Wednesday, April 29, 2009

Matt Stokes: "Desiring Necessities", John Hansard Gallery, Southampton, UK


John Hansard Gallery
www.hansardgallery.org.uk

Desiring Necessities
2 May - 20 June 2009

For a generation growing up through the 1980s and 90s, do the ideals of previous eras hold special significance? And if a search for idealism characterises the decades just passed, where will we find the values to react in today’s global crisis?

Desiring Necessities presents twelve emerging international artists who explore past iconic moments in culture. The revolutionary spirit often attributed to historic events in art, film and music can attain near-heroic status, yet only exists
through second-hand experience. The artists within Desiring Necessities test the strength and relevance of this desire to ‘live the original’, exploring re-enactment, appropriation and irony, and blurring fact with fiction.

Works featured include Iain Forsyth & Jane Pollard’s remake of an infamous video documenting The Cramps’ concert at Napa Mental Institute, California, 1979; Susanne Bürner’s 50,000,000 CAN'T BE WRONG, replaying slowed footage of Elvis Presley fans (while never revealing the man himself); and Mario Garcia Torres’ semi-fictitious chronology of cinematic dates, Monochronic Film on a Polychronic Story.

Elsewhere, Cyprien Gaillard allegorises the failure of postmodernity in his bleak film-work The Lake Arches; João Onofre galvanises young Lisbon models into words of conviction, quoting Rossellini’s 1949 film ‘Stromboli’; Matt Stokes explores the 1980s Cumbrian ‘cave-rave’ scene; Patrizio di Massimo examines the cycle of Libyan empires and dictatorships in Oae, a multi-layered three film installation; and Conrad Ventur re-stages Andy Warhol’s screen tests, forty years on.

Participating artists: Susanne Bürner (b. Germany, 1970), Marcelline Delbecq (b. France, 1977), Patrizio Di Massimo (b. Italy, 1983), Iain Forsyth & Jane Pollard (b.. England, 1972 & 1973), Cyprien Gaillard (b. France, 1980), Ryan Gander (b. England, 1976), Mario Garcia Torres (b. Mexico, 1975), João Onofre (b. Portugal, 1976), Olivia Plender (b. England, 1977), Jamie Shovlin (b. England, 1978), Matt Stokes (b. England, 1973) and Conrad Ventur (b. USA, 1977).

Desiring Necessities is a John Hansard Gallery exhibition curated by Ilaria Gianni. A special free publication is available in the Gallery throughout the exhibition, featuring a newly-commissioned essay by author Michael Bracewell, texts by curator Ilaria Gianni and Stephen Foster, John Hansard Gallery and contributions from each artist. The publication will also be free to download from www.hansardgallery.org.uk


John Hansard Gallery
University of Southampton
Highfield
Southampton
SO17 1BJ
Tel: 023 8059 7271
Fax: 023 8059 4192
Email: aph1@soton.ac.uk
www.hansardgallery.org.uk

Desiring Necessities
2 May - 20 June 2009

John Hansard Gallery Opening Hours:
Tuesday to Friday 11 - 5
Saturday 11 - 4
Free Admission

Image:
Matt Stokes
From:
Real Arcadia: Outhouse Promotions archive
2003 - ongoing
Courtesy of the artist and Workplace Gallery, Gateshead

Monday, April 27, 2009

Matt Stokes: "Artist Talk", BALTIC Centre For Contemporary Art, Gateshead, UK



ARTIST TALK: MATT STOKES

Monday 27 April 18.30-20.30

FREE In Conversation with Will Hodgkinson and Sam Lee

BALTIC Curator Robert Blackson leads a conversation between artist Matt Stokes and collaborators on The Gainsborough Packet. Sam Lee is the singer of the original music in The Gainsborough Packet, whilst writer Will Hodgkinson, (The Guardian) contributed an essay to the exhibition catalogue. Pay bar available in the gallery space.

