Inova Welcomes U.K.-Based Sculptor Samuel Williams 5/20

Samuel Williams - the U.K.-based sculptor whose current exhibit Instructions has been adding one sculpture per day to Inova's gallery - will travel to Milwaukee this Friday, May 20th for a special reception. This week marks the creation and installation of the final Williams sculpture in the Instructions exhibit. The reception will take place in Inova's Kenilworth location at 2155 N. Prospect from 5-8pm. Free and open to the public!

About Instructions
Since April 1, the Institute of Visual Arts (Inova) has been the home of an unusual exhibition of work from U.K.-based sculptor Samuel Williams. Samuel Williams: Instructions pits the limitations of time, materials and distance required to make an art exhibition against the ease and speed of current communications technology, simple and cheap materials, and volunteer spirit.

At the beginning of the show, the gallery was empty. Since then, Williams has sent instructions via Skype, e-mail, telephone, text message, or fax for one sculpture to be made on site each day that Inova is open. A collection of volunteers, drawn from students in the Peck School of the Arts and the Milwaukee community, signed on to help realize the works. Williams' video work has also been shown in Inova's screening room throughout the exhibition.

The exhibition is perfectly in line with Williams' usual working methods, primarily in sculpture and video, tending to focus on limitations of materials and time. His series of 20-second sculptures, made from whatever is at hand within the one-third minute time constraint, is a primary example. For this exhibition, Inova fully engagEd Williams' inventive capabilities, and the limitations created by him living in a country an ocean away.

As Williams states, "Often projects cannot happen because of a lack of materials, budget or time. This work tries to make a positive out of those limitations. A limitation itself can be just another tool. They are things that generate unexpected outcomes, things that push creativity in interesting directions. It is not about setting oneself up to fail, but about looking for potential, and working with that."

Samuel Williams was educated at Manchester Metropolitan University, the University of Brighton and the Royal College of Art in London. Most recently he completed a residency at the Kyoto City University of Arts in Japan.