Jo Lathwood : Making Up – The Lowry, Salford

Over the next two weeks artist Jo Lathwood will be transforming the exhibition area at The Lowry, Salford, by building and installing a large wooden walkway in the Gallery area made out of reclaimed timber. Starting at the entrance to the gallery the structure will start with a small ramp, enabling all visitors access to it, and will curve around the periphery of the room, finishing on a large circular platform.

Every part of the structure creation process will be visible to visitors. When Jo is in the exhibition area you will see her assembling the structure. During the times when Jo is working in the workshop, which is located in a different part of The Lowry, there will be a live stream projecting onto one of the walls in the Gallery. As such, the exhibition will be in a continual state of flux with new sections of the structure being added and removed over her residency.

From the 3^rd February, once the main structure has been assembled, visitors will have the chance to experience the structure and take a walk along it. For the final part of Jo’s residency she will be disassembling the structure and making wooden crates out of the timber, further recycling it and leaving no waste. The crates will then be available to visitors. Sustainability is very much the focus.

The second area of Jo’s exhibition will focus on ladders and journeys, along with other means of getting from one place to another.

Ladders feature quite heavily in this exhibition, and as such there are portraits of ladders around the entrance to the exhibition, along with larger collages along walls. There are painted portraits and intricate ladders cut out of paper on display. Jo mentioned that she really enjoyed the technical difficulty of cutting such intricate shapes. The larger paintings around the edge of the space are of dysfunctional ladders, with some having breaks in their legs or a completely impractical curved ladder, metaphorically highlighting that we may need to look at progression in a less linear way.

We asked Jo why she had such a love of ladders:

“Ladders have no obvious start; there is no invention of them. Nobody has ever claimed to have invented the ladder. They have just always existed, and exist across multiple cultures. From a sculptural point of view they’re quite beautiful and they fulfill a task, and I like that they either physically or mentally allow you to get over something or to see a different viewpoint. They’re a transient object. They allow you to get from one space to another, and as such they are mini journeys, and I love journeys.”