Pre-booking essential. Please e-mail events@balticmill.com or call 0191 478 1810 to reserve your place.

image:

Matt Stokes
The Gainsborough Packet, 2009
16mm Film Transferred to Hard Drive
8:56 Minutes (excluding loop)
(MS0031)
Courtesy of the artist and Workplace Gallery

Friday, April 24, 2009

Matt Stokes: "ARTPROJX", Prince Charles Cinema, London, UK



An ARTPROJX MATINEE PRESENTATION

Staged Events
films by Lynne Marsh and Matt Stokes

Monday 27 April screening 1-2pm
(doors open 12.45pm)
Introduced by David Gryn, Lynne Marsh and Matt Stokes
Artprojx at Prince Charles Cinema, 7 Leicester Place, London WC2

Tickets £8 (£5 concessions, Shooters, PCC members, artists, students, curators)
Box Office: 0870 811 2559 (open to telephone bookings from 1.30pm-8.30pm or in person)
www.princecharlescinema.com
www.artprojx.com

'Staged Events' is a screening of four films by artists Lynne Marsh and Matt Stokes, illustrating the similarities and differences between their approaches. Each of the films presented have been developed from carefully choreographed situations or unpredictable events the artists set-up in response to particular contexts and locations.

Artprojx Matinee Presentations are programmed and presented by David Gryn | Artprojx www.artprojx.com


Contact:
ARTPROJX
David Gryn, Director
www.artprojx.com
info@artprojx.com
07711127848
www.facebook.com

Programme:

Long After Tonight (2005) Matt Stokes
Original: Single-channel, Super 16mm film and audio transferred to Digibeta/DVD
Duration: 6'45"
Long After Tonight documents a specially-organised event staged in St Salvador's Church, Dundee. Parts of 'Sally's', as St Salvador's was fondly known, were used during the 1970's as a venue for the city's first Northern Soul nights. Although these sessions were held in an adjoining hall, for the purposes of the film permission was sought to use the church itself. By transposing the event to the unique interior of the nave, the dancers are surrounded by the beautifully gilded and ornate religious imagery of the building, thus creating a connection between the location and the activity as expressions of faith, commitment and shared purpose. The people that participated in the filming came together from across the UK, some having attended the original events held at Sally's. This link to the roots of the scene in Dundee, and the Northern Soul fraternity as a whole, is critical in establishing a heightened sense of unity and emotion evident in the film.

Camera Opera (2008) Lynne Marsh
Original: Two-channel, video and audio synced DVDs
Duration: 11'50"
Camera Opera is filmed on the set of a Das Duell, a German current affairs television program. Marsh reverses the role of the cameras in conventional news broadcasting: they become the subject and the performance of filming becomes the action. Marsh directs five camera operators through a series of choreographed movements around the silent figure of the anchorworman. The operators circle around the studio, focus on the anchorwoman and pan out to expose the set, equipment, lighting, audience seating and each-other. The performance is set to Strauss waltzes that were piped into the studio to guide the camera operators' movements and later edited in sync with the image to form the final two-screen film. What we see is how the space of the studio is organized through and by camera views, and how the set may become a performative space based on a series of codified relations. Engaging the Brechtian techniques of alienation, Marsh turns the cameras on themselves, denying their traditional role of relaying information and exposing their participation in the manipulation of what the viewer is presented with.

Stadium (2008) Lynne Marsh
Original Single-channel, HD video and audio (this screening transferred to DVD)
Duration: 10'54"
The Olympiastadion in Berlin, the infamous site of Leni Riefenstahl's film on the 1936 Olympic Games, is both setting and protagonist in Stadium. Marsh employs techniques favoured by Riefenstahl, including the crane shot, long circular traveling shot and low-angle shot. The resulting footage exhibits the persistant legacy of representations of power and control in photography and cinema all the way up to contemporary imaging from video games to epic films. Faithful to this notion, the film opens with a 3D animation of the architect's model of the recent renovation of the stadium and transitions to the site itself with sweeping multiple camera perspectives that produce a feeling of vertigo and banal repetition. Here, a figure in white performs a careful choreography of gestures. In Stadium, Marsh creates an uncanny dialogue between the mechanistic, standardized and absolute uniformity of the architecture and the anonymity of the individual.

these are the days (2008) Matt Stokes
Original: Two-channel, Super 16mm and audio transferred to synced hard-drives
Duration: 6'26"

Austin, Texas has long been a centre for music and culture in the US. Since the late 1970s, punk has been an important counterpoint to the mainstream in the city. these are the days explores the efficacy and actuality of distinct waves of punk as a wide-spread subculture, and their manifestations in specific communities in Austin. Stokes made the work by staging two separate events. During the first, he filmed the audience at a free all-ages gig he organised - in collaboration with a local punk and hardcore music promoter - at Broken Neck, a skate and music venue. For the second part of the work, Stokes brought together five members of different Austin-based punk and hardcore bands and asked them to make a sound-track for the silent film shot during the gig. This track was filmed during a session at a recording studio. The result is a portrait of a musical subculture that challenges notions of causality, originality, tribute and circularity.

