Exhibition provides a beginning to the end

Associated media

Text and sound will be used to explore the idea of ‘endings’ in a new project to be exhibited at Slumgothic’s deconsecrated church,  x-church, in Gainsborough by University of Lincoln academic Professor Steve Dutton in collaboration with artist Neil Webb and supported by Kate Buckley from the School of Art and Desig

‘End of Ends’ will confront visitors with a potentially never-ending list of endings in a way that Steve, who joined the university a few months ago, hopes will appear as something ‘oddly full of potential’. The project started, according to Steve, as a list written down of things that end and how they end.

It started apocalyptically; mountains crumbled, planes crashed, territories flooded etc. All very eschatological, biblical even. Then, as I dug down it got a bit more intimate, or stupid, or bland, he said.

As the list continued, however, I started to feel oddly hopeful - realizing that as long as you are writing a list of ends you are not ending.

We are creating a potentially never-ending list of endings, the list of endings has to keep growing, and if it doesn’t then things (things being things in human consciousness) will have ended. In other words as long as we are imagining ends ‘we’ are not ending.

Kate Buckley, a Fine Art student at the University of Lincoln, said while the premise for End of Ends is simple, the reality – designing it in a way that allows contributions from anonymous online submitters so it has the potential to loop more than 24 hours of contributed 3-4 word phrases – is complex.

To be part of the Arts Council England funded End of Ends project submit your ‘ending’ at:  www.endofends.co.uk

The exhibition is at x-church, Ashcroft Road, Gainsborough DN21 1BY BITR and will run 11a.m. – 5p.m. from Thursday 24 May – Saturday 26 May 2012.