Friday, October 19, 2007

Marcus Coates: "Cycle Parking And Prostitution" Rekord, Oslo


20.10 – 04.11. 2007
Marcus Coates - Cycle parking and prostitution

Separatutstilling

Åpningstider 20.10 - 04.11: torsdag – søndag kl. 1200 – 1700

Velkommen til åpning 19.10 kl. 19.00!

Marcus Coates har tatt et helgekurs i sjamanisme i Notting-Hill Gate,
og arbeidene hans er slik et resultat av bruken av åndelige ritualer
som selvhjelp i en vestlig overflodskultur. Dyret som etterlignes gir
sjamanen kraften han trenger - synet, raskheten eller kraften til å
fly. Tanken er at dyret og naturen er nært tilknyttet mennesket,
heller enn ideen om mennesket som dets motsetning. Marcus Coates
nærmer seg dyrets bevissthet og språk i arbeidene sine. På tross av en
potensiell ironisk lesning er Coates’ produksjon preget av dypt alvor
og relevans. I verket Goshawk – Accipiter gentilis (1999) lot han seg
binde fast i toppen av et høyt tre i skogen i timesvis for å komme på
høyde med fuglene og oppleve verden fra deres perspektiv. Her
undersøker han hva det vil si å oppføre seg som ikke-menneskelig.
Coates verk er samtidig ofte absurde og komiske, og ved hjelp av enkle
grep eller kostymer, som å kombinere den ulastelige britiske
business-dressen, med hornbriller og bukkeskinn med stort gevir,
benytter han sjamanistiske ritualer til å løse vanskelige
samfunnsproblemer.

Gjennom sitt arbeide som sjaman utfører han ritualer for forskjellige
klienter, og kommer tilbake fra sin reise til underverdenen med
informasjon som blir gitt ham av dyreåndene han møter på veien. Noen
av hans siste klienter inkluderer Liverpool City Council IK, Ikebukuru
City Council Japan, Toge Village Council Japan og Stavanger Byråd.
Coates har søkt svar på varierende problemer fra disse kliententene.

På Rekord viser Coates to nye verk: Radio Shaman 2006, og Kamikuchi
2006, hvor han blant annet søker svar på spørsmålet – “hvordan kan vi
stanse ulovlig sykkelparkering”.

Catherine Bertola: "Out Of The Ordinary" V&A Museum, London


Out of The Ordinary: Spectacular Craft

A V&A and Crafts Council Exhibition
13 November 2007 – 17 February 2008

Free admission

Out of the Ordinary will bring together a group of international artists who place craft at the heart of their practice, transforming everyday subjects and materials into works that are truly extraordinary.

The exhibition will showcase on a grand scale astonishing examples of meticulous making and attention to detail. Challenging conventional ideas about craft, the artists in the exhibition skilfully use tradition to achieve unexpected outcomes.

Out of the Ordinary will feature new work by Olu Amoda, Annie Cattrell, Susan Collis, Naomi Filmer, Lu Shengzhong, Yoshihiro Suda and Anne Wilson, many showing their work in the UK for the first time.

The exhibition will include film, installations and objects in diverse materials such as metal, paper, textiles, glass, wood, ice and chocolate. An eight artist Catherine Bertola will create a site specific installation within the V&A’s galleries, taking the themes of the exhibition and juxtaposing them with the historic collections.

Eric Bainbridge: 'Etc.' Amagerfælledvej Art Project, Copenhagen


etc

Eric Bainbridge (UK), Anna Barham (UK), Phyllida Barlow (UK), Jacob Dahlgren (S), Jason Dungan (UK) Peter Fillingham (UK), Ellen Hyllemose (DK), Max Hymes (UK), Charlotte Thrane (DK), Roy Voss (UK), John Wallbank (UK), Torgny Wilcke (DK).

Amagerfælledvej Art Project, Amagerfælledvej 40-42,
2300 Copenhagen.
6th October – 10th November 2007
opening : October 5th, 5-8 pm
curated by Sotiris Kyriacou

Amagerfaelledvej Art Project is pleased to present etc, a celebration of the continuing pertinence of the readymade and found materials in contemporary art.

Bringing together established and emerging artists from Britain, Denmark and Sweden, the exhibition is part of a visual arts festival which will take place amidst the faded grandeur of the halls of an ex post office headquarters on the island of Amager.

The title of the exhibition refers not only to the varied repertoire of everyday objects, materials, language and media used by these artists as starting points for their works, but also to the opening-up of empathy and association they bring to the fore through the dynamically unexpected and diverse approaches to their respective inventories.

Works which declare their provenance in the realm and materiality of the known and familiar at the same time manage to suggest a rich multiplicity of possibilities for engagement, through a wilful disrespect for conventional syntax.

etc is one of four exhibitions taking place concurrently at the venue before its redevelopment. The other exhibitions are :

- Maddag, with Camilla Nørgård, Lise Nørholm and Ellen Hyllemose.

- The Last Compositions at Amagerfælledvej, with Johanna Billing (S),
Tine Oksbjerg (DK), Susan Philipsz (UK), curated by Lotte Juul Petersen.

- Housewarming, curated by Anita Viola Nielsen and Simon Grimm.

This final season of exhibitions at Amagerfælledvej Project Space is co-ordinated by Torgny Wilcke and supported by The Danish Arts Council, Copenhagen City Council and The British Council.
For further information and images please contact Torgny Wilcke at t.wilcke@inet.uni2.dk

Workplace Gallery at Zoo Art Fair 2007: The Royal Academy, London

Monday, September 24, 2007

Laura Lancaster & Marcus Coates: "Micro-narratives" 48th October Salon, Belgrade



Laura Lancaster 'Untitled' 2007, Graphite and Ink on Found Book Pages, Private Collection UK, Courtesy of Workplace Gallery
Marcus Coates 'Radio Shaman' 2007, High Definition Video, Courtesy of Workplace Gallery

48th October Salon
Belgrade, September 29th – November 11th, 2007
www.oktobarskisalon.org

Micro-narratives
Curated by Dr Lóránd Hegyi

Co-curator Saša Janjić

Opening
Saturday, September 29th, at 7 pm
The 25th May Museum – the Museum of Yugoslav History, Botićeva 6

Artists
The Temptation of Small Realities – Micro Communities
Gordana Andelić-Galić, John Armleder, Snežana Arnautović, Txomin Badiola, Mrđan Bajić, Ruth Barabash, Maria Bussmann, Valerio Berruti, Erik Binder, Frauke Boggasch, Pedro Cabrita Reis, Marija Ćalić, Eugenio Cano, Davide Cantoni, Jiří Černický, Daniel Chust Peters, Victoria Civera, Marcus Coates, May Cornet, Uroš Đurić, Petra Feriancova, Peter Friedl, Gloria Friedmann, Paolo Grassino, Kevin Francis Gray, Veronika Holcova, Dominika Horáková, Pello Irazu, Hyunsoo Kim, Oan Kim, Kimsooja, Hee Sook Kim, Nina Kovacheva, Laura Lancaster, Fabrice Langlade, Andreas Leikauf, Denisa Lehocká, Felice Levini, Carla Matti, Petar Mirković, Milica Milićević i Milan Bosnić, Zsuzsa Mojzer, Hajnal Németh, Noh Sang-Kyon, Ursula Palla, Marina Paris, Marina Perez Simão, Françoise Pétrovitch, Ivan Petrović, Zoran Popović, Renata Poljak, Sergio Prego, Mileta Prodanović, Nenad Racković, Hana Rajković, László László Révész, Anila Rubiku, Nebojša Šerić Šoba, ŠKART, Ágnes Szépfalvi, Valentin Stefanoff, Marko Stojanović, Chun Sung-Myung, Barthélémy Toguo, Tessa Manon Den Uyl, Sandra Vasquez de la Horra, Vedovamazzei, Vuk Vidor, Katerina Vincourova, Lois Weinberger, XYZ Group, Haegue Yang, Sookyung Yee, Hye Sook Yoo, Italo Zuffi, Ivan Zupanc, Nikola Džafo

Urban Crossroads – New York, Paris, Seoul
Jean-Michel Alberola, Christian Boltanski, Bertrand Lavier, Kang So Lee, Matthew McCaslin, Richard Nonas, Dennis Oppennheim, Seo-Bo Park, Pierre Soulages, Lee Ufan

The October Salon, initiated in 1960, is regarded as the most important exhibition of contemporary art in Serbia. Since 2004, the October Salon has been organised as an international exhibition. In the form of art dialogue, it presents the current artwork of world and local artists. Every year, a new art director is chosen and the exhibition is reinvented, a concept which has been validated by the continued interest of the public.