Artist Info:

LYNNE MARSH
Lynne Marsh's practice is located at the intersection of performance, cinema and the status of the image, at the convergence of cultural and social concerns that operate in speculative fiction, choreography, and staged events. Marsh's recent video works shot respectively in a sports stadium and a TV studio investigate the inscription of individual bodies in architectural environments built specifically for mass consumption and mass cultural expression. Using codified cinematographic techniques (extreme angles, sweeping, panning and zooming shots), her vocabulary draws on the languages of video games, sports coverage, television broadcasting, and the cinematography of the early twentieth century.

Lynne Marsh was born in Canada and has been living and working in London since completing her MA at Goldsmiths' College in 1998. Her video installations have been exhibited in solo exhibitions at Künstlerhaus Bethanien, Berlin (2007), Steve Turner Contemporary, Los Angeles (2008) and the Musée d'art contemporain de Montreal (2008) with an accompanying catalogue. Her work can be seen in an upcoming group show entitled There is no audience, at Montehermoso, Vitoria-Gasteiz, Spain in May.

MATT STOKES
Matt Stokes's practice stems from a long-term inquiry into subcultures, particularly musical ones. He is interested in the way music provides a sense of collectivity, acting as a catalyst for particular groups to form, shaping and influencing people's lives and identities. Stokes's works are often context-specific; he immerses himself in a setting and area of interest, through which collaborations with informal communities arise. After a process of collecting stories, information and materials related to their histories and values, Stokes produces artworks that depart from his research and take on a conceptual and aesthetic life of their own through films, installations and events.

Matt Stokes was born in Penzance, Cornwall and has lived and worked in NewcastleGateshead since 1993. His recent solo exhibitions include these are the days (Arthouse, Austin), Real Arcadia (LüttgenMeijer, Berlin), Now is Early (VOID, Derry), Long After Tonight (Kavi Gupta, Chicago and Ziehersmith, New York), [un]promised land (Attitudes espace d'arts contemporains, Geneva), Lost in the Rhythm (Temple Bar Gallery, Dublin), and Pills to Purge Melancholy (Collective, Edinburgh). He is currently showing new works at 176, London and BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art, Gateshead. Forthcoming group exhibitions include See This Sound, Lentos Kunstmuseum, Linz and Desiring Necessities, John Hansard Gallery, Southampton.

Matt Stokes, The Gainsborough Packet is at 176 until 26 June 2009 www.projectspace176.com

Artprojx Matinee Presentations are in association with Shooting People:
Shooting People, the world's largest network of independent filmmakers, are proud supporters of Artprojx. Shooting People's 36,000+ members share tips, recommendations and news, and cast their films using the nine Shooting People daily bulletins. Over 300 films are cast and crewed each week using the services. The site maintains the UK Independent Film Calendar, hosts lots of interviews and free filmmaking resources, and members-only special offers. http://shootingpeople.org

Matt Stokes: "Club Ponderosa: antiDOTE" 176, London, UK



Club Ponderosa
presents
antiDOTE

A FREE alternative to the
Camden Crawl

Friday 24 April
6.30 – 11pm

Screening of Dan Graham’s
ROCK MY RELIGION
followed by DJs and MCs:

Mach1
Tom Richards
Dave Gamble

Saturday 25 April
2 – 11pm
Live music featuring:

Barrel
Beth Jeans Houghton
Sam Lee Trio
A.J. Holmes
Trombone Poetry
Hoofus
Laura J Martin
My Toys Like Me
Sculpture
...plus special guests to be announced!


