Visit to The Word to discuss forthcoming exhibition

Yesterday Jenny Richards and I went to The Word in South Shields to meet to discuss plans for my solo exhibition and to develop plans for a symposium to be held to coincide with the exhibition. I have been speaking with Jenny Richards, Joseph Cowen Professor of English Literature at Newcastle University. Her current work is focussed on the physical voice, the fifth part of rhetoric, pronuntiatio or delivery, and the history of reading aloud.

Jennifer invited me to be part of her project, Recovering the Voice.

One of the outputs of the project is to host an event that brings together eminent Voice specialists and academics in order to share research and work towards the development of a large scale funding bid to the AHRC or Wellcome Trust. It is this event that we proposed to host at the the symposium at The Word.

Richard Barber and Pauline Martin at The Word were both very encouraging about hosting the symposium at The Word, and suggested that we actually adjust the dates of my exhibition so that it corresponds with Write Festival which is happening in May, and should attracts lots of people. We looked at possible options of spaces in which the symposium could take place. I'll keep you posted with dates.

Symplaysium

Symplaysium

At the weekend I participated in Symplaysium, a one-day symposium on play, creativity and public space as part of the current exhibition Think.Play.Do. at The Tetley, Leeds.
The event began with an introduction by Zoe Sawyer, Curator at The Tetley, and Kenn Taylor, Participation Curator at The Tetley. They explained that the Think.Play.Do exhibition launched the gallery’s ambition to commission a play sculpture for Brewery Green. In the form of plans, sketches, maquettes and prototypes, the artists’ proposals will help ask the question ‘What if…?’ Working with a contemporary artist or artists’ group, The Tetley aims to commission the play sculpture as a contribution to the development of new public realm in the emerging ‘South Bank Leeds’, one of the largest regeneration projects in Europe.

The project has emerged in response to a lack of play facilities within Leeds’ city centre. The exhibition presents ideas from a range of artists interested in the public realm, sculpture, and intergenerational play.

The artists were invited to ‘start at the beginning’ and not to be constrained at this stage by real-world practicalities. Some of the projects have and will develop during the exhibition through a range of workshops and events devised by the artists. After the exhibition, some of the ideas will be taken to a design development stage in tandem with fundraising for the commission.

Nils Norman, an artist living in London, spoke about his practice as a whole and then specifically about his proposal for the play sculpture at The Tetley.

    

Norman “works across the disciplines of public art, architecture and urban planning. His projects
challenge notions of the function of public art and the efficacy of mainstream urban planning and large-scale regeneration. Informed by local politics and ideas on alternative economic, ecological systems and play, Norman’s work merges utopian alternatives with current urban design to create a humorous critique of
the discrete histories and functions of public art and urban planning. He exhibits and generates projects and collaborations in museums and galleries internationally.”

Norman’s website http://www.dismalgarden.com/ houses his archives, with playscapes being one of his main areas of research. He provided a brief history of playgrounds, which were introduced in the mid 1800s as a form of controlling children, and showed a variety of different playscapes from around the world.

He then gave an overview of his proposal for The Tetley’s play sculpture.

Nils Norman

Collaborative duo Robinson/Stirling (Dr Liz Stirling and Laura Robinson), delivered ‘Play is Powerful’ a collaborative action and talk with Jo Hassall and Ben Hall. Ben Hall and Laura Robinson delivered a slide presentation giving an insight into their work. Meanwhile, Liz Stirling and Jo Hassell, who had been sat in the audience, began to cake their faces in vaseline and what looked like dirt, donned scrappy wigs and began bounding round the room on all fours making unexpected growling and barking noises. We, the rather amused audience, were then encouraged to join them to explore the exhibition upstairs as dogs, sniffing, barking and crawling around the artworks. Unexpectedly for the artists, we all played game, and proceeded to alarm the other visitors in the gallery by crawling round the exhibition, throwing and chasing sticks and barking. It certainly provided an alternative way of viewing the exhibition!

http://robinsonstirling.blogspot.co.uk/

Simon and Tom Bloor

The group discussion was wide ranging and covered topics such as the importance of bringing play outside of defined play zones. When asked about the history of playscapes, Nils Norman explained that there has been a shift towards abstraction in playgrounds as opposed to playgrounds resembling castles, ships etc. This encourages children to use their imagination more. He discussed some of the different playscapes around the world, and how they vary and are valued differently. For instance, German playscapes are regarded as pedagogical areas – areas of learning.

Natalie Finnemore

Alice Withers and Lucy Courtney-Clegg from REETSO (Ben Boothman is the other member) began the afternoon session with a presentation covering a range of their projects that “aim to incite thought and play through creative projects that involve the general public.” Their “work manifests itself in a variety of forms including; installation, performance and workshops.”