This year’s October Salon will present an artistic message which announces a new attitude and a new orientation of artists in an era of radicalisation of global conflicts, religions, ideologies and socio-cultural value structures. This surprising and emotionally touching approach to small realities, to direct socio-cultural constellations and micro-communicative relations requires an anti-hierarchical, anti-monumental, sophisticated, intimate, emphatic and modest artistic practice concentrated on the artistic creation of new situations and on the processes of sensibilisation. Micro-narratives represent an attempt to redefine artistic practice in the thicket of complex sociocultural situations, which reflect, by their fragmentary, spontaneous, anti-teleological, tolerant, open and sensitive acceptance, the typical post-utopian state of our contemporary era and offer a new, credible and modest way of reading.


A bilingual catalogue with textual interpretations of the project, written by the Art Director of the Salon and his assistant, will be published for the purpose of this exhibition. Isidora Nikolić will be in charge of the graphic design and visual identity of this year’s October Salon.

Members of the international jury will give three equal awards, plus the fourth award of Belgrade Cultural Centre (exhibition in 2009)
Olivier Kaeppelin/France, Roberto Lambarelli/Italy, Darka Radosavljević/Serbia, Ljiljana Slijepčević/Serbia and Grozdana Šarčević/Serbia

Founder and patron: The City Assembly of Belgrade
www.beograd.org.yu

Organiser: The Belgrade Cultural Centre
www.kcb.org.yu

Co-realisation
Solares, Fondazione delle Arti

The 48th October Salon has been supported by: the Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Serbia, Art in Culture, Arts Council Korea, SUK-CHUL KIM, Meridian Bank – Crédit, Agricole Group, Telenor, the French Cultural Centre, the American Embassy, the Austrian Cultural Forum, the Korean Embassy

Belgrade Cultural Centre

Saturday, September 22, 2007

Ant Macari: 'Fresh As Tomorrow' BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art, Gateshead, UK


ANT MACARI
"Fresh as Tomorrow"
3 September - 20 January 2008

BALTIC presents a major exhibition by emerging Newcastle-based artist Ant Macari, continuing BALTICs ongoing commitment to local artists. Macari’s direct physical response to the space has resulted in a new series of site-responsive drawings, traceable throughout the building. This presentation of Ant Macari’s work is expansive and involving, presenting new visual challenges to us in and around the gallery that reaches beyond the conventional art exhibition.

Jo Coupe: 'An Archaeology - Zabludowicz Collection' Project Space 176 London


An Archaeology

20th Sept - 16th Dec 2007

Project Space 176

A group exhibition of 38 artists from the Zabludowicz Collection curated by the Collection Curator, Elizabeth Neilson. The exhibition includes a new commission for the Collection by artist Rina Banerjee (India) based on a residency at 176. Visitors to 176 are invited to contribute their expectations and reminiscences of travel, migration and pilgrimage to Banerjee's installation.

A limited edition book comprising specially produced works by the artists featured in An Archaeology has been published on the occasion of this exhibition, and is available from the 176 bookshop.

Artists in the the exhibition:
Marcela Astorga
Rina Banerjee
Vanessa Beecroft
Candice Breitz
Cris Brodahl
Berlinde de Bruyckere
Varda Caivano
Marina de Caro
Ruth Claxton
Susan Collis
Henry Coombes
Jo Coupe
Liz Craft
Amie Dicke
Tatiana Echeverri Fernandez
Mathilde ter Heijne
Claire Hooper
Takaaki Izumi
Anya Kielar
Rachel Kneebone
Laura Lima
Renata Lucas
Sarah Lucas
Goshka Macuga
Lee Maelzer
Eline McGeorge
Matthew Monahan
Katy Moran
Liz Neal
Tim Noble & Sue Webster
Eva Rothschild
Karen Russo
Alejandra Seeber
Sigga Bjorg Sigurdardottir
Anj Smith
Eve Sussman and the Rufus Corporation
Francis Upritchard
Pae White

Matt Stokes: 'Long After Tonight' Kavi Gupta Gallery, Chicago, USA


Matt Stokes
Long After Tonight
Exhibition Dates: September 7 – October 26, 2007
Opening Reception: September 7, 5-8 PM
Gallery Hours: Tuesday – Friday, 10-6; Saturday, 11-5

Kavi Gupta Gallery is pleased to present our first solo exhibition by British artist Matt Stokes whose work is marked by an ongoing interest in cultural movements associated with underground music scenes and the uncanny way in which these events contribute to a collective social experience. The exhibition will include the award winning film Long After Tonight which earned Stokes the 2006 Beck's Futures Prize, accompanied by production photographs, film stills, and portraits of participants from the film.

Long After Tonight documents a re-creation of a Northern Soul night staged at St Salvador's Church in Dundee, Scotland – parts of which housed some of the city's first dance events of this kind during the early 1970's. Northern Soul is a term used to describe the dislocation of obscure up-tempo African-American soul music to the north of England during the sixties and seventies. ‘Northern’ nights became extremely popular events where fans gathered in discreet communal places and dance halls for all-night dance sessions. The eclectic way of dancing that emerged took cues from traditional folk to outrageous moves suggestive of forms of proto-break dancing, featuring spins, flips, and back drops. Stokes invited original participants of this scene to dance to tracks from the genre, but transposed the event to within the nave’s Gothic interior. The mix of real time and slowed down rhythm and movement of the dancers, their flowing hair, endlessly spinning skirts and loose undulating clothing, intermingle with the gilded ornate religious imagery of the church, heightening the connection between the definition of a shared religious experience with an overt feeling of nostalgia.

Accompanying the film, several photographs from Long After Tonight will be included in the exhibition. Some of the images are direct film stills that juxtapose the ornate Christian iconography within the church interior with a glistening shirtless body. Other photographs reveal a behind the scenes look at the making of the film including a wide-angled shot of the dramatically lit church interior and stark portraits taken of the participants during their warm-up session revealing the sincere personalities and countenance of these individuals.

Matt Stokes (b. 1973 lives and works in Newcastle upon Tyne, England) was the 2006 recipient of the Beck’s Futures Prize. Recent solo exhibitions include shows at espace d’arts contemporains, Geneva; ZieherSmith, NY; Temple Bar Gallery, Dublin; Collective Gallery, Edinburgh and a solo project with Workplace Gallery at the NADA Art Fair, Miami in 2006. Stokes has also been included in numerous group exhibitions including shows at MuHKA, Antwerp; Witte de With, Rotterdam; ICA, London; PS1 MOMA, NY; Dundee Contemporary Arts, Dundee; and the Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art, Gateshead.

Lost in the Rhythm’, a monograph representing Stokes’ recent projects has just been co-published by Collective Gallery, Edinburgh and Art Editions North.