176 Prince of Wales Road, NW5 3PT
www.myspace.com/clubponderosa

Club Ponderosa is an active social space for music, theatre,
festivals and events, which exists at 176 for the duration of
Matt Stokes’s exhibition, The Gainsborough Packet, &c.
All events at Club Ponderosa are free.
www.projectspace176.com

antiDOTE is part of Camden Voices, an initiative of the Cultural Olympiad
http://camden.gov.uk/ccm/navigation/leisure/olympics/camden-voices/

Thursday, April 23, 2009

Tanya Axford: "There Is Nothing Left Of The Sea But Its Sound" LOCWS, Swansea, UK



TANYA AXFORD

There Is Nothing Left Of The Sea But Its Sound

Unit 1a, National Waterfront Museum Square

Tanya Axford’s artwork stems from her discovery of Swansea’s rich maritime history and in particular the city’s relationship to the dramatic and powerful impact of the sea. She sees this within elements of Swansea’s regeneration and ‘reinvention’ and specifically with the redevelopment of the LC, the newly revamped Swansea Leisure Centre.

The LC, a multi-faceted water park, has taken the natural phenomenon of the sea that is unpredictable, wild and unmanageable, and created a compact version that is highly controllable making the ‘drama’ of the sea safe and entertaining.

Axford has created a video installation that plays with this relationship, giving an illusion of the sea as a storm emerges. Accompanied by a dramatic soundtrack, the waves reach a crescendo and, as the piece continues, the true landscape is revealed.

Tanya Axford was born in Kent and lives and works in Newcastle upon Tyne.

Axford completed a BA Fine Art at Newcastle University and a MA Fine Art at Goldsmiths College, London and is currently represented by Workplace Gallery, Gateshead.

Monday, April 20, 2009

Cath Campbell: "50 Ways To Leave Your Lover", Open Space 2009 - Art Cologne





Workplace Gallery Presents:

Cath Campbell

50 Ways To Leave Your Lover

Open Space 2009 - Art Cologne

21st - 26th April 2009

Hall 11.3/A/30

Vernissage: Tuesday 21st April 2009, 5-9pm

For Open Space at Art Cologne 2009 Workplace Gallery presents a solo project
by Cath Campbell. 50 Ways To Leave Your Lover consists of fifty proposed
interventions into the designed exhibition architecture particular to Open
Space. By dismantling, manipulating and reconfiguring the fabric of the
existing Messe architecture, Campbell proposes a series of works that
directly disrupts and undermines the expected form of the exhibition booth.
Through a process of discussion with Workplace Gallery and Open Space,
proposal No. 48 (below) has been selected and realised. The remaining 49
proposals have been documented and presented alongside as a publication and
single channel video work. We will also be showing _Islands In The Stream_ a
new drawing made by Campbell for Art Cologne. Continuing her research into
imaginary architectures, Campbell’s delicate graphite drawing has been
meticulously constructed through a two - point perspective system and then
cut away with surgical precision leaving behind a fragile architectural
palimpsest that floats, part object, part drawing and part-empty space, in
its frame.

Cath Campbell’s practice is dominated by an ongoing enquiry into the status,
meaning and fabric of architecture. Taking Modernism as a point of departure
Campbell re-appropriates architectural imagery from memory or imagination to
create works that reinvent our associations with the built environment.
Drawing, sculpture and large-scale installations combine to create a world
of make-believe spaces inspired by encounters with plans for actual places
that are closed off or inaccessible. Campbell often works closely with
architects, engineers and fabricators to create large-scale interventions
that make use of the materials and forms intrinsic to a building. In this
sense, Campbell’s work often bears subversive implications, which subtly
jibe at the conventions of public art. Rather than adding a new object to a
given environment, she distorts or reorders existing structures in a way
that enables a shift of both meaning and space.

Cath Campbell was born in 1972 in Ilkeston, UK, she lives and works in
Newcastle Upon Tyne, UK.

For all enquiries please contact info@workplacegallery.co.uk or call
+44(0)191 4772200

Images

(Top): 50 Ways To Leave Your Lover - No 19. (Detail), Cath Campbell,
2009, Photograph, Dimensions Variable.
Middle: 50 Ways To Leave Your Lover - No 48. (Detail), Cath Campbell,
2009, Photograph, Dimensions Variable.
Bottom: All I Need Is The Air That You Breathe - Part 7 (Detail) Cath
Campbell, 2006, Graphite on Paper, 45 x 61 cm

All Images Copyright the artist, Courtesy of the artist and Workplace
Gallery, UK

Friday, April 17, 2009

Cecilia Stenbom: "Trickle-down Theory", Korjaamo Gallery, Helsinki, Finland




Trickle-down Theory
18.4.-10.5. 2009
Korjaamo Gallery, Korjaamo Hall

Welcome to the inauguration,
Friday April 17 th,
5-7 pm!

