A closer look: Benjamin Moss – All Down On The Ground

Once lively, now static; post-industrial Britain has been subjected to the natural repercussion of abandonment. Exploring this theme of decay, artist Benjamin Moss explores the textures and fabrications found on the fringes of urbanisation.

Deterioration and disregard shape many post-industrial towns in the Midlands and the North of the UK. The decline of traditional commerce has shaped the social landscape of modern Britain, notably in towns and cities like Staffordshire, once known for its brewing and ceramics production. These former industrial sites are now neglected in the urban context.

Exploring these conditions, Moss, born in Staffordshire, engages in unravelling, examining and preserving aspects of modern British culture.

As Moss states:

These works relate to the forms and scars that are still present in the landscapes of my hometown, a place that has had its industry stripped from its identity, making the Midlands feel directionless and sparse.

Like many adolescents in Britain, teenage years were spent exploring forbidden spaces. For Moss, exploring the abandoned factories and structures of his hometown, this juvenile adventure later went on to inspire his visual language. As he narrates the effects of a thriving economic and social past, he considers the complexities of this condition and satirises the neo-liberal optimism.

Steel structures penetrate the ground and litter hops around in the wind, rubbish may find itself attached to a pigeon spike, almost like a self-reclaimed urban flag at full mast.

Moss works with sculpture and painting as his medium, bringing together mechanised systems such as welding at the hands of traditional techniques like oil painting.

Now Moss navigates how these themes present themselves in his new home of London. Here, curator and artist Grazia Mori calls upon Moss to explore these themes of presence and decay in exhibition: ‘All Down to the Ground’. Similarly to Moss, Mori recalls her move to London in which a series of benign events unravel into meaningful connections. Pulling from her inner circle she brings artists together to look down and explore how chance has brought them together.

Moss makes three contributions to Galleria Objets with Pillar, Staffordshire Landscape III and Cot.

Staffordshire Landscape III sits on the floor in the main hall of the gallery, forcing the visitor to pause and look down. The physicality of the piece signposts the space, echoing the structure’s original purpose as a road sign. The artist utilises benign urban memorabilia, symbolic of manufactured age. Bringing together found objects with classical means of oil painting, Moss subverts the bounds of the canvas in a much more familiar setting.

Pillar consists of a welded steel plinth adorned with pigeon spikes and barbed wire. Indicative of hostile architecture found in the metropolis, the materials work against nature’s place in such environment. At play here, we see the flux between nature and the human desire to modernise. Moss’ works take on an architectural purpose and seamlessly become part of the gallery structure. Pillar, placed on a brick wall, flanked by neighbouring paintings, recalls the harsh landscape of post-modern Britain.

Perhaps a new future for these abandoned post-industrial landscapes can be found in the creatives of our marginal cities and towns. Such environments, once passive and now lively again — redefined by artists like Moss, who attempt to critique and reframe British culture.