Ginny Reed: 'Dot Dot, Dash Dash' Waygood, Newcastle



Ginny Reed

'Dot Dot, Dash Dash'

Installation of new works

Thursday 13th September 3 - 5.30 p.m.

The Hanging Wall
Waygood Gallery and Studios
548 - 560 Shields Road, Byker
NE6 2UT

Wednesday, July 25, 2007

Catherine Bertola, Cath Campbell, Joe Clark, Paul Merrick, Richard Rigg and Wolfgang Weileder: 'MOVED' Workplace Gallery, Gateshead, UK



MOVED

Catherine Bertola, Cath Campbell, Joe Clark, Paul Merrick, Richard Rigg, Wolfgang Weileder
28th July – 31st August 2007
Thurs - Sat, 12 -5pm (or by appointment)

Preview: Friday 27th July, 6 - 9pm

Workplace Gallery are pleased to present MOVED a group exhibition of new and existing works by six gallery artists.
This will be the last of a series of exhibitions in 34 Ellison Street Gateshead, beneath Owen Luder’s ‘Get Carter Car Park’.

MOVED shows works by artists who each reveal a tendency towards the uncovering and exploration of architectural form, site, and ideology.

Catherine Bertola has methodically filled and gilded a crack in the concrete floor of the Gallery. Bertola’s intervention is predictive of the fate of the surrounding building, and significant in its symbolic function as a ‘Seam’ - a stratum of a mineral embedded as a distinct layer or vein in other layers of rock. Bertola’s choice of material – Gold – is rich in meaning, symbolic for wealth and class, as well as alchemy and religion. The base standard for the international monetary union Gold is a material that is irreducible, basic, yet arguably lies at the heart of the motivation and aspiration for many, perhaps all, things.

Cath Campbell’s drawings and architectural models take modernism as a point of departure. Her cutout works begin by constructing a complex grid structure on a two-point perspective system within which Campbell builds her drawing before cutting away and removing vast areas of work and labor. Campbell’s architectures are constructed either from memory, imagination, or from an encounter with plans of places that are closed off and inaccessible. Titled with popular love songs such as ‘If You Leave Me Now...’ or ‘All I Need Is The Air That You Breathe’ the works occupy a space both poignantly romantic and pointlessly throwaway representing secret and intimate spaces, into which we are granted entry though acts of disclosure.

Joe Clark’s photographic works take the spaces bordering urban dwellings and industry as their subject. Taken at night on long exposure with a large format camera, Clark spends his time walking away from cities, getting lost in his explorations of places foreign and unknown to him and often returning empty handed. Once photographed Clark’s work is then subjected to a lengthy, filmic, post-production. Perspective and symmetry are subtly altered before being sealed behind acrylic; serving to further dissociate the viewer from a ‘Real’ place and push the viewer towards experience. In Clark’s work the viewer is confronted with a scene, dramatically lit, yet without event. These are works that occupy and explore the memories experienced primarily through the dramatic mode of cinema and film rather than reality.

Paul Merrick’s practice is notable for his ongoing investigation of surface and substance through repeat procedure. In previous works the impasto mark is sanded back to an absolute flatness at odds with its own image. Built from sheets of aluminum scavenged from junkyards and riveted together, Merrick’s recent work has taken a darker turn. Moving beneath the surface Merrick’s enquiry concerns itself with the raw matter of the supporting plane. Paint in these new works acts as a blanket material to conceal and hide, to bond together, or to be scratched back and reveal. As Merrick pushes the entropic logic of his new method towards collapse and dumb-down, something base is touched upon…embodying a state that can’t be easily put into words, Merrick’s new paintings nod toward redemption through their materiality and simplicity.

Richard Rigg’s work conflates the object and its ideal form (or use). Merging our ideas of ‘things’ with their physical limits Rigg finds the reflexive crux point in his self-referential sculptures. In ‘Piano’ he has retuned a domestic Piano to the note ‘C’. The mid point of the stave, ‘Middle C’ represents compromise and balance, a middle way. Conforming to this ideal the Instrument is placed under extreme tension, making it a dangerous object ready to spring. Rigg’s work functions like a trap, catching us somewhere between object, definition of object, and use of object. His work can be both tautological and contradictory at the same time, inhabiting the realms of paradox. For Rigg, everyday objects become a proposition or conundrum that ultimately (and unnervingly) unpick and destabilise themselves, and us.

Wolfgang Weileder's latest photograph and film ‘Transfer’ derives from an architectural project commissioned by Milton Keynes Gallery, wherein each of the four walls of the white cube space is built and unbuilt - one at a time - in white concrete block work. The optimism of building and its oppositional force of demolition and deconstruction dissolving together into an eternal palimpsest maintained through Weileders photography: Super long exposure images burnt through a pinhole lens onto film during weeks. Through his practice Weileder challenges us to accept activity and project as photograph, and thus accept photograph as sculpture. Weileders works bleed into each other; documentary and actuality substitute one another. Interrogating architecture and the impulse to build Weileder renders buildings as object, and therefore invests them with the same values, inadequacies, and impermanence’s, revealing the sad truths intrinsic to the spaces which we inhabit.


MOVED marks the end of Workplace Gallery’s occupancy of 34 Ellison Street in Owen Luder’s Trinity Court Shopping Centre, better known as the ‘Get Carter Car Park’ after its prominent appearance as the backdrop to Mike Hodges’ ‘Get Carter’ (1971) starring Michael Caine. Luder’s ‘Trinity Court Shopping Centre’ is exemplary of a key point in the architectural landscape of the UK and the development of ‘Brutalism’. Deriving its name from ‘Béton brut’ (French for exposed concrete) a phrase coined by the influential Swiss Architect Le Corbusier, In Post-war Britain ‘Brutalism’ became synonymous with socially progressive utopian ideology, and in the coming years with the failure of that ideology to develop fully and positively. Only in recent years has Brutalism been re-examined and reinvigorated as a significant and important Architectural style in the UK.

Brutalism is characterised by raw and unadorned functionality and a rejection of decorative superfluity. It’s internationalist modernist forms stand as a counterpoint to classical architectural form, which represent an imperialist dialogue of centre and province. Locating itself within such architecture, Workplace Gallery has found this building paradigmatic of our position as a group of artists initially living and working in the North East of England and our conviction to reassert our position within the mainstream of international culture, outside of any notions of provincialism.

Trinity Court is due to be demolished later this year by Tesco’s and Gateshead Council. The ‘Get Carter Car Park’ will be replaced with a new supermarket development as part of Gateshead Town Centre’s regeneration strategy.

Workplace Gallery will continue to deliver a programme of exhibitions, and we will be announcing our new location soon…

Monday, July 16, 2007

Miles Thurlow: "Morro", Projecto 270, Lisbon, Portugal






Images:
Untitled 2007 Miles Thurlow, Melamine and Chipboard
"New State" 2007 Miles Thurlow, Graphite on Paper, Chicken Coop


"Morro"

Pedro Barateiro
Hugo Canoilas
Vasco Costa
Nuno Faria
Teresa Gillespie
André Maranha
Pedro Tropa
Francisco Tropa
Ruben Santiago
Sancho Silva
Miles Thurlow


Press release

Projecto270 has the pleasure of announcing the project Morro, happening in our organic farm, at Costa da Caparica, until October 15th.

The Morro project was developed by Vasco Costa and Hugo Canoilas starting from notions of construction, popular architecture, of the historical references of K. Schwitters’ Merzbau and the work of Helio Oiticica. From these initial premises, was then formulated the project of a temporary construction to be developed in this space as an artistic intervention, through the collaboration with 7 other artists.

