艾雷可．薛普利 艾雷可．薛普利是位當代藝術家，曾於英國與世界各地舉辦過各項展覽；目前擔任英國林肯大學藝術與表演藝術學院的資深教師，他亦積極參與許多英國及國際間的藝術研究講座和論壇。薛普利的藝術創作核心是對於困惑與焦慮、挫敗、憂鬱、矛盾與希望的詩意探索；透過現實與虛構的交織，他創造出一種互為文本並交叉辯證的即興場域。 學歷 1996-2000 英國曼徹斯特城市大學，博士（裝置藝術實務與變動架構） 1991-1993 英國雪菲爾德哈倫大學，碩士（藝術與設計） 1986-1987 英國曼徹斯特理工學院，碩士文憑（藝術與設計教育） 1983-1986 英國伍佛漢普頓理工學院，學士（藝術） 展歷與計劃（節錄） 2014 「如前所述」，關渡美術館，國立臺北藝術大學，台灣 2014 「細節」聯展，H計劃空間，曼谷，泰國；與倫敦過渡畫廊及林肯郡亞瑟畫廊共同合作 2014 「藝術駐村計劃」，X-教堂，庚斯博羅，英國 2014 「測試部門」，計劃空間集合，林肯郡，英國 2014 「INSERT 2014：共同點的新典型」，馬地加爾，英迪拉．甘地國立藝術中心，新德里，印度 2014 「超時」，英國惠靈頓公園之家，里茲，英國 2013 「圖書館」， 亞瑟街70號溫尼伯圖書館，溫尼伯，加拿大 2013 「副產品交換社會」，山姆射手藝廊，林肯郡，英國 2013 「熵聯盟」，萊格尼察美術館，波蘭 2012 「PPLANT」，文托薩區荷蘭設計週，埃因霍溫，荷蘭 2012 [sic]，庭園畫廊，林肯郡收藏博物館，英國 2012 「鱷魚的第二層皮膚碎片：蔓延與共生練習」，Over+Out，林肯郡，英國 2012 「場域描繪：描繪場域」，羅伯特．E與瑪莎．赫爾利畫廊，邁阿密大學；俄亥俄&史黛拉藝廊，費城，美國 2011 「距離2」，學院美術館，國立索非雅美術學院，保加利亞 2011 「有效標題：抵押計畫」，和尚藝廊，林肯郡，英國 2011 「頻率：林肯數位文化藝術節」，林肯郡，英國 2010 「逝去的隱私片刻」，亞瑟畫廊，林肯郡，英國 2010 「微小現實的重新協商」，前衛藝廊，上海，中國 2010 「距離」，大道畫廊，北安普頓大學，英國 2010 「石礫與雪崩」，克羅斯利畫廊，哈利法克斯，英國 2007 「美麗的一日」，庵畫廊，弓藝術，倫敦，英國

The lightness of thought and the weight of objects Dean Hughes “I am from Leonia” announces the voice, at the same moment at which (mirroring what is being said) white text appears across the screen, running from left to right, drawing my eyes to traverse as first an ‘I’ then an ‘a’ then a ‘m’ delineates the sentence that is also appearing as a phrase in my mind at the same time “I am from Leonia”. The combined effect of audio arising, alongside typographic appearance, places this utterance within a mental space which queries its origins. It seems to ask me ‘is the voice a product of the text? Or is the text a record of a voice?’ This binary dynamic is established at the beginning of Alec Shepley’s video ‘I am Leonia’ and is central to the work’s structure. The text disappears and the voice continues, allowing my question to reverberate for me about the origins of the voice. The screen depicts the inside of a modernist ruin, St Peters Seminary in Cardross, Scotland to be precise, clearly identifiable through its cast and molded concrete pierced by the outside light and foliage. The horizon demarks and splits the screen in half. Entering from the right a sweeping brush first, and then next a figure move along this indeterminate line and circle around to double back, all the while slowly accruing and moving dust and detritus to a point located approximately center stage. It occurs to me that this path taken by the lone figure with a sweeping brush is opposite to the direction at which the text appeared and announced the beginning of the video. As a filmic device entering from the right and moving to the left, acts as a disjuncture that arrests my comfortable viewing. As an artwork ‘I am from Leonia’ is filled with futility. There seems little tangible attempt to actually cleanse the space in any demonstrable sense. This feeling is enhanced when in one sequence the figure’s attention is centered upon sweeping along a shadow cast by the ruin’s distinctive vaulted ceilings. What could be filled with more purposeful purposelessness than following a contour whose only certainty is that it will have shifted as soon as one has completed the activity of following along its path? This unassailable quality is further testified to when the figure diligently sweeps along the edge of what would have been a balcony seemingly oblivious to the genuine detritus, which constitutes the floor below. Neither is the sweeping piecemeal in the way that it might be conducted if one was passing time within monotonous employment. The sweeping is carried through with diligence and attentiveness to the job at hand that seems at odds with the apparent situation at hand. The intersections between the opposite forces that is apparent within ‘Leonia’ activates a potential for meaning to be created by a viewer through a continuous process of purpose forming which is initiated and then refuted, and discarded. Watching Leonia I cannot help but think of American artist Douglas Huebler’s famous assertion from 1968 when he states, “The world is full of objects more or less interesting; I do not wish to add any more”. The protagonist within the video is intent on moving and remodeling matter rather than making a new construction or order. Shepley’s video presents itself as a tension. What is the nature of this sweeping? What is its purpose? The action is carried out and performed with a sensitivity removed from simple cleaning (what indeed could be cleaned?). The figure seems to be part archeologist unsure of the status of what is being dislodged, moved and uncovered. There is equal reverie being given to dust and dirt as there is to surface. I think about cleaning and the points at which cleaning occurs; after a party, after a meal, before and after visitors. All moments similar to these are epiphanies within our lives when compared next to the act of