Jo Lathwood: Making Up
We are all in a cycle.
Exhibition open 20th January–3rd March 2024.
Inspired by the history and heritage of Salford Quays, the area that is now home to The Lowry, and by her longstanding interest in journeys and movement, Jo Lathwood offers the idea of traveling backwards, undoing, and turning around as potentially poignant aspects of a sustainable future.
Commissioned by The Lowry, Jo Lathwood will spend four weeks in residence developing, building, and deconstructing a site-responsive sculptural work.
Find out more here https://thelowry.com/jo-lathwood-making-up-exhibition/
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Hello, my name is Jo Lathwood I’m a contemporary artist mostly making 3D works and sculpture My show at The Lowry is called Making Up and it’s open until the 3rd of March Making Up is really an exhibition about how we travel through life and symbolic journeys as well as physical journeys.
It’s also focused around sustainability. And I normally make work around site and responding to a site. So obviously the Lowry being in Salford was a key inspiration to the work. And I was looking at the docks and the architecture and location of this building as a starting point to
Start making some of the works. The title of the show, Making Up, really relates back to the history of a part of the Industrial Revolution where the last stage in making a product was really to package it. those people that were packaging those things were called “Makers Up”.
And I think because of the history of Greater Manchester, they’re sort of linked to the Industrial Revolution up until really the 1980s when the docks shut. There was this driver of like how we import and export goods and move things around. and that’s where the title comes from. It comes from this idea
Of objects moving around. Making Up’s quite a unique exhibition because for the duration of the first two weeks, I’m in residence in the gallery space making the work. and returning audience members will be able to see that progress happen and then on the 3rd of February we’ll open the boardwalk
And people will be able to walk on the structure and go to a turning circle and stand on that and then after a two week period the boardwalk will be deconstructed and made into boxes and that really is the sort of final part of me being in residence where
The audience again will be able to see that process and then take a box home. This exhibition is important now because I wanted to make a work that reflects where we are in society. I always think that artwork is a reflection of what’s going on in the wider world.
I think we’re at a crucial point in regards of kind of environmentalism and sustainability. And I’m a maker and I really enjoy making things and I think there’s a language within that. But also when you’re a maker, you are making objects and there are problems around creating things in the world.
Part of this exhibition really focuses around sustainability and sustainable ways of making I wrote a sustainable manifesto which really focused around circular systems and circular ways of working. Really considering all the different materials that are used, your transport systems, your energy usage, and trying to keep those as low as possible
And feeding back into them so you’re left with very little waste. With this show, an example of that would be that we kind of brought together loads of recycled timber from The Lowry. We collected lots of pallets from shows coming in and out. I used timber from a previous exhibition.
We brought those materials together. They’ve sort of formed this sculpture and then they’re going to disband again by being made into functional boxes back into the community of Salford. In the exhibition, I’m writing “We Are In A Cycle” around one of the exhibition rooms. And this sort of poetic statement is
There because I wanted to link a sort of emotive journey with a physical journey. As humans, we are all in a cycle. We’re on our own kind of journeys and pathways. I really enjoy the sort of physicality of linking a physical journey with an emotional one within the space.
For a long time, I’ve been incredibly interested in ladders. For me, they’re a sort of quintessential tool to get over something. They’re a really great symbol for a mini journey. I think sculpturally they hold a lot in regards of a satisfying form. They also enable you to see a different viewpoint,
Whether that is physically or metaphorically. One of the things I’m really interested in is that nobody really invented the ladder. They have no historical starting point or any cultural link. That means that they’re a bit more of an open symbol for everybody to kind of associate their own ideas with.
I hope audiences will take away from this exhibition a larger consideration about their own journeys in life and their own impact on the world in regards of sustainability and environmentalism. The exhibition is open to everyone and it’s a free exhibition, so everybody is very welcome. And there’s also some physical things
That people can actually take away from the exhibition. There are copies of the Sustainable Manifesto, which is an open source thing, so people can edit them or change them if they want to. At the end of the show, there will be potentially 100 wooden boxes that are free for anybody to take.
And I would love them to disperse back into the local community.