Starting from a common base structure, each participant will develop his intervention on the work of the previous artist, carrying on with its work as a creative capital to offer the next one. The barriers of authorship and the notions of an art of the need are here well present in a project that involves: Pedro Barateiro, Hugo Canoilas, Vasco Costa, Nuno Faria, Teresa Gillespie, André Maranha, Pedro Tropa, Francisco Tropa, Ruben Santiago, Sancho Silva and Miles Thurlow.

Each author will develop his project during a period of fifteen days. Between each intervention there will not be any period of interruption of the works, by which we invite you to visit the work in progress every day between the 10 and 18 p.m., until October 15th.

Subsequently it will be developed a DVD edition by Nuno Faria and Pedro Tropa on this project.

........

O projecto Morro continua a decorrer na exploração agricola do projecto270, na Costa da Caparica.

Artista residente de 01 a 15 de Julho: Miles Thurlow

O projecto Morro foi desenvolvido por Vasco Costa e Hugo Canoilas partindo de noções de construção, arquitectura popular, das referências históricas da Merzbau de K. Schwitters e da obra de Helio Oiticica.
Apartir destas premissas, foi formulado o projecto de uma construção de carácter provisório a realizar neste espaco como intervenção artística, através da colaboração com 7 outros artistas.

Partindo de uma estrutura base, cada participante desenvolverá a sua intervenção sobre o trabalho do artista anterior, realizando o seu trabalho como capital criativo a dar ao próximo.
As barreiras de autoria e as noções de uma arte da necessidade estão aqui bem presentes num projecto que envolve:
Pedro Barateiro, Hugo Canoilas, Vasco Costa, Nuno Faria, Teresa Gillespie, André Maranha, Pedro Tropa, Francisco Tropa, Ruben Santiago, Sancho Silva e Miles Thurlow.

Cada autor desenvolverá o seu projecto durante um periodo de quinze dias.
Entre cada intervenção não existirá qualquer periodo de interrupção dos trabalhos, pelo que convidamos a visitar o trabalho em processo de desenvolvimento todos os dias entre as 10 e as 18 horas, até 15 de Outubro.

Será posteriormente desenvolvida uma edição em DVD por Nuno Faria e Pedro Tropa em torno deste projecto.


Mais informações: Tânia Simões
Telefone: 91 824 1550
e-mail: mail@projecto270.com
www.projecto270.com
www.myspace.com/projecto270

Thursday, June 28, 2007

Darren Banks "GODDESS" : British & European Legs - Outpost, Norwich



Darren Banks
"GODDESS"

Workplace Gallery is pleased to present GODDESS a new installation by Darren Banks

commissioned as part of British and European Legs organised by OUTPOST in Norwich.

July 2nd –21st, private view Sunday 1st July 2007

http://www.norwichoutpost.org/ for further information

The centrepiece of the exhibition (which gives its name to the installation) is a sculpture made from a carefully arranged jumble of second-hand plastic domestic objects circa 1970-1980. When these objects were manufactured they represented the future, the ultra – modern, a world of labour saving devices and beige plastic living. For Banks ‘Goddess’ represents a maquette of a monument constructed to signify new beginnings, renewal and improvement looking towards the reappraisal of modernist sculpture and signifying a need to recover a sense of freedom and expression.

Alongside 'Goddess' is a new video work entitled ‘It’s Not The End of The World’. The result of another attempt to start afresh, this musical-disaster-movie is made up of an assemblage of clips from Banks’ own video collection; 'Blue Planet', 'Meteor', 'Secrets of the Ocean Realm' and 'Contact' among others come together to create a life-cycle which Banks toys with, destroys, and re-makes.

Both works are framed by ‘Their Fantastical Landscape’ a large billboard/wallpaper appropriated from the work of Roger Dean. Originally used as the inside gatefold to the album ‘Close to the Edge’ by 70s prog. Rock band ‘Yes’ the backdrop brings in a domestic fantasy into which the other works are given the opportunity of an entirely new context.

Darren Banks is represented by Workplace Gallery
www.workplacegallery.co.uk

OUTPOST's ambitious project contribution to Contemporary Art Norwich 2007, 'OUTPOST presents British & European Legs' - invites 10 artist led organisation - 5 UK & 5 European based - to visit Norwich during July & August to run temporary gallery/project spaces within the city centre. The organisations have each been asked to reflect OUTPOST's core exhibition programming approach, by presenting the work of a single artist.

The invited organisations and the artists presenting are:

JULY 2nd -21st (UK)
The Royal Standard, Liverpool - Sean Hawkridge
S1 Artspace, Sheffield - Torsten Lauschmann
Workplace Gallery, Gateshead - Darren Banks
Bureau, Salford - Dave Griffiths
Moot, Nottingham - Jonty Lees

AUGUST 2nd - 21st (European)
F.a.i.t. Krakow - R.E.P.
Transmission Gallery, Glasgow - Lotte Gertz
General public, Berlin - Erika Mustermann
Het Wilde Weten, Rotterdam - Niels Post
Les Complices*, Zurich - Edit Oderbolz

'British & European Legs' Symposium Saturday 28th July - a day of short presentations by the participating organisations and exhibiting artists.

Wednesday, June 27, 2007

Marcus Coates Solo Exhibition: Whitechapel Gallery, London





Marcus Coates
Whitechapel Gallery, London, UK

27 June - 5 August 2007.
Opening preview 27 June, 6.30 - 9pm

Baying at a gathering of baffled Liverpudlian housewives dressed as a reindeer, Marcus Coates has also adopted the psyche of a seal and trained people to mimic the dawn chorus. Made into curiously poignant films, Coates’ performances recall the animal cults of pre modern societies. Yet their evocation of the spiritual role of animals in culture is combined with a dead pan documentary style. In the cold light of everyday life, his aspiration to harness the magic of nature is absurd, yet unexpectedly profound.

Admission free

Saturday, June 23, 2007

Darren Banks, Catherine Bertola & Marcus Coates in Metteurs en Scène, Embassy Gallery, Edinburgh


Metteurs en Scène

Embassy Gallery
Edinburgh

23rd June - 15th July 2007

Opening Night: Friday 22nd June 7-9pm

Marcus Coates
Catherine Bertola
Darren Banks
Susie Green
Ilana Mitchell



Dirigé près MSc Contemporary Art Theory
Centre pour des études Visuelles et Culturelles
Edimbourg Ecole des Beaux-Arts

Curated by students currently completing the MSc in Contemporary Art Theory in the Centre for Visual & Cultural Studies at Edinburgh College of Art, this group exhibition brings together the work of artists associated with the artist-led Star and Shadow Cinema in Newcastle (Susie Green and Ilana Mitchell) and Workplace Gallery in Gateshead (Marcus Coates, Catherine Bertola and Darren Banks). The work they have selected can be seen to explore the concept of mise en scene via film, video and installation. Scene-setting and staging is paramount here, with discreete installations and tableau being construed as taking the form of 'sets'.

The curators are metteurs-en-scène since they seek to bring together the different perspectives of a number of artists and their organisational contexts in the North East of England rather focusing on the vision of a singular director. They want to make it explicit to the audience that they are simply a group working with other groups - and in turn highlight the synergies between The Embassy and similar independent organisations such as Star and Shadow and Workplace. By posing the question of authorship in relation to the dusty concept of mise-en- scène borrowed from film theory, they hope to illustrate how spaces can be given a sense of identity through the influence of many different components and the collaborative investment of artists.

Saturday, June 02, 2007

Jennifer Douglas "The Wood Between The Worlds" Workplace Gallery, Gateshead, UK


Jennifer Douglas
The Wood between the Worlds

Workplace Gallery, 34 Ellison Street, Gateshead, UK, NE8 1AY

2nd June – 7th July 2007
Thurs - Sat, 12 -5pm (or by appointment)

Preview: Friday 1st June, 6 - 9pm


Workplace Gallery are pleased to present ‘The Wood between the Worlds’ a solo exhibition of new works by Jennifer Douglas.