removing and discarding after the event. I wonder if cleaning is ever the event, or is it resigned to be the melancholy moment after the fact. Cleaning, sweeping in this instance, is the quintessential point to reminisce and a point not to be in the present. Is there virtue in seeing all things, and all activities, outside of a hierarchy and as being equal? In a likewise manner artworks exude and pronounce themselves as events and pre-eminence is given to the arrival at this state via the popularity of the phrase ‘installation’ within our lexicon of contemporary art practice. Leonia, in its residual dwelling on what has long passed and is out of place, makes me wonder how little contemporary art thinks of de-installing, the act of removing an artwork from a situation or event. Perhaps de-installing lies too far beyond the commodity address? Concentrating upon the site of this modern ruin I am struck by how indeterminate it seems. Is this the fate of modernist buildings of this nature that fall into emptiness and disrepair? Unsure of their own status, the building’s vice is to exist in perpetuity as both forgotten relic, and abandoned beginning. Alec Shepley’s ‘Leonia’ testifies to this curious status and in turn one can watch the video thinking that the building is new or under construction, the sweeper preparing the ground for further work, and yet at the same time it is apparent that this is a wreck and very much a former glory. The consistency and sensitivity of the sweeper, as he attests to his strange occupation, occludes singular readings and provides meaning in multiple positions. ‘I am from Leonia…’ enters my mind again and I look again at the text where the body of the narrative is taken. Italo Calvino’s last section of Chapter 7 from Invisible Cities does not begin with the authorial phrase ‘I am from Leonia’ but the remainder of the dialogue is congruent with the 1974 original. Invisible Cities is famously a book narrating different facets of one city, Venice. Leonia is a city obsessed with newness and replenishment. Shepley’s ‘Leonia’ is a meditation on matter out of place. The perfomative ‘I’ introduces a speaker, a listener, and a place, and the work’s structure allows me to place myself in a variety of roles. “I am from Leonia” I say to myself as I consider the weight of objects introduced to the world, in comparison to the lightness of thoughts that lie at their origin. (December 2014)

Ibid Review Duncan Mountford On the screen a ritual is enacted, the clearing of a path, a figure engaged slowly, carefully, brushing the detritus from the walkways in a ruined building. The lack of any certainty concerning the location of this ruin is reinforced by the narrating voice telling the story of an imaginary city, a city where the cleaners are figures of importance, for they clear the ground to allow the appearance of the new. The ruin in the video is reflected, refracted, in the ruin in the gallery; a wall half destroyed and illuminated by a fluorescent tube in the debris on the floor, a light seemingly caught at the moment of its slide to destruction; a model of a ruined building on a segment of earth, and floating in a pool of light as if it was caught in the act of escaping the gravity of its situation. Ibiddefies any simplistic narrative of the romance of ruins, for the ruined structure in the video projection glimpsed though the jagged hole in the wall seems as much an echo of the future, a foretaste of the ruins that will be left behind when humankind has gone, leaving behind one solitary last man engaged in a melancholic act of cleansing. Yet the clearing of a ruin, the creation of a space in the midst of the concrete slabs overgrown with the forest, is also an act of making ready the space for something new. In this there is a connection to all the strategies of creation, the tidying of the desk before beginning to write, the laying out of tools before the start of construction, the brushing of the studio before beginning a new work of art. Ibidthus sits at an intersection between what has gone before, the ruined gallery wall left from the previous exhibition, and the process of creating a new work. The tables on which sit the monitors that showing further footage of the brushing of the ruin seem to continue this sense of interregnum, being quotidian rather than elements of exhibition language. Andrew Benjamin talks of installations as always being in the state of becoming, for the viewer is remaking the work at each navigation of the space. Ibid makes this plain, by quoting what has gone before, clearing the ground for what will come, and in itself being a space that connects to a modern ruin that is echoing what will come. The slow brushing continues, at a pace that speaks more of meditation than of employment. And we watch and feel time stretch.