  

They provided us with a taster, by giving us a sheet of foil each. We then formed pairs and were both instructed to face each other then close our eyes, pick up the foil and cover the other persons face with the foil. We carefully had to fit the foil around their face so as to create an impression of their face. What a wonderful way of getting to know your neighbour!

http://www.reetso.co.uk/

Matthew Houlding

Lesli Godfrey, a playworker and lecturer at Leeds Beckett University gave the final presentation.



She described some factors contributing to creativity:


- Divergent thinking

- problem solving

- flexibility

- access to emotions

- self confidence

- risk taking

- openness to experience



She also explained that play is

- Spontaneous

- Rewarding

- Intrinsically motivated

- Offers some protection

- Actions and thoughts are in novel combinations e.g. role reversals

- Involves performing repeated actions, or exaggerated or incomplete actions 

- Requires the individual to be free from stress or illness



In ‘The Needs of Children’ Pringle (1986) argues that children need:

- Love and security

- New experiences

- Praise and recognition

- Responsibility



In order to promote play, the following actions should be taken:

- Encourage free play

- Provide opportunities for exploration

- Promote divergent thinking

- Allow risk taking


When asked about changes in policy regarding play over the years, Lesli told us that the last Labour government wrote the first National Play Strategy. This was abolished by the coalition, and Michael Gove wanted no play in education. The Welsh government have a law to provide sufficient amount of play opportunities, and the Scottish Government are looking to establish a National Play Strategy.

Jem Finer: Spiegelei 

The summary at the end of the day was a chance for us to give feedback to the curators about the proposals for the play sculpture, and to share with each other some useful links. Here are a few:

http://www.happycity.org.uk/

http://www.leedsplaynetwork.org.uk/

http://opalexplorenature.org/aboutOPAL

http://popupadventureplay.org/

http://popupplayshop.org/

http://squashnutrition.org/

https://kaboom.org/playability/playful_city_usa

Painting in Time Symposium

Today's Painting in Time Symposium at The Tetley Gallery in Leeds proved to be an excellent way to pull together and scrutinise some of the thoughts behind, and issues surrounding the exhibition which ends tomorrow.

The exhibition has been co-curated by Sarah Kate Wilson and stems from her practice and PhD research at The University of Leeds.

Speakers for the symposium were drawn from a network of academics, curators and artists. Each presented their research on painting and its relationship to time. 

Dr. Joanne Crawford’s paper focused on American abstract art in 1952 where painting’s role became one of the deferred ‘revolutionary moment’.

Through her own painting practice Nadine Feinson discussed how a painting might be understood to be in motion, despite its material fixity. She spoke about Triboelectric Series 2, a site-specific work made for RIFF/T, an exhibition at the BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art's project space BALTIC 39, Newcastle, 11th December 2013 - 2nd March 2014.

"The work explores and utilises the material properties of polythene dustsheets¹ as a painting support and their ability to retain static charge - resulting in the contact-electrification of the painting. The thin plastic, electrostatically charged, is a responsive ‘film’ that clings, shifts and moves on the wall. It responds to touch, rubbing and buffing, to atmospherics in the exhibition space, gravity, and the weight of paint. Holes in the surface, drafts, and moisture – all these things shorten its ‘life-span’. As paint is applied, it stretches, puckers and falls into holes, so that paint is deposited on the wall underneath: the polythene creating its own repertoire of ‘gestures’ in the wake of painting activity.

A number of paintings on polythene are made, one after the other, in the same space. As each painting is finished, it is discarded, leaving behind paint marks and gestures on the wall where the plastic has torn – these then become reconstituted into the painting that follows."

http://www.nadinefeinson.com/paintings/20134-triboelectric-series/series-2--notes/

California-based Curator, Sinead Finnerty-Pyne examined the act of viewing and exhibiting painting as a time-based experience, posing questions such as 'can artwork rebel against our fast nation society?' She spoke of the current exhibition, Expanding on an expansive subject, that she has curated at Armory Centre for the Arts, California. 

"Expanding on an expansive subject is a group exhibition that explores the expanded field of painting through nine artists’ investigations into painting’s range and potential as a cross-disciplinary medium. The exhibition presents a unique model, a group exhibition displayed as individual solo projects that unfold (or expand) over the course of time, offering the possibility of an exhibition as a temporal experience. Since May 2014, Expanding on an expansive subject has featured six-week projects by Margie Livingston, Analia Saban, John Burtle, Liat Yossifor, John Knuth, Kendell Carter, and continues through November 2015 with shows by Kate Gilmore, Sarah Kate Wilson, and Constance Mallinson. While each artist’s approach to the discursive nature of painting is unique, the exhibition as a whole asks how painting today is distinct from its art historical predecessors."

http://www.armoryarts.org/exhibitions/2015/expanding-on-an-expansive-subject-part-7-kate-gilmore-pushing-paint/

Artist Kate Hawkins’ paper set out to explore durational modes of address and spectatorship in relation to contemporary painting. With reference to her work included in the exhibition, Hawkins discussed explorations of mourning in art from Picasso's Weeping Woman to Chris Ofilli's No woman, no cry.