Taking its title directly from C. S. Lewis’s book ‘The Magicians Nephew’ (part of ‘Chronicles of Narnia’) where The Wood is a 'linking room' between the protagonists real and fantasy worlds Douglas’s exhibition invites us to test our boundaries and preconceived notions of objects and space, fiction and reality in a series of new works.

Douglas’s work compels us to unravel a multiplicity of meaning entangled in the formality of all kinds of objects and procedures. Spanning drawing, sculpture, and installation her work reveals structures of thought that are both abstract and literal. Her materials are carefully selected for their distinctive qualities or characteristics: painted wooden shapes, brightly coloured ropes and twines, luminous reflective plastics, and dirty pools of pigmented latex engage us in an aesthetic vocabulary that is idiosyncratic and unmistakably her own.

This immediate sense of playful intuition belies a far more rigorous and demanding investigation of ‘matter’ and its conceptual significance. Key to the work is Douglas’s ongoing exploration of colour through several stages. Firstly, colour inherent in and applied to the found object; then in relation to architectural and sculptural space; and finally in a reinterpretation of the above that in turn informs her drawings and collage.

As you move through Douglas’s work her drawings begin to act as codes that need to be cracked before you can attempt to fully experience her sculpture and installation:

“Through the process of making the drawings I start to illustrate materials and processes that I use when making sculpture - the drawings are my method of thinking through the making of an object or collections of objects to form a sculpture”

The sculpture acts in the same way, whereby through the process of making and experimenting with material, form, and placement one is led to a place where the sculpture provides an entry point back into the drawing. Douglas’s installations become a place of transition ‘betwixt and between’ worlds of understanding, where indeterminacy and disorientation enable an opening up to something new.

“There is a strong relationship therefore between the making of both drawings and sculptures as they are undertaken in a similar way, that’s why I think its difficult to separate them in exhibiting them as the one informs the other both visually and in the way that I make them.”

Jennifer Douglas was born in Amersham, England in 1975 and studied Fine Art at Newcastle University before moving to Glasgow in 2003 where she completed an MA in Fine Art at Glasgow School of Art. Her works have been shown in galleries and museums internationally including at Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art (Gateshead), Tramway (Glasgow), Hales Gallery (London), Museum of the Central Academy of Fine Arts Beijing (China), and Tensta Konstall, Stockholm (Sweden). Forthcoming projects include a new billboard commission for The Jerwood Space, London. In 2007 Jennifer Douglas received an Arts Council England Award towards the research and development of new work. Douglas currently lives and works in Gateshead.

All works are shown courtesy of the artist and Workplace Gallery.

A text by John Calcutt accompanies the exhibition.

For further information and images from the exhibition please email: info@workplacegallery.co.uk or telephone: +44 (0)191 4774784

Marcus Coates: "The Hamsterwheel" The Arsenale, Venice.




THE HAMSTERWHEEL

Artists: Jean - Marc Bustamante, Urs Fischer, Olivier Garbay, gelitin, Douglas Gordon, Rachel Harrison, Sarah Lucas, Paola Pivi, Rudolf Polanszky, Ugo Rondinone, Tamuna Sirbiladze, Una Szeemann, Piotr Uklanski, Franz West, Toby Ziegler.

The video box: offers a free choice of videos arranged by Veit Loers, based on the principle of a juke box that plays selected films including:

John Bock, Marcus Coates, Christian Jankowski, Erik van Lieshout, José Ruiz Gonzalez, Antonio Ortega, Peter Fischli / David Weiss, Georg Herold, Annika Ström, Thomas Zipp, Ralf Ziervogel, David Zink Yi, Tamuna Sirbiladze, Mark Leckey, Hans Weigand, Jonathan Monk, Rudolf Polanszky.


The venue: TESA DELLA NUOVISSIMA 105, Arsenale di Venezia

ACTV: 41,42, 51, 52; Fermata: Bacini

Entrance: Spazio Thetis

Opening: 7th june, 4pm

Opening concert featuring Philipp Quehenberger, ddkern & Marco Eneidi

Duration: june 8th - 26th august

www.hamsterwheel.eu

The Exhibition The Hamsterwheel will be shown more extensively at the

Festival de Printemps de Septembre in Toulouse -

From the 21st september until 14th october 2007.

Opening: 21st september, 6pm

www.printempsdeseptembre.com

Matt Stokes: '[un]promised land' Attitudes espace d'arts contemporains, Geneva



Matt Stokes
[un]promised land

du 23 mai au 7 juillet 2007
vernissage le mardi 22 mai, dès 18 heures
exposition ouverte du mercredi au samedi de 15 à 19h et sur rendez-vous

Sacred Selections à la Basilique de Valère, à Sion, le samedi 26 mai

L’artiste anglais Matt Stokes construit son œuvre à partir de recherches dans le champ de l’anthropologie culturelle. Il s’intéresse à des événements ou des mouvements qui rassemblent les gens, et sélectionne des sujets spécifiques à un contexte. Ses projets artistiques sont souvent développés sur des bases collaboratives avec divers types d’interlocuteurs.
Nous avons découvert son travail au ICA de Londres, à l'occasion de l'exposition du prix artistique Beck’s Future 2006, dont il a été le lauréat. Son projet à attitudes - [un]promised land (terre [non]-promise) –, qui s'articule autour de trois œuvres de formes différentes, mais intimement liées, constitue sa première exposition personnelle hors du Royaume Uni.
Le film Long After Tonight, tourné en super 16mm dans l'église San Salvador de Dundee, est le théâtre d'une insolite soirée dansante, réactivation d'un type d'événements fréquents dans les années 1970. Aux lents cadrages sur la nef et les ornements succèdent des plans rapprochés sur les corps d'hommes et de femmes qui s'embrasent sur des rythmes Northern Soul. Par contraste, le travelling arrière de la scène finale permet de découvrir l'environnement austère et brumeux de cette ville typique du sud de l'Ecosse. Ce film laisse entrevoir la rudesse du quotidien et évoque le poids de la religion par le biais de l'architecture qui est ici investie pour un événement festif.
L'ensemble Real Arcadia est une recherche sur l’histoire de Out House Promotions, un groupe aujourd’hui défunt qui a organisé des événements Acid House au nord de l’Angleterre. Matt Stokes archive et interprète cette expérience clandestine, en collectant des objets et des témoignages de membres de l’organisation, de participants aux soirées, d’habitants et de propriétaires de la région, ou encore de policiers, et analyse ainsi l’identité de la Rave culture et l’impact de ses idéaux perdus.

Les événements performatifs Sacred Selections visent à rassembler des gens qui ont des centres d’intérêt contrastés, soit l’orgue ancien, les musiques underground et l’art contemporain. Des morceaux de styles populaires dans le nord de l’Angleterre – Northern Soul, Happy Hardcore et Black Metal – ont été sélectionnés par des DJ et transcrits par des membres du Royal College of Organists, puis sont joués sur des grandes orgues lors de récitals expérimentaux. En écho à l’exposition [un]promised land, nous proposons un récital de Happy Hardcore, sélectionné par DJ Sy et transcrit par John Riley, qui sera interprété par l’organiste anglais Paul Ayres sur le plus ancien orgue jouable au monde et dans le cadre exceptionnel de la Basilique de Valère à Sion.

L'exposition de Matt Stokes est réalisée grâce à un partenariat avec
la Banca del Gottardo et à un soutien du British Council.

