Daniel James Wilkinson In Residence

Residencies at Daniel Shand allow the artists to spend a month working in the space during the week. The visitor pops in at weekends to check their progress and witnesses the completed project at the culmination of the residency. The absolute highlight of Ludovica Gioscia and Karen Tang's vibrant collaboration last month was, for me, their multihued, jewel-encrusted, radio-controlled tortoise.

This month sees Daniel James Wilkinson in situ: For Daniel James Wilkinson's residency he will be continuing his epic journey of a make-believe civilisation of the Eotheians, which he presents to the viewer as an imaginary history of urban sprawl. Each map painstakingly produced by hand, the arrangement of dots, shapes and lines immediately draws the viewer into his false but believable world. Concerned with issues of class, urban development, and the moving of the masses, Wilkinson's work both references history, and is ironically in tune with the history in the making of his actual city. A resident of the London's East End, he spends his time falsifying urban sprawl as it continually happens around him. When looking at the entirety of the body of work, the viewer witnesses the disappearance of parks, the introduction of railways, and a constant shift towards urban development. Covering a vast expanse of time and landscape, Wilkinson has written a two thousand year history of his city to accompany the maps. (Text Debra Scacco)

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