Sam Porritt: A Certain Change

For this exhibition, Sam brings together a new series of works made with the space in mind and exploring ideas of limitlessness and directionality. At the centre of the exhibition there is a sculpture of a lighthouse, human scale. The work turns in its entirety as it casts out a light, the moving beam of light falling on interior walls and out into the surrounding public space.

Porritt describes his approach to the unique VITRINE space as wanting to create a site-responsive work that would turn, move and animate the space which after a time led him to the lighthouse. He was also drawn to the motif of the lighthouse for its symbolic associations; providing a guiding light in a disorientating and changeable environment they stand defiant in stormy seas, singular against the horizon, beacons that warn of the dangers beneath them.

In his practice, Porritt works with drawing, sculpture, text, the moving image, and performance, focussing on the human agency and its associated ethical implications.  The lighthouse stages as a metaphor, compounded by it being shown here in Switzerland; Basel being home to the only seaport of an otherwise landlocked country. The human height of the lighthouse lends the sculpture a melancholic air and at the same time, there is a strange comfort to be taken in watching it stoically maintain its lonely vigil.