Junction: a point where two or more things are joined.

Residents of South Leeds may remember Silvia Liebig from her time spent here in 2019, just before the outbreak of the pandemic. As part of East Streets Arts long running Artist House 45 residency project (2015-19), that also included Lloyd&Wilson, She was a resident of the house during 2019.

Silvia is a multimedia artist from Dortmund in West Germany, and whilst in South Leeds she spent her time getting to know residents and creating drawings of those who interacted with her. This included certain Beeston landmarks as well such as Rowland Road Working Men’s Club.

After leaving Beeston to return to Dortmund in September 2019, the streets then fell (almost) silent for the next couple of years as the pandemic hit. During this time BasementArtsProject opened up the metaphorical pages of its online Studio Journal, normally a place for Basement artists to talk about their practice and ideas, to any artist that wanted to submit work for the public to see during the time of lockdown.

One of the posts submitted during this time was by Silvia who submitted drawings of wildlife overtaking Dortmund’s silent streets.

As the drudgery of lockdown wound its interminable way to a very unsatisfying end BasementArtsProject was invited to take part in an exhibition in Dortmund by Silvia. Interested in our way of keeping art content present digitally when it was not possible to do so physically, we were invited to present a new entry of the journal in a ‘Real-World’ setting.

‘Meine Welt Auf Corona’ was a project that looked at several artists responses to the lockdown and a video documenting how BasementArtsProject had tackled the situation.

So, sponsored by the international relations teams of Leeds and Dortmund City Councils, I was able to travel to our twinned city of Dortmund with the lockdown documentary, whilst making several new travelogue entries in the process. These can all be found in the Studio Journal blog.

After meeting the other artists involved: Martin Brand, Stephanie Brysch, Maria Hanl, Maren Kames and Christiana Spatt we decided that it would be good to bring their work to the UK in the future. That project was to be this year, but due to a lack of funding we have had to postpone this until mid-2025. Still wishing to keep the twinned city theme present in the year of Leeds2023, we decided not to postpone it entirely, but to adapt, and fill the now blank space with something in a similar vein.

And so, we present ‘Junction’; A project devised specifically for BasementArtsProject, by Silvia and Leeds based artist Griet Beyeart.

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Griet Beyeart is a Belgian Artist who is a resident of Leeds and a studio holder at East Street Arts. Griet creates sculpture in glass as well as film and audio works, these are often displayed in the form of sculptural installations. Recently in Leeds her ‘Light Organ’ work, a collaboration with Artist Adam Glatherine was part of Light Night at Leeds Art Gallery. Her work has been seen/heard all over the UK and she often collaborates with other artists in the process