She explained how her paintings in the exhibition were painted when she was pregnant, and struggling to come to terms with what she thought was going to be the end of life as she knew it. Hawkins believes that an artwork should exhibit tenderness and love to the viewer, and commented that the spectator should be treated as an equal.

The theatricality of the work is enhanced by the three-dimensional supplements that are added to the two-dimensional surfaces. 

Dr. Catherine Ferguson talked about how paintings make time in relation to history.

Natasha Kidd, used Huberman’s text ‘Take Care', 2011, to discuss how her new work in the exhibition Painting in Time was set loose in the world, what it wants and how it behaves or misbehaves.  She talked about how an instruction to attend to the work was essential in order to keep it alive and her curiosity around the word “care” in relation to the systems she makes. Kidd is interested in "unlocking the artwork as static". She used her contribution to the Test Run exhibition at Modern Art Oxford as an example of how an artwork can provide access to the creative process and to demonstrate her interest in learning.

Curator and artist Sarah Kate Wilson used the rainbow as a figure, and presented a case for painting as a time-based medium. She discussed how viewing paintings during World War 2 was an event as one artwork per week was removed from the mines where they were being kept for safe keeping, and made accessible to the public. Similarly, in his work Act III, Daniel Buren made an event of viewing an artwork as his positioned a painting on the  stage of a theatre and the audience were forced to pay attention to this artwork as nothing else happened on the stage. Wilson used Jutta Koether's 'Hot Rod' to illustrate how painting can be a social space, and cited Oscar Murillo's work as a way in which viewing painting can be a performance.

The symposium concluded with a question and answer session involving all of the days speakers, and was chaired by Dr Joanne Crawford.

It really was a fascinating event to complement the varied and exciting exhibition, with lots of very interesting and inspiring people both in the audience and as speakers. 

Painting in time at The Tetley

PAINTING IN TIME

3 APRIL - 5 JULY 2015

CO-CURATED BY SARAH KATE WILSON



Given my interest in artists that work across disciplines and question the notion of medium specificity, this is definitely an exhibition I want to visit.



Exhibiting artists include Polly Apfelbaum, Claire Ashley, Kate Hawkins, Robert Chase Heishman and Megan Schvaneveldt, Natasha Kidd, Rob Leech, Lisa Milroy, Yoko Ono, Hayley Tompkins, Jessica Warboys and Sarah Kate Wilson.



This group show brings together an exciting array of works by international artists practicing within the expanding field of painting. Exploding ideas of what painting can be, these artists work across sculpture, performance, painting and film. The exhibition includes inflatable paintings, painting machines and paintings that can be handled and reassembled by visitors.



Painting in Time consists of works that are in a state of flux: pieces will constantly evolve and in some cases only exist for the lifespan of the exhibition. New commissions sit alongside existing works reconfigured for The Tetley’s unique gallery spaces.

This exhibition acknowledges the enduring popularity of the medium and asks ‘what constitutes painting today?’
__

A symposium, which focuses on painting and its relationship with time, will take place at The Tetley on 4 July 2015.

http://thetetley.org/painting-in-time/

Some quotes on Painting

During the symposium yesterday, a number of quotes were mentioned that caught my attention

"I don't want to make pictures, I want to learn things" 
Piet Mondrian

"Every painting is an idea. 
Eveery painting is the result of a process. 
Concerptual art just removes the pleasure of looking  - colour and beauty and all that" 
Peter Doig

"Not knowing where one is going - being lost, being a loser, reveals the greatest possible faith and optimism" 
Gerhard Richter (1995) The Daily Practice of Painting

"Painting in many ways is a glorious illusion. The painter makes something magical, spatial and alive on a surface that is flat with materials that are inert" 
Helen Frankenthaler

Thinking and Talking about Contemporary Painting - Symposium

I have been helping organise the 'Thinking and Talking about Contemporary Painting symposium' which took place today. It was a collaborative project between Glasgow School of Art (GSA) and GoMA.

The backdrop of this symposium was A Picture Show but the day focussed on wider issues within contemporary painting with key note speakers; artist Melissa Gordon and artist & curator at Norway’s National Gallery Gavin Jantjes.  The day started at GoMA with Jim Birrell, Head of Painting and Printmaking at GSA giving a brief introduction to the conditions and nature of Contemporary Painting. Melissa Gordon then discussed her work and its position in the history of Painting. In the afternoon we moved to the Mackintosh Lecture theatre at GSA where Gavin Jantjes delivered his talk titled 'To paint in the face of doubt.' This was followed by a panel discussion chaired by Hanneline Visnes and Sarah Wilson, with Rachal Bradley, Dr Frances Robertson and Alex Dordoy.

