THE lights may have been switched off from last week's Illuminating York four-day festival but  bright sparks shine on at According To McGee.

The Tower Street gallery is celebrating its 11th anniversary with a show that co-director Ails McGee hopes hammers home its contemporary credentials.

Interfuse, funded by Arts Council England's Grants for the Arts programme, dovetails the work of light installation artists, performance artists and letterpress prints in an ambitious week-long exhibition that ushers in a new period of experimentation for the McGees.

"The Interfuse project is a timely reminder that, as a gallery, we're just as innovative and provocative as ever," says Ails.

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According To McGee co-director Ails McGee, beside Winters & Hide's Crying installation

Built around letterpress posters from Shipley's The Print Project, performances from Gary Winters and Claire Hind and light installations from Winters & Hind and New Visuality artist Nick Walters, Interfuse adds up to an unsettling experience.

The gallery visitor is greeted first by Winters & Hind's Neon Works, with the words Crying and If Only glowing on the Tower Street pavement. "If Only is a provocative phrase that is accompanied by a footnote of Crying," says Claire, who has been collecting Yorkshire dreams with Gary as a creative resource for their plaintive neon signs.

"Our dream work inevitably brought us into the world of Roy Orbison, his melancholic persona and his faith in dreams. His song Crying is particularly interesting to us because of the repetitive structure of that word within the song and because the song has been used within popular culture.

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Winters & Hind's brain prints at According To McGee

"The neon works also reflect our interest in urban light used conventionally and commercially in advertising and most commonly associated with underground alternative spaces in the city, such as nightclubs, peep shows and tattoo parlours."

Winters & Hind, newly returned from a street project in Chicago, are holding court in According To McGee's back gallery too with their Dream Prints. "The dream drop-in events organised by Claire and Gary is guerilla art at its most mischievous," says Ails.

"The stark beauty of the work that comes out it is a bonus. When you have the general public dropping by to donate their most troubling dreams, and Claire and Gary to chronicle them like this, with handwritten and drawn images of the dreamers, together with fragile and outmoded Letraset – this is thrilling stuff, beautiful, hilarious, troubling. Just like a good dream, I suppose."

Winters and Hind's brain prints find particular favour with Ails. "Claire and Gary use iconic and fictional characters in their work. The set of brain prints playfully delve into the hidden worlds and narratives of these characters. It's good to know they are available for purchase, not only as what we've got on the wall, but you also can commission one yourself, or for a loved one, or a pin up."

Alongside these dream prints, The Print Project's letterpress posters play with aphorisms and slogans. "We love letterpress prints, and Print Project's Nick Loaring is always up for it, always producing excellent work. These are throwaway slogans that, because they're executed so beautifully, are built to last. Perfect for these attention-deficient times," says Ails.

Light artist Nick Walters uses this week's Aesthetica Short Film Festival (ASFF) in York as a springboard for his installation. "ASFF is a global recognition of independent filmmakers, and we thought that Interfuse could join that conversation, so every night we're projecting footage from an array of ASFF's films," says Nick.

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Winters & Hind's If Only

"The amount of footfall we get at this time of year is massive, so we're looking at reaching a bigger, very international audience, flying the flag for independent art."

Interfuse will culminate in a 7pm performance by Winters & Hind on Saturday evening entitled Five Dead Acts Five Dead Cats, for which Ails advises contacting the gallery via ails@accordingtomcgee.com to secure a place. "It's very much a tongue-in-cheek finale," says Claire. "It'll be a performance of action-based tasks that explore the concept of deadness. A dead King meets a dead gorilla, meets a presumed dead adventurer, meets a dead singer, meets a dead wonder of the world, meets a dead writer, meets a dead career, meets a dead psychoanalyst, meets a dead cat."

Originally made for the Defibrillator Gallery in Chicago, this work is being re-imagined for According To McGee. "We're developing it to suit this space and it'll contain new writing and tasks in the context of Interfuse," says Claire.

Interfuse is on show at According To McGee gallery, Tower Street, York, until Monday, November 9.