Tuesday 29th May, 2007

At first view Andrew Burton's new work in the Exsertus space plays with your sense of scale. The work is a wall constructed from thousands of fired bricks dividing the space into two. The bricks however are finger sized, a kind of lego-like miniature construction block from which Burton has built a wall that would be well over head height if normal sized construction bricks were used.

The wall structure gives the sense of creating a boundary, or in a space that lies along the route of Hadrian's wall, a frontier. In stepping over the barrier and viewing the work from the far side of the space, we can see that the wall has been filled with street tags, but due to tiny size of the bricks and the scale of the wall, the graffiti writing is of a miniature scale.

Burton's inspiration for working with fired bricks came from the experience of working in India, and observing what at first appeared to be piles of discarded bricks, but were actually the product of local brick yards. These piles of bricks had an order to them, and could be found all over India, an example of the staple Indian building material. The chances of seeing these discarded bricks may become a rarity, as the Indian government moves towards financing large-scale construction from concrete and more modern building materials.

This piece, constructed in the Exsertus space is one of a number of works that Burton has constructed from the same bricks. Here they have taken on a life of their own as they are reused in successive sculptures, bringing with them remnants of the paint and glaze from the works that have gone before.

Bricks are a universal material for construction, and they are found worldwide. Their versatility as a method of construction lend themselves to forms that are solid and permanent. Bricks give us a sense of solidity and comfort that they will not fall down. Burton's piece is neither solid nor permanent. Its precarious nature invites danger in the simple act of stepping over it. The precariousness of the construction reflects the precarious nature of the area that Harker's building is situated. Industrial buildings are being levelled on virtually all sides reminding us that the Exsertus space itself, like the Harker’s Building is only a temporary home for artists.

Matthew Cowan