New Work Scotland Programme Symposium

Looks like this event will be really interesting...

New Work Scotland Programme
Symposium | Part 2 

New Work Scotland Programme Symposium

Part 2

Thursday 25 April | 6-8pm

Collective

This event will consider how international organisations and curators support and work with emergent practitioners and how a residency opportunity can develop an artist's practice and networks.

Speakers will include; Devrim Bayar, curator WIELS, Brussels; Daniella King, recently curator, MASS Alexandria, Egypt and Fiona Jardine, artist and writer.

A selection of work by artists who participated in the MASS programme will be screened as part of the event.  

Devrim Bayar is curator at WIELS Contemporary Art Centre and teaches contemporary art at La Cambre School of Visual Arts in Brussels. She was editor-in-chief of CODE Magazine between 2005 and 2009.

WIELS Contemporary Art Centre focuses on presenting temporary exhibitions by national and international artists, both emerging and more established. In addition to regular exhibitions, WIELS houses nine residencies for young artists and an active education programme. WIELS Residency Programme is an international laboratory for talented emerging artists from all over the world. WIELS provides a unique framework for artists to pursue their practice and engage in current debates and research, which examines the potentials of contemporary artistic production.

Fiona Jardine is an artist, writer and curator based in Glasgow. Fiona studied at Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art & Design, Dundee and is a graduate of the MFA at Glasgow School of Art. Since graduation in 2003, she has exhibited widely in cities in the UK as well as Rotterdam, Mexico City, Athens, Antwerp, New York, Paris and Montreal. Fiona is currently pursuing a PhD programme of research at the University of Wolverhampton.

Fiona completed a residency in Beijing as part of Collective's, How to Turn the World by Hand programme, which formed part of her research in her exhibition Five Foot Shelf that took place at Collective in 2012.

Daniella King is a curator and writer, currently resident in London. Most recently she was Programme Curator at MASS Alexandria, an independent study and studio programme for artists in Egypt. She recently contributed to The Right Dissonance (London, 2011) a collection of interviews between emerging curators and artists and Hatje Cantz's, On One Side of the Same Water: Artistic Practice between Tirana and Tangier (Germany, 2012) and has written for Frieze, Art Monthly, Ibraaz (where she is an editorial correspondent), Universes in Universe - Worlds of Art, Portal 9, and Harper's Bazaar Art.

MASS Alexandria was founded in 2010 by the Alexandria artist Wael Shawky and provides an opportunity for independent study and learning for artists in Egypt. Through its programme, MASS Alexandria aims to complement existing art education schemes, with a focus on the conceptual aspects of artistic production. Monthly workshops, seminars and lectures are led by artists, art educators and curators. Through the exploration of contemporary artistic practices, the programme also encourages students to work closely with cultural, artistic and scientific ideas in the fields of art history and theory and inter-disciplinary studies. 

Studio 58 Symposium

Studio 58 Symposium
The Glasgow School of Art

Speakers:
Susannah Waters, GSA Archivist
Peter Trowles, GSA Curator
Andrea Kusel - Curator of Art, Paisley Museum
Sarah Lowndes - Studio 58 Curator
Stacy Boldrick - Research and Interpretation Manager at The Fruitmarket Gallery

Sarah Lowndes mentioned that there were a number of sub themes to the exhibition:
1. Still life - Still life as an interior landscape when it was not possible to go outside
2. Artists with illness / handicap

Lowndes was interested in meetings between artists, particularly meetings between two or more artists who had never met before

"I do feel the more you know something, the more you get out of it" Joan Eardley

AHM State of Play manifestos

Documentation of the one-minute manifestos that were presented at AHM's third State of Play Symposium are now on the AHM blog.

More documentation from the event is to be updated soon!

http://theahmblog.blogspot.com/

manifesto at AHM Symposium 3 - Dundee

Art is, and can be many things

Art : political : art : captivating : art : public : art :

loud: art : thought provoking : art : light : art :

critical : art : colourful : art : challenging : art :

beautiful : art : permanent : art : enlightening : art :

intimate : art : poetic : art : huge : art : meaningful

: art : soft : art : moving : art : reflective : art :

sensual : art : controversial : art : tactile : art :

temporary : art : pertinent : art : complex : art :

humorous : art : difficult : art : inspiring : art :

quiet : art : engaging : art : emotional : art :

stimulating : art : important

Artist manifesto at STATE OF PLAY Symposium

STATE OF PLAY - Art and Culture in Scotland Today Symposium

Saturday 1st October
Cinema 1, Dundee Contemporary Arts (DCA)
11am - 4pm



Working as Research Assistant for AHM (Sam Ainsley, David Harding and