Tuesday, May 15, 2007

Peter J Evans at Spacex, Exeter



Peter J Evans
Spacex, Exeter

19 May - 14 July 2007
Fascinated by systems and patterns, Evans explores how such structures can be found even in supposed chaos. Ideas about movement, memory, time, the un-quantifiable, and aesthetic beauty inform his practice, which finds an affinity with Russell Hoban's wrtings concerning 'the moment under the moment'. He seeks to create metaphorical maps of the visible and invisible links between objects and sensations, combining the concrete and the philosophical.

Spacex presents the first solo exhibition by Peter J. Evans comprising new works which will occupy, inhabit and rupture the gallery space through intricate layered wall drawings and floor-based structures. These works seek to describe the silent spaces within each moment, when things are moving, shifting into new ground, syncing or dispersing.

Cath Campbell: 'Build It and They Will Come' The Travelling Gallery



Build It and They Will Come
The Travelling Gallery

Cath Campbell
Donna Conlon
Will Duke
Matthew Houlding
Toby Paterson
Susie Wright

Touring 12th April to 29th June 2007

The brand new Travelling Gallery vehicle begins its first tour this April with an exhibition featuring artists whose work is inspired by architecture and the built environment. The exhibiting artists are Cath Campbell, Donna Conlon, Will Duke, Matthew Houlding, Toby Paterson and Susie Wright. Matthew Houlding will show new work commissioned specially for the new Travelling Gallery and as a response to the new design.

The concept of the exhibition was inspired by the process of commissioning and building the new Travelling Gallery. This involved working with architects Sutherland Hussey for the interior and artist Mandy McIntosh, who created the exterior design.

The exhibition will be complemented by a series of artist-led workshops and events, focussing on design and architecture and will include a full colour Education Pack for venues/groups.

To find out if the gallery will be visiting a venue near you, have a look at the current tour dates and locations page.

Wednesday, April 11, 2007

"False Winess" Workplace Gallery, Gateshead, UK


False Witness

Eric Bainbridge, Marcus Coates, Francis Gomila & Alonso Gil, Laura Lancaster, Ant Macari, Cecilia Stenbom

Workplace Gallery, 34 Ellison Street, Gateshead, NE8 1AY, UK
www.workplacegallery.co.uk info@workplacegallery.co.uk

7th April – 12th May 2007
Thurs - Sat, 12 -5pm (or by appointment)

Preview: Good Friday 6th April, 6 - 9pm

Workplace Gallery are pleased to present False Witness - a group exhibition of new and existing works by six gallery artists. Drawing its title from the Ninth Commandment: Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbour. (Exodus 20:16) False Witness explores moral ambiguity concealed at the periphery of artworks initially presented in the more or less orthodox guises of Drawing, Performance, Sculpture, Sound, and Video which are then corrupted through multi - faceted cultural referencing.

Eric Bainbridge experienced culture shock in Bangkok. There on a British Council residency Bainbridge speaks of a place of extremes where the sacred and profane coexist and merge, the artists awe and terror embodied in Bangkok’s river - the Chao Phraya - a constant brown ooze from the heart of the jungle, a place where you don’t survive. Bainbridge’s series of Bangkok Sculptures present a New Modernism. His cool refined structures articulate space and modernist architectural ideals as a strategy of escape from the engulfing sweaty humidity of a city known as much from a western eye for its cheapness of life and sex industry as it is for its traditional heritage of religion and culture. Despite the Artist’s attempts Bangkok seeps back in through the tropical hardwoods of Indonesian DIY stores, fake melamine, and a cheap looking novelty light bulb winking flirtatiously from purple to blue to green to red…

Marcus Coates’ 2006 HD film Radio Shaman is documentation of an interview on Norwegian Radio where Coates, a polite Englishman in suit, spectacles, and stag skin, continues in his role of Shaman to provide his services to the people of Stavanger, a middle class Norwegian town dealing with a sudden influx of Nigerian immigrants bringing with them the social problems of poverty, prostitution, and a spread of HIV. Coates’ film explores these issues, taboo in Norwegian society, by performing a Shamanic ritual in the local centres of Religion, Politics and on the street corner. Coates’ role as Shaman in the film meets straightforward acceptance, with strangely no questioning of the authenticity of such a figure regardless of his deadpan delivery. We as audience are given a persuasive middle class gentleman of an idol in whom we can choose to believe.

Francis Gomila & Alonso Gil’s collaboration consists of a compilation of all the known versions of the Cuban classic Guantanamera forming an endless soundtrack for the ground floor of the Gallery. Guantanamera reflects upon the use of music as an instrument of torture by US Armed forces on their detainees in Afghanistan, Iraq and Guantanamo Bay. Originally sited in a subway ventilator shaft during Arco Madrid earlier this year the work simultaneously created havoc and entertainment day and night. Whilst the city’s legendary nightlife welcomed the new accompaniment to their bar and restaurant hopping, during the daytime nearby banks and businesses reacted strongly against the repetitive and continuous music, compounded by the inaccessibility to the amplification equipment and its awkward proximity to Madrid’s main Metro line.

Laura Lancaster has made a new installation for the exhibition. Upon finding a photographic album of an anonymous young woman at a local market, Lancaster took to the procedural task of copying each photograph as a drawing onto the dedicatory pages torn from old second hand books. On closer inspection the occasional photograph reveals a portrait of Hitler in the living room of ordinary domesticity, and the ink of Nazi beaurocracy rubber-stamped on official photographs. It transpires that the young woman, like many Germans of that era, is a member of the Nazi party. By making generic this archive of images and occasions, birthdays, holidays, parties, and dances, Lancaster’s work draws out a question from within our initial nostalgic response, revealing a darker shadow behind the empathy and sentiment that is initially evoked.

Ant Macari’s new wall drawing How To Beat Children is an illustrated text from Bernard Shaw’s 1903 drama Man & Superman, a Don Juan themed comedy which itself is a deeper reflection on Nietzsche’s philosophical ideas of an Ubermensch. This contentious excerpt, overtly provocative in a gallery setting, hides partially behind Macari’s over elaborate decorative illuminations. Made in magic marker referencing the typographic vernacular of 1920’s American East Coast Tattoos and their indelible proclamations, Macari’s work is oblique and coded, always turning away from easy reading.

Cecilia Stenbom’s subject is herself. Through the means of narcissistic projection into fantastical roles such as a US Marine, Police Cop, or Multilingual Translator she finds a way to examine contemporary culture. Stenbom exposes our desires by appropriating genres of mass media and commodity such as advertising, documentary and the TV movie, absurdly fulfilling the expectations that those genres set up. In her Search & Destroy series Stenbom is an unlikely Vietnam Veteran crawling through the dunes of Druridge Bay in Northumberland to a reportage narrative medley gleaned from Apocalypse Now, Platoon and Full Metal Jacket. Forming a knowingly amateurish pastiche, Stenbom carries through to completion the wants of a culture constantly beckoning to a place that should never be reached.

