YOUNG AND IN THE WAY

1st July - 17th July

Installation Images

One year, when I was about eleven or twelve, my friend and I decided we were old enough to use Halloween as cover for a vandalism spree. We spent the whole month of October acquiring spray paint, silly string, toilet paper, eggs - anything we could get our hands on to make a mess. To avoid suspicion, we hid all of it in the shed of an unoccupied house on his street, literally adjacent to his parents’, a stroke of criminal genius. When the night came, I ended up with the flu and couldn’t go out to wreak havoc, so we left it all in the shed and waited for the following weekend. We met up in the middle of the night and unloaded the entire arsenal on this one unoccupied house, the whole stockpile in a scorched-earth assault. It’s probably worth noting that this is not an abandoned house, just a home where the owner worked offshore and was rarely there. We ramped it up, smashing the shed and maybe a window or two (even at that age, it did seem like overkill) and didn’t think for a second that one of his neighbours might notice what was undoubtedly the least subtle attack imaginable.

Of course, that’s what happened - and instead of telling his parents, they called the police who promptly arrived with flashing lights at our respective houses.

The first question, and one we’re probably all familiar with:


WHAT were you THINKING?!


Well, I dunno.


That’s the thing about being a kid, sometimes it just feels right to take a swing at the world - even in the most socially acceptable way possible. Adolescence is a series of re-emergences, hard turns into new identities and steadfast beliefs about who you are, each one more certain than the one before. For us, destroying a house probably wasn’t about breaking stuff, it was about announcing to the world that we were beyond trick or treating, we were teenagers (almost) and it was time to embrace the stereotype. Like smoking a cigarette for the first time, or losing your virginity, or getting arrested, it’s all just a big grab for control over your sense of self.


Young and In The Way brings together artists working with youth in the broadest sense, from its materiality, to cultural aesthetics, and the miasma, the unplaceable impressions left by an experience which is both entirely unique and entirely ubiquitous. Youth, as a material, is fluid - it moves across aesthetics, experiences, impressions and identities.