Billytown is combining two exhibitions.
Its spacious main exhibition Palm tree is almost absorbing its smaller but more dense show (traditionally called the Kitchen show) Skroderider, made by the New York based artists run platform Lie Lay Lain.
Billytown has removed a wall and so you automatically walk into the smaller exhibition.
Palm tree is based on a story about a palm tree (wouldn’t you guess?) and it deals with the seen and unseen objects that surround us in daily life.
You may think of them as unimportant but in fact they are the props that influence our ideas and feelings, both by their appearance and by their context, maybe even by their invisibility.
It results in an exhibition with works varying from the very visible concrete structures by Jeroen Jacobs to the sometimes almost too unobtrusive small objects by Nishiko.
Other part-taking artists are Nina Canell, Peggy Franck, Marius Lut, Sepus Noordmans and Michael E. Smith.
The title Skroderider of the Kitchen show derives from a plant character from a 1990s science fiction novel and deals with the materiality of things.
It is another very diverse show in which both the quality and the meaning (one could say the life) of materials play a role.
There are works by Joseph Buckley, Sara Enrico, Erin Johnson and Viola Yesiltac.
Jacobs makes his concrete come to life on the cushions in the hall.
In the stairway a video loop by Smith creates a flashing atmosphere.
A work by Skroderider-show’s JosephBuckley even overlaps the Palm tree exhibition.
On the second floor, which houses the Billytown-artists’ studios and the impressive Peter van Beveren Library, the exhibited works merge with the other objects.
In spite of the two titles it is difficult to see the two shows as separate.
There is of course a higher density of objects in Skroderider and one doesn’t have to search for the works like in Palm tree.
After the quest for objects in the main show the almost overcrowded Skroderider show confronts you with objects that are emphatically present.
That is a good strategy to shift the emphasis of the context that objects and space create, to the actual appearance of objects and their meaning.
As such both shows are together almost classical Billytown exhibitions in that as a twofold unit they deal with space and how objects behave in it.
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© Villa Next Door 2021
Contents of all photographs courtesy to all artists, Lie Lay Lain, New York, and Billytown, Den Haag
Bertus Pieters
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