For further information and images from the exhibition please email: info@workplacegallery.co.uk or telephone: +44 (0)191 4774784

Marcus Coates: "Dark Mirror" Nederlands Instituut voor Mediakunst


Friday March 30th from 17.00 h. opening
Dark Mirror
Carlos Amorales, Emmanuelle Antille, Marcus Coates, Mike Stubbs, Mark Wallinger
Works from the collection Rick Buckley, Charlemagne Palestine, Jeremy Drummond, Sebastian Diaz Morales, Sterling Rub y, Joanna Rytel and Servaas.
Exhibition from March 31 - May 20

Dark Mirror is a group exhibition that explores man and his social conditioning in relation to the animal nature of man. Internationally renowned artists guide us through the borderlands between rational man and brute beasts. This is a twilight realm where emotion and instinct come to the fore and social conditioning seems to ebb away. The participating artists respond, each in their own manner, to their environment, so that aspects such as social codes, nature and animal emerge as subjects in the works. More information: http://www.montevideo.nl
Walking Conference
March 31
Man is a wolf to man. In cooperation with the Night of Philosophy
Conducted by philosopher Katja Rodenburg
Drawing on the works in the exhibition, we will be exploring the boundary in ourselves between man and animal. At what point can we say animals begin to become human, and where does man shade off into beast? Together with the French philosopher Georges Bataille (1897-1962) we will tackle this intriguing question, an issue that the first men already visualized in the paintings in the famous caves at Lascaux.
Your guides are: Katja Rodenburg (philosopher), Marga van Mechelen (art hi storian, University of Amsterdam) and Petra Heck (curator Netherlands Media Art Institute).
Start: 21.00 h.
Door open: 20.30 h.
Admission € 5,- (students 3,50)
Reservations info@montevideo.nl T 020 6237101

Free entrance to the Walking Conference for visitors of the Night of Philosophy. http://www.maandvandefilosofie.nl


Nederlands Instituut voor Mediakunst
Keizersgracht 264
1016 EV
Amsterdam
Nederland
Tel: 020 6237101
Email: info@montevideo.nl

Tuesday, March 13, 2007

Laura Lancaster in 'Salon 2007: New British Painting and Works on Paper' London



ART WORK PRODUCTIONS presents...
'Salon 2007 : New British Painting and Works on
Paper'
Venue: 319 Portobello Road, London, W10 5SY
Dates: 9th - 31st March 2007

Art Work Productions are pleased to present 'Salon 2007 : New British Painting and Works on Paper', an exhibition curated by Flora Fairbairn and Sotiris Kyriacou.
Bringing together an eclectic range of artists who explore ways of working with the image in the 21st century, Salon 2007 will look at a cross-section of British artists who revitalize the legacy of figuration. The exhibition is not claiming that conceptual approaches to the image are anything new or particular to British work; rather, it explores a prevalent trend manifesting itself in very diverse and dynamic ways in current practice. Taken as an opportunity to showcase some of the most interesting work in painting, drawing, prints and collage being made in Britain, Salon 2007 brings together work by: Colin Allen, Salvatore Arancio, Paul Archard, Edwina Ashton, Chris Barr, Vanessa Billy, Anna Boggon, Andrea Büttner, Guillermo Caivano, Ruth Claxton, Oliver Clegg, Joel Croxson, Sophie de Stempel, Andrea Dettmar, Graham Dolphin, Sarah Douglas, Matthew Draper, Jason Dungan, Lloyd Durling, Nicola Durvasula, Haris Epaminonda, Nadine Feinson, Nick Fox, Sam Griffin, Alex Hamilton, Diane Howse, Mustafa Hulusi, Thomas Hylander, Amy Ison, Eri Itoi, Annie Kevans, Adam King, Laura Lancaster, Wolfe Lenkiewicz, Peter Liversidge, Andrew McDonald, James McLellan, Nicholas Mobbs, Heather & Ivan Morison, Alicia Paz,
Emma Puntis, Jo Robertson, Nike Savvas, Rachel Shannon, Phoebe Unwin, Hanneline Visnes, John Wallbank, Miranda Whall, Maria Zahle and Adam Zoltowski.

Opening hours: 11am – 7pm Wednesday to Saturday and by
appointment
For further information and images please contact Rowena Chiu (Exhibition Organiser)
+44(0)7852 964 352 or info@artworkproductions.net

Darren Banks, Catherine Bertola, Cath Campbell, Marcus Coates & Matt Stokes in Art Futures at Bloomberg Space, London



"A pilgrimage for the canny art buyer, ARTfutures is a Mecca of contemporary art stars."
Jessica Lack, The Guardian, 3/3/07
Where: Bloomberg SPACE, 50 Finsbury Square, London EC2A 1HD
When: Tuesday 13 March 11-6pm, Wednesday 14 March 11-9pm - late night last chance!
Free Admission
Curated tours/information/advice offered on request
For a full list of artists who are showing at ARTfutures 2007, go to
www.artfutures.org.uk/docs/artists.htm

Thursday, February 15, 2007

Darren Banks, Catherine Bertola, Cath Campbell, Peter J Evans and Richard Forster in "The Opposite of Vertigo"



The Opposite of Vertigo

8 February - 18 March 2007
Darren Banks, Catherine Bertola, Cath Campbell, Alex Charrington, Layla Curtis, Graham Dolphin, Peter Evans, Richard Forster.Kevin Mason, Karl Nattress.
A group exhibition of emerging artists based in the North East of England, curated by Jon Bewley, Director, Locus +, Newcastle-upon-Tyne. Linking the drawing in this exhibition is an intense physicality, with each work betraying the process of its production.

Tuesday, February 13, 2007

Marcus Coates: "Dawn Chorus" at BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art



Marcus Coates: Dawn Chorus

Metamorphosis through voice and sound is a state that Coates has long been exploring, and he has established a reputation for producing fascinating films in which the human voice accurately mimics complex and beautiful birdsong. Dawn Chorus is the latest and most ambitious project in this series.

Dawn Chorus uses unique digital methods to explore the relationship between birdsong and the human voice, drawing out previously unexplored similarities between the behaviour of birds and humans.

Dawn Chorus is an ambitious exhibition comprising films of 17 singers that uncannily recreate birdsong in their ‘natural habitats'. The individuals are located in various situations such as an underground car-park, an osteopathic clinic and a bath-tub, the project is as much a portrait of British idiosyncrasies as it is of the natural world. The films are hung on screens in the gallery according to the position of the birds when they were recorded, creating an immersive soundscape for visitors to the exhibition.

During rigorous fieldwork 14 microphones were placed around woodland to record birds during one morning of birdsong in Northumberland. This study is the first, simultaneous, multi-microphone recording of individual birds during the dawn chorus. From this multi-track recording each song was slowed down up to 16 times, then each human participant was filmed mimicking this slowed down song. Finally the resulting video footage was then speeded up, returning the bird mimicry into its ‘real' register. The speeding up of the film not only magically translates the human voice into bird song, but also emphasises unconscious gestures that appear uncannily similar to the physical behaviour of specific birds; a grandfather becomes a pheasant andteachers in a staffroom transform into chiffchaffs, robins and blue tits.

Picture This has worked with Marcus Coates and birdsong expert and wildlife sound recordist Geoff Sample over a three year period to support all aspects of the project, from scientific research and field work, to sourcing and filming singers and presenting the exhibition. The project has been funded by the Wellcome Trust.

Exhibition
14 February - 18 March, 2007, BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art, Gateshead

Publication
A new Picture This InProfile DVD publication containing excerpts from Dawn Chorus and other works by Marcus Coates as well as an interview with the artist and a specially commissioned essay by Max Andrews is available spring 2007.

To Celebrate the opening of Dawn Chorus by Marcus Coates at Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art,
Picture This and Workplace Gallery invite you to join us at Star and Shadow Bar & Cinema from
9pm until late on Tuesday 13th February.
http://www.starandshadow.org.uk/

Sunday, February 04, 2007

Marcus Coates: "Waterlog" Norwich Castle Museum & Art Gallery





Waterlog

Marcus Coates
Tacita Dean
Alexander & Susan Maris
Alec Finlay & Guy Moreton
Simon Pope

Saturday 3 Feb - Sunday 15th April 2007
Preview
2nd Feb 2007, 6 - 8pm
Norwich Castle Museum & Art Gallery

Participation has long been an important aspect of Marcus Coates’ practice, and in particular the notion of ‘becoming animal’, that is, taking on an animal’s characteristics as either a spiritual journey, or one that imitates basic behaviour. For ‘Waterlog’, Coates has created two new and related works, both of which explore the cultural mythology of one of the region’s most elusive birds: the bittern. In a long display case are placed eleven unstuffed bittern specimens – known as ‘skins’ – from the museum’s natural history collection, representing the total number of males recorded in Britain in 1997, the lowest figure since the 1950s, and from which the current population has subsequently grown. Emanating from this rather macabre display, as if from the dead birds themselves, is a song of bitterns and bitterness composed and performed by the artist in a local accent, itself a warning – and perhaps example – of man’s folly.

