Poole-based fine artist Michelle Rumney is inviting visitors to her solo exhibition at Lighthouse to come up with a name for one of the pieces on display.
The Arts Council-funded show, Are we there yet? Mapping the Labyrinth, explores ideas around journeys and maps and how we respond to directions and instructions as we navigate our way through them.
Michelle became interested in maps as a child when her father, Malcolm Rumney, was working overseas. “Maps are powerful and they affect how we see the world,” said Michelle, who invited Malcolm to help hang the exhibition. “My dad travelled away a lot in the 1970s, working on building contracts in countries such as Saudi Arabia, Iran and Iraq. I looked at maps of these places imagining what they were like and what he was doing. He used to come back with such magical stories that I romanticised the whole idea of the ‘explorer’ and caught the travel bug before I’d even gone anywhere.”
Her first adventure was as far as she could go – 12,000 miles to New Zealand. “On day one of the trip, I got talking to some New Zealanders in Auckland and was amazed they knew my favourite pub back home, The Square and Compass at Worth Matravers. The world is a beautifully small place.”
The 20 exhibits in the Gallery, all produced in the last two years, include maps, books and even printed instructions from IKEA, each revisited and essentially laid bare, some as mazes, others as labyrinths, all as journeys. “I love mazes – the sense of play and wonder you can feel, but a labyrinth is different. It has a single path in and out. It’s much simpler. You can get lost in a maze but not in a labyrinth. You can walk and move, but also create space to think. I’m inviting the viewer to slow down, allow their senses to tune in and, most of all, enjoy the journey. It’s all about looking again and rethinking how we see things. For me, these pieces work on many different levels.”
Michelle’s process involves many hours of cutting, reordering and reshaping simple materials to create a totally different experience of them. Some of the artworks are small but others you can literally get lost in looking at them. There’s also a labyrinth on the floor, which younger visitors love to walk.
One piece was inspired by Michelle’s long-held wish to visit the famous international art exhibition, the Venice Biennale. Curious about what the journey might involve, she used Google Maps and found that from her front door in Poole, it was exactly 999 miles to Venice. Working on canvas, Michelle mapped the route exactly through France and Italy using original paper maps and the Google directions. This continuous line, the journey through many different landscapes, spans three canvases.
In other pieces, Michelle has reworked journeys through self-help books that she admits are both fascinating and annoying. “A lot of these bestselling books like ‘The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People’ are sold in their millions, as they promise to make things easy and simple, but life’s not like that – we each have to find our own way. Lots of people have these books on their shelves, but haven’t actually read them, so here’s another way to look at them, laid out flat, like a map.” These 6ft-square pieces expose key phrases, sentences, headings and other signposting through the books and have visitors reading in all directions on the walls.
One of the pieces in the show needs some help. At the moment it’s untitled, so Michelle is inviting visitors to name it themselves. It’s made up of maps of Bournemouth and the Purbecks dating from 1974, 1991 and 2014. They are woven together and highlight similarities and differences as the local area has changed over the past 40 years.
The best suggestion will be chosen by Lighthouse managers and unveiled at a closing event between 4pm and 6pm on the show’s final day, Saturday, 5thDecember, 2015.
Are we there yet? Mapping the Labyrinth is at the Ground Floor Galley, Poole Lighthouse. Entry is free and the exhibition is open 11am-10pm Tues-Sat.
For more information, contact the Lighthouse Ticket Office on 0844 406 8666 or visit www.michellerumney.com.