Trickle-down theory is a right-wing political term that refers to the policy of providing tax cuts to rich individuals in the belief that this will eventually benefit the larger population. The exhibition deals with the crash fall of capitalism and its theories, through the combined effect of works of almost 100 individual artists.

Open daily from 11 am until 5 pm.
Free entry.

Artists:
Ana Albuixech, Petri Ala-Maunus, Hanna Maria Anttila, Judas Arrieta, Sezgin Boynik, Simo Brotherus, Rita Castro Neves, Gokce Celikel, Mo C. Chan, Jackie Chen, Chen Fei, Luo Hui, Soyeon Cho, Thomas Chow, Michael Chuah, Daisy Delaney, Democracia, Suzanne Dery, Desert Planet, Siu Ding, Fahd El-Jaoudi, Filter017, Forever Tarkovsky Club, Jiri Geller, Graphicairlines, Kalle Hamm, Kea, Erika Harrsch, Hannaleena Heiska, Minna L. Henriksson, PhalanX Studio, Sami Hyrskylahti, Mikko Ijäs, Herman van Ingelgem, Jian, Chen Jie, Fermin Jimenez Landa, Yang Jing, Shen Jingdong, Dzamil Kamanger, Eemil Karila, Kaoru Katayama, Kea, Teemu Kivikangas, Zenita Komad, Heta Kuchka, Kalle Lampela, Honcheung Lee, Niina Lehtonen-Braun, Jani Leinonen, Ling Ling Ling, Liisa Lounila, Oscar Martinez, Ramon Mateos, Jacob Meehan, Mika Minetti, Rauha Mäkilä, Shunsuke Francois Nanjo, Julia Nekrasova, Erkka Nissinen, Hanna Ojamo, Pilar Pinchart, Panu Puolakka, Aurora Reinhard, Alex Rich, Angelica Rodriguez, Carlos Rodriguez-Mendez, Jaakko Rustanius, Adam Saks, Gregor Samsa, Carrie Schneider, Philippe Servent, Jari Silomäki, Kim Simonsson, Sauli Sirviö, Federico Solmi, Cecilia Stenbom, Sari Tervaniemi, Tobby HK, Katja Tukiainen, Juanjo Valencia, Erika Verzutti, Cowper Wang, Toto Wang, Kenny Wong, Gudrun F. Widlok, Raphael Woo, Nod Young, Anne Zhe, Markus Astrom

Curator: Riiko Sakkinen
Co-curators: Judas Arrieta & Aura Seikkula
Exhibition Coordinator: Ulla Jaakkola

Logo designed by Shunsuke Francois Nanjo

Image:
Cecilia Stenbom
'Money Worries' 2009
unlimited edition
Courtesy of the artist and Workplace Gallery

Tuesday, April 07, 2009

Ginny Reed "Space-Time" NGC Sunderland 6/04/09 - 6/09/09

‘SPACE-TIME’
Artists: Heike Brachlow, William S Burroughs, Vaclav Cigler, Keith
Cummings, Bill Drummond, Tehching Hsieh, Dominick Labino,
Liliane Lijn, Steven Pippin, Ginny Reed and Kiki Smith

6 April – 6 September 2009
Private View - Tuesday 7th April

National Glass Centre
Sunderland

'Space-Time’ brings together artists’ work that reflects upon the relevance of astronomical observations and the role of time in our everyday lives, memory and future. The works, drawn from artists living in the North East of England, across the UK and internationally, provide a glimpse of the breadth and scope of the common interests between art and science. The exhibition offers a means through which we can think and explore the many aspects of cosmology and the celestial world.

The exhibition takes its cue from Wearmouth-Jarrow’s own most notable theologian, scholar and scientist, the Venerable Bede, and his eighth century treatise, On the Reckoning of Time. In its text this study starts with the smallest units of time, describing days, weeks and months moving on to lunar movements and the seasons; solar movements and years; the Six Ages of the world, ending with a discussion about eternity (the greatest unit of time). Bede’s computation of these astronomical principles informed his determination of the Anglo-Saxon calendar and the date of Easter – it remains the means by which we still calculate the date of Easter today.

