Natalie Finnemore
Support Structures, 2019
John Lewis & Partners Leeds

Saturday 22 June -
Sunday 29 September 2019

Victoria Gate
Harewood Road
Leeds
LS2 7AR

Commissioned by John Lewis & Partners Leeds for Yorkshire Sculpture International

The installation in situated in the window on Ludgate Hill (opposite Kirkgate Market) and on the second floor near the feature staircase.

A shop window display is rarely a neutral space, but one which is highly charged with domestic and personal aspiration. It is a vacant stage set coercing you to play a bit part, each square foot calculated to prompt passers-by into wondering how to renovate their surroundings and fine-tune the chaos of their daily lives.

With her window installation Support Structures, Natalie Finnemore takes further cues from the potential of furniture and household prototypes to project an idealised lifestyle. The work is a testing ground to deconstruct the influence of mass production on contemporary life, and the ways in which carefully orchestrated modes of display can inform the way people read a space. Taking influence from Donald Judd’s emphasis on industrial materials, and the geometrical precision of Georgio de Chirico’s metaphysical interiors, these sculptures will occupy the unit for the duration of Yorkshire Sculpture International.

The work also addresses the boundary between bespoke craftsmanship and prototypes for manufacturing. Which category do these sculptures fit into? Within the context of an established retail space like John Lewis, they occupy a position neither commercial nor purely sculptural. Not ambiguous forms, but recognisable domestic silhouettes: lampshades of sculpted glass, or clothes rails whose angles beckon into the space. Elsewhere in the homewares section, columns of stacked boxes act as a deceptively impromptu shelving unit onto which items of glassware are arranged.

Despite appearances, however, the objects in question will not be snapped up by shoppers on the ground or shipped out in bulk to online browsers. The inventory is not fixed, and market research will play no part in its expansion. Instead, these items are to be replaced and adjusted over the course of the festival as the artist gradually creates additional pieces – and it is this “working through” of ideas that is reflected by the staging of the installation. Rather than the gleaming surface of a shop floor, traces of the workshop linger through wood offcuts and folded drapes of (as yet) unused material. These details point to the limitations of artistic production, reminding us that rather than a machine firing off endless reproductions of the same model, these are artefacts which must each be carefully crafted into existence, piece by piece.

Finnemore’s work has often played with the idea of design archetypes and how their potential can be realised, or distorted, to enhance the experience of the people interacting with them. Can the perfect design, as retailers claim, have any impact on wellbeing? Are there certain fabrics, textures or shapes which can be manipulated to optimise human experience and health?

Moving this question into a shop window display shifts focus onto how people respond to the sculptures, rather than the sculptures themselves. It transfers the artistic process from that of spontaneous expression into a series of predetermined, ostensibly functional objects, immaculately laid out to attract the direct and unblinking attention of a hypothetical consumer. And this, after all, is the fate of the prototype: caught up in an endless dress rehearsal, just waiting for its potential to be activated.

Text by Orla Foster

Photography © 2019 Jules Lister. All Rights Reserved

Function Grasping Movement Ability Developing, 2018
buckwheat hulls, calico, zips, thread

Function Grasping Movement Ability Developing, 2018
buckwheat hulls, calico, zips, thread

Function Grasping Movement Ability Developing, 2018
buckwheat hulls, calico, zips, thread

Portobello, 2017
plywood, screws, paint, varnish

Launch of Portobello Play's at National Play Day

I was invited by The Hepworth's learning team develop a collaborative play sculpture with Sandal Castle Primary School's Year 6's.

For more info please follow #sandalcastlesculptures on Instagram.

Photography © 2017 The Hepworth

Untitled, 2017
mild steel, plywood, wax

Installation view

Untitled, 2016
MDF, screws, paint

Untitled, 2016
MDF, screws, paint

w/ Rowena Harris

Installation view

Seats 11, 2015
Plywood, redwood, screws, paint

A group exhibition showing works by S1 Artspace artists Joseph Cutts, Natalie Finnemore, Emily Musgrave and Peter Martin

Curated by Louise Hutchinson

Installation view

Seats 11, 2015
Plywood, redwood, screws, paint

Photography © 2014 Jules Lister. All Rights Reserved

Untitled (collapsed maquette), 2015

The Tetley, Leeds invited artists Simon and Tom Bloor, Conway & Young, Natalie Finnemore, Matthew Houlding, Studio Polpo to submit a proposal for a play sculpture on the gallery's Brewery Green.

Untitled (collapsed maquette), 2015

Untitled (collapsed maquette), 2015

Photography © 2014 Jules Lister. All Rights Reserved

Structures, 2014

S1 artists Natalie Finnemore and David McLeavy have been commissioned for their first major collaborative work to produce a large-scale and adjustable structure that acts as a device to pull together and present new work by all the artists, including work made specifically for Three Act Structure.

Act I

James Clarkson, Peter Martin, Anna McQuillin, Emily Musgrave, Mark Riddington

Occupying Structures:
James Clarkson and Mark Riddington

Structures, 2014

Occupying Structures:
Peter Martin

Act II

Artists: Alison J Carr, Joseph Cutts, Jerome Harrington, Vicky Hayward, Lindsey Mendick, Lucy Vann, Roanna Wells

Structures, 2014

Occupying Structures:
Lindsey Mendick

Structures, 2014

Occupying Structures:
Vicky Hayward

Structures, 2014

Act III

Artists: Alison J Carr, James Clarkson, Joseph Cutts, Natalie Finnemore, Jerome Harrington, Vicky Hayward, George Law, Peter Martin, David McLeavy, Anna McQuillin, Lindsey Mendick, Emily Musgrave, Mark Riddington, Lucy Vann, Roanna Wells

Occupying Structures:
(from left)
George Law and Mark Riddington

Photography © 2014 Jules Lister. All Rights Reserved

From far left:
Untitled (2), 2009, two colour acrylic ink on 300 gram Somerset tub-sized satin, 58 x 58cm 1/1 AP
Untitled (1), 2009, one colour acrylic ink on 300 gram Somerset tub-sized satin, 58 x 58cm 1/1 AP
Arrangement #16, 2011, MDF, redwood, screws, paint

Arrangement #16, 2011
MDF, redwood, screws, paint

Untitled (2), 2009
two colour acrylic ink on 300 gram Somerset tub-sized satin, 58 x 58cm 1/1 AP