The Manifestation - Falling Phoebe

In 2002 Richard Layzell, for a commission from the firstsite gallery in Colchester, invented a group of four artists and made their work for them. After the exhibition closed, Layzell found himself missing the method and ease of producing work that he had discovered as one of these invented artists: Tania Koswycz. He decided to continue fabricating work as Tania finding that the internal dialogue that he engaged in as a result was germane to the creative process and could be dramatized through published dialogues and collaborative installations.

The Manifestation is a touring collaboration between Layzell and Koswycz and, in its most recent form as The Manifestation – Falling Phoebe (a firstsite commission installed at St Martin’s Colchester), represents a return to the town for which Layzell first imagined Koswycz.

In tribute then to Layzell and Koswycz this review continues as a dialogue with a co-reviewer Tania Kostain, who is fictitious.

TK. This it, then? Music stands, TVs, tables and a film! Is this what you dragged me here to see?

JE. It’s artfully arranged, Tania, you must admit. The music stands are the outer edge of a circle that is completed by the curved wooden panel at the rear and the circular tables, their plates and mirrors echo the circle that is the whole installation.

TK. It all looks pretty random to me. So someone’s come up with a particular arrangement for all these different things but so what? What about the film? That’s not part of the circle and it just shows a man collecting leaves and scattering them again.

JE. Maybe the film is intended as an introduction to the installation. In the film disparate objects are gathered up and scattered again just as these has happened with the different objects in this installation.

TK. But you said these objects were artfully arranged which means they’ve not just been scattered, so there must be some purpose in the way they’ve been put together. What’s going on? Do the sheets on the music stands explain it?

JE. Well, they contain a dialogue between the two artists who collaborated on this installation, one of which is a figment of the other’s installation.

TK. You mean, he talks to himself! That’s the first sign of madness, isn’t it?

JE. But don’t we all have an interior conversation going on all the time? You’ve seen dramatizations or visualizations, for example, of angels and demons on people’s shoulders voicing their conflicting thoughts. Isn’t that to do with bringing our internal dialogue into the open?

TK. So, the idea is that we can read the sort of chat he has with himself on the inside when he’s making art. If we can read that talk then we can join in too. I like a good chat myself. So what’re they talking about?

JE. Part of their dialogue deals with an ancestor of the artist who lived in Colchester and married at St Martins.

TK. But that’s where we are, isn’t it? In St Martins?

JE. Well, yes. But they married at St Martins-in-the-Field in London, not this St Martins. So there’s a connection but it’s not exact.

TK. But that’s it, isn’t it? That’s what all this is about, isn’t it? You’ve got all these different objects and the point of the exercise is to find the clues to work out the connections between all the different things – some are personal and some are just cause that’s the way they were put together – but everything is connected in some way. It’s cool; connections and conversation. I can buy that!

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