time and place.
In 2016 I went to the UK again undertake a residency at Glasgow Sculpture Studios, and for six months I was based between Glasgow and London. I developed a new body of sculptural works called Grinding Series and the collaborative project When I Have Finished in Here I Will Speed Back Up Again in partnership with the artist Flora Parrott. The sculptures made during the residency were intended to engage with abandoned spaces in the city and with the local community. I was interested in the relationship between body and object in the public space, so I started to walk caring these portable sculptures and some people wanted to interact with it. Some of the situation generated by these actions were recorded and transformed into a video work. Before heading back to Brazil I abandoned the sculptures I made in different spots on the streets of Glasgow.
At the end of 2017 I moved back to the UK and since February this year I am based in Glasgow again. I went for a wandering and, in the same place I had left it, I found one of the sculptures I abandoned almost 2 years ago; all rusted, laying against a mattress, covered by empty bottles in a wet dark corner.
Currently I am exploring Scotland’s landscape, I am interested in the right to roam and doing a visual research in to country stiles, making drawings and writing about my subjective experiences for a possible publication in the future.
Gustavo S Ferro
Summer 2018
By Gustavo S Ferro
The first time I travelled by myself to another Country was in 2010 to do a residency in Spain. I remember waking up after hanging out with my new flatmate and realising that I was in another place, listening people speaking other languages through the window of the bedroom. I think that since I made this first residency, I started a new process in my artistic practice, which was to walk without plans, just going to bend the corners and explore the surfaces of the city. I started to do interventions using found barriers on the streets, and experimenting the idea of ephemeral sculpture and collaborative situations with other people.
From Spain I went for the first time to the UK to stay one month with my brother who was living in London at the moment. It blew my mind being there in such a fast-paced city with all its cultural diversity and so many things happening. I went to see the installation The Coral Reef by Mike Nelson, which was on display at Tate Britain and I had the most intense experience in art. The installation was a space that operated like a maze with a sequence of rooms. Each room was a different environment composed by specific characteristics: a garage, a shop, a waiting room, corridors and places that I couldn’t draw any parallels with anywhere else. When I opened one of the doors and I saw another person walking in the installation, for a moment I forgot where I was. I didn’t know anymore if I was invading a place or if the other was playing a role in the installation. It was like getting inside a scene in a movie, but where could I find the exit?
I started to understand this feeling of misplacement as taking part in an important process of self-acknowledgement. Adapting to another culture and being in a place that doesn’t belong to you, allow us to interpret the reality through different perspectives. I think that art is the capacity of playing with these new possibilities, establishing situations of connection between individuals, time and place.
In 2016 I went to the UK again undertake a residency at Glasgow Sculpture Studios, and for six months I was based between Glasgow and London. I developed a new body of sculptural works called Grinding Series and the collaborative project When I Have Finished in Here I Will Speed Back Up Again in partnership with the artist Flora Parrott. The sculptures made during the residency were intended to engage with abandoned spaces in the city and with the local community. I was interested in the relationship between body and object in the public space, so I started to walk caring these portable sculptures and some people wanted to interact with it. Some of the situation generated by these actions were recorded and transformed into a video work. Before heading back to Brazil I abandoned the sculptures I made in different spots on the streets of Glasgow.
At the end of 2017 I moved back to the UK and since February this year I am based in Glasgow again. I went for a wandering and, in the same place I had left it, I found one of the sculptures I abandoned almost 2 years ago; all rusted, laying against a mattress, covered by empty bottles in a wet dark corner.
Currently I am exploring Scotland’s landscape, I am interested in the right to roam and doing a visual research in to country stiles, making drawings and writing about my subjective experiences for a possible publication in the future.
Gustavo S Ferro
Summer 2018