For ancient civilizations the night sky was a source of religious, mythological wonder and scientific discovery and peoples from all corners of the world have created myths and cosmogonies in an attempt to explain their place within the universe.

Astronomers studied stars, planets, galaxies, and other celestial objects with the naked-eye, until techniques honed in the glass making centres of Europe, attracted the attention of scientists and led to the invention of the telescope. It was an Italian, Galileo Galilei who utilised this new technology and revolutionised our understanding of our place in the Universe when he used a telescope to study the night sky, and with his observations dawned a new era in scientific study and time-keeping. In 2009 the world celebrates the ‘International Year of Astronomy’ commemorating the 400th anniversary of Galileo’s use of a telescope and 40 years since man first landed on the moon.


Kiki Smith’s Constellation (1996), a room-sized installation approx 6m in diameter is a three- dimensional reordered ancient astrological star chart in which cut glass stars and mystic animals (of the zodiac) are scattered across the circular plane of a night-blue paper-carpet – a mysterious blueprint for the infinities of space. Ginny Reed’s photograph, Tiny Shiny (2005) mirrors the seemingly random arrangement of the asteroid-belt catching spot-lit stars of falling glitter through the aperture of a pinhole camera.

Eight thousand seven hundred and sixty hours are condensed into Tehching Hsieh’s six minute film One Year Performance (1980-81). His hourly, daily, weekly, monthly regime is compressed in real time, but tempered by the gradual growth of the artist’s hair. In Bill Drummond’s Score 326 (2008), we are encouraged to muse upon the past [year] to affect how we approach the year ahead. William S Burroughs brings into play the Space Time Continuum (c. 1965) of the Fourth Dimension. Splicing and reordering a reel-to-reel sound recording, Burroughs’ work dispenses with the gravital constraints of a linear narrative structure.

Heike Brachlow's Intersphere series (2004) and Vaclav Cigler’s Untitled (2008) explore virtual space through the optical effects of the refraction of light and glass, hinting at the hidden depths beyond which the eye can see. And, like with Keith Cumming’s Moon Pool (2007), one is caught up in romance, fantasy, folklore and legend.

The use of Aerogel in Liliane Lijn’s Heavenly Fragments (2008) stems from her residency at the Space Sciences Laboratory, Berkeley, California; in its intended use Aerogel is used in NASA’s space missions to capture both cometary samples and interstellar dust (star dust). This installation recently featured in Let There Be Light part of the BBC’s Imagine series presented by Alan Yentob. Lijn is also making a new work, Way out is way in, that will premiere in the exhibition and in Sunderland. This poemdrum will incorporate text from William S Burroughs’ Naked Lunch, one of the landmark publications in the history of American literature.

Artist, inventor and glass technologist Dominick Labino’s glass pyramid, Untitled # 402 (1976) refers in its design to the pyramids of Giza. It was by means of the reflections and shadows cast by the pyramids, that ancient Egyptians were able to measure not only the days and hours, but to forecast the Solar Astronomical Year – the Spring Equinox, the Summer Solstice and so on.

Steven Pippin exhibits UFO (2005) alongside 2B Space & Time Drawing (2007). In this work we are presented with a photograph purporting to be from March 8, 1988. An accompanying text remonstrates through the event, capturing every detail of the fleeting moment in which Pippin witnessed this scarcely explicable phenomenon of a UFO.

‘Space-Time’ at National Glass Centre, 6 April – 6 September 2009, with a complementary events programme April 2009-April 2010. This includes one-off film/video screenings and talks at National Glass Centre and in other locations throughout the North East region with artists, astronomers, scientists and theologians. Please look out for more details on www.nationalglasscentre.com, call 0191 515 5555 or register for email updates by sending your email address to info@nationalglasscentre.com and put ‘Space-Time Updates’ in the subject box.

Acknowledgements:
Kiki Smith courtesy Pace Wildenstein; Dominick Labino courtesy Scott Hudson; William S Burroughs courtesy Riflemaker and William S Burroughs Trust; Vaclav Cigler courtesy Caterina Tognon; Liliane Lijn courtesy Riflemaker.

