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.

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

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.

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.