The bittern has long been perceived as a messenger of doom, perhaps due to its deep, booming call; this can be heard at regular intervals within the rotunda of the Castle Museum, around which can also be read the following quotation from the Old Testament’s Book of Zephaniah: ‘the bittern shall lodge in the upper lintels of it; their voice shall sing in the windows; desolation shall be in the thresholds.’ Given that this warning concerns the Lord’s destruction of the city of Nineveh, now known as the Iraqi city of Mosul, these words possess a distressing contemporary relevance.

Miles Thurlow: "Good Riddance", MOT International, UK



Drawing: Erased and Removed, Miles Thurlow 1998 - 2000
Empty Frames, John Clayman 2006


GOOD RIDDANCE.
3 February – 10 March 2007.
Open Fri, Sat, Sun 12-5 or by appointment
Private View 2 February 6-9pm.
Brown Sierra, John Clayman, Paul Davis, Jem Finer, Leo Fitzmaurice, Miles Thurlow, Lawrence Weiner
What happens if, rather than add-on, build-up, fill-in or replace, you get-rid-of something instead? Can getting-rid-of be constructive, progressive and forward looking, and not just destructive, nostalgic, or somehow redemptive? Can taking-away open things up, push things forward and create new lines of enquiry? Good Riddance looks to explore and expand on these thoughts and questions by inviting people to think, or think again, about the means and potential of taking-away. The exhibition brings together work by seven contemporary artists in response to the idea of taking-away and getting-rid-of as a means of making.


The artists in Good Riddance use a variety of media including sound, film and text. Most adopt a manual approach to modify, adapt and transform existing objects and forms through a process of taking-away. Through this process, things are gained rather than lost.


Brown Sierra (Paddy Collins & Pia Gambardella) is a London-based collective that works predominantly with sound and mechanical interventions. Brown Sierra’s Reduced Mechanical Sound Scapes comprise of found music box mechanisms from which teeth on the rotating drum have been filed-down to create sparse new compositions. For the exhibition, Brown Sierra will also install a wall of electrical ‘silences’.


John Clayman is a London-based artist, who, for the last two years, has been digitally manipulating black and white photographs from art textbooks. Empty Frames is a selection of iconic images of site-specific artworks made between 1955 and 1997 with the artwork painstakingly removed. What remains is a sequence of seemingly banal, but oddly familiar images presented here as a 35mm-slide show.


Paul Davis is a London-based artist, DJ, and founding-member of the ‘Beige’ art collective and the media arts company ‘Lektrolab’. For the exhibition, Davis has created a digital work from a ‘hacked’ Super Mario Brothers game cartridge. All of the game code has been removed, leaving behind an ever-changing stream of digital imagery generated by the primary data stored on the cartridge.


Jem Finer is a London-based artist and musician. His responses to Good Riddance have drawn on ideas of reduction and entropy. Finer has produced a time-lapse film that records the gradual accumulation of dust on a record over a period of months. Reduced to the original length of the recorded song, as the dust accrues the sound becomes increasingly muffled, until finally, it falls silent.


Leo Fitzmaurice is an artist based on Merseyside. His work includes floor and wall installations made from commercial packages, such as cigarette cartons and cereal boxes, from which all sections of text have been removed. Rather than being simply an anti-brand intervention, these ‘reverse collages’ invite new and surprising understandings of space, structure and identity.


Miles Thurlow is an artist based on Tyneside. He will be re-staging his piece Drawing: Erased and Removed (2000), which emerged from a laborious, process of applying/erasing graphite to/from an ink soaked board leant against a wall. Thurlow eventually abandoned this process and got-rid-of the board altogether, leaving behind grubby handprints on the wall and eraser ‘droppings’ on the floor, which unexpectedly became the work.


Lawrence Weiner is a New York-based artist. He will be participating in Good Riddance with a seminal text work – REMOVALS HALFWAY BETWEEN THE EQUATOR AND THE NORTH POLE (1969, #096) – that proposes any number of possible dimensions, scales, variables and possibilities, as well as all manner of motives and consequences.


Curated by Claire Davies and Sam Gathercole

http://www.motinternational.org

MOT
Unit 54/5th floor Regents Studios
8 Andrews Road London E8 4QN

t/f +44(0)20 7923 9561

e info@motinternational.org

Director Chris Hammond +44 (0)7931 305 104

Open Fri, Sat, Sun 12-5 or by appointment

Bethnal Green Underground
Bus 394,106,253,26,48,55,D6, D3, 8

Marcus Coates: "Emotional Man" Centro d'Arte Contemporanea del Ticino, Switzerland



Emotional Man. Insights into Beuty and the Beast
Nniet Brovdi,
Marcus Coates,
Andrea Crosa,
Mauro Ghiglione,
Anthony Howard,
Supersober Bohdan Stehlik/Una Szeemann,
Marco Villani

25 November 2006 - 25 February 2007

Paul Moss & Cecilia Stenbom: Waygood Gallery Harker Herald - February


Untitled (Dog & Pattern # 1) © Paul Moss & Cecilia Stenbom 2007

Untitled (Dog & Pattern #1) is a first time collaboration between Paul Moss and Cecilia Stenbom. Both artists are known for their interpretations of the everyday: Moss using information and materials taken from architecture and the urban landscape and Stenbom selecting subjects from places including fashion, mass media, and household technology.

“For Harker Herald we have created an image that combines our interests and responds directly to the billboard site and its potential audience. We want it to ask questions about how pattern influences opinion and judgement, simultaneously signalling high and low values, danger and decoration.¨

Email art@waygood.org for monthly updates or to be added to our postal list to receive monthly calendar postcards.

Harker Herald is a monthly changing artwork on a billboard located outside of Waygood Studios, temporarily located in Byker whilst the High Bridge site awaits redevelopment.

It can be seen on Old Shields Road, opposite the Parson’s Turbine Hall, from the no 15, 22, 301 and 302 buses and is a short walk from Chillingham Road and Walkergate Metro Stations.

Ginny Reed: The National Review of Live Art, Tramway, Glasgow.





The National Review of Live Art, 7-11 February, 2007 will take place at Tramway, Glasgow.
www.tramway.org
Ginny Reed
until my pencil runs out
small bang

Part of a body of work on the accumulation and dispersal of human actions, themes of the absurd, randomness and repetition recur throughout 'small bang' and 'until my pencil runs out'. Reed's performances highlight the residues and remnants of the event; often, small particles from everyday materials are distributed, expanded, exploded or sucked away. Her influences vary widely and here they range from comedy to cosmology to mapping.
Concerned with contrasting different aspects of production including film, performance and light and it's effects the works coincide in contrasting the materiality of actual, depicted and used objects with the materiality of the forms of their representation.

Friday, January 26, 2007

Francis Gomila with Alonso Gil: "Guantanamera" Madrid Abierto 07



Francis Gomila & Alonso Gil

"GUANTANAMERA"

During the month of February 2007 a powerful sound system playing all the known versions of the Cuban classic Guantanamera, was buried deep in one of Madrid's Metro ventilators.

Madrid Abierto 2007
1st - 28th February 2007

Francis Gomila: "We Are Us And Them" Holocaust Memorial Day 2007, Northern Stage, Newcastle