Monday, April 06, 2009

Richard Rigg "Explum 09"

Solo show of Richard Rigg. As part of Explum 09, an arts and music festival, Rigg is exhibiting "Now That We are Apart, I Don't Know You Anymore".

Taking place in Puerto Lumbreras. Murcia. Spain.
3rd April - 21 April 2009

Thursday, April 02, 2009

Joe Clark "Transfixed Motion / Transitory Still" Shefield Hallam University




Private view: Thursday 2 April
6pm–9pm

Exhibition dates: Friday 3 April–Saturday 18 April
Monday–Saturday 10am–4pm
Closed Good Friday 10 April and Easter Monday 13 April

Address: Sheffield Institute of Art and Design Gallery
Furnival Building
Sheffield Hallam University
153 Arundel Street
Sheffield S1 2NU

Gallery contact: 0114 225 6777
Website: http://www.shu.ac.uk/art/gallery/
Campus map: http://www.shu.ac.uk/visit/plancity.html


TRANSFIXED MOTION | TRANSITORY STILL
In closing his contribution to the essay collection, Stillness and Time: Photography and the Moving Image, David Campany postulates: ‘Photography has all but given up the ‘decisive moment’ in order to explore what a moment is; video art has all but given up movement, the better to think what movement is … But must the speedy always be sacrificed in all this? Need slowness be the only way? At this key point in the histories of art and media, I think it is a question worth posing. And a pose worth questioning’. – ‘Posing, Acting, Photography’

The two notions of stillness and movement, and how these can powerfully conflict, contradict or compliment each other, are the premise of Transfixed Motion | Transitory Still. This exhibition, curated by Esther Johnson and David Williams, brings together a diverse group of 22 UK-based artists whose work reflects the above quote and who incorporate moving image, photographyand/or sound into their practice.

The show runs from Friday 3 to Saturday 18 April, from 10:00 am to 4:00 pm Monday - Saturday, at Sheffield Institute of Art and Design Gallery. Please note, the Gallery will be closed on Good Friday 10 April and Easter Monday 13 April.

ADDRESS, CONTACT AND DIRECTIONS
Curators: Esther Johnson esther.johnson@shu.ac.uk
David Williams d.williams3@shu.ac.uk

Wednesday, April 01, 2009

Marcus Coates"Trying To Cope With Things That Aren't Human(Part One)" AirSpace Gallery, Stoke On Trent

28th March - 2nd May 2009
Open Tuesday- Saturday 11am - 5 pm

This is the first in a series of exhibitions, which will tour to AirSpace Gallery in the UK in March and continue to develop as it moves on from there. The accompanying publication comprised of specially commissioned artworks by Paul Rooney, Heather and Ivan Morison, Richard T. Walker, Annika Ström, Ian Brown, Ryan Gander, Francis McKee and Alex Pearl will be also available at DCP.

Trying To Cope With Things That Aren't Human (Part One) places us in a familiar position, one where we struggle to deal wit the things around us, unable to completely understand how technology works but simultaneously unable to truly understand the beauty of nature. We remain confused but still standing - between the things that we have made and the things that w have not, what could be called the invented world and the natural world. We struggle to understand the natural world without ourselves in it. So we turn away to the security of the invented world, the one that we have created. As much as enduring a wilderness, the most minor of domestic tasks can become a difficult exercise in personal maintenance survival.

To the extent that it discusses difference, this exhibition also tries to find the common ground, or indeed the threshold, between out inability to cope with the things that we have created, to make our lives easier, and our struggle to relate to the wonders of the natural world. We find it equally as difficult to comprehend the beauty of a vast landscape as we do the best way to use our computer, or indeed how it works. It is maybe only right that both the invented world and the natural world could also be equally and simultaneously called non-human. Often viewed as a dichotomy, technology and nature actually have a fluid relationship, one which judders and jerks all the time, rubbing them up against one another. In many ways technology has allowed us to have access to the natural world but our own obsessions with out ability to invent often distracts us and allow us to ignore it.

Equally, natural sciences provide us with with clear ways in which we can develop out technological tools. The production of art in itself has been affected by these opposites, allowing a relationship to from. This can be seen in recent examples of artists producing work during residencies in local such as the Antarctic. Is this how we see/define ourselves - Between the two? Or do we indeed define ourselves by the struggle to deal with them? Is it this struggle - the trying and the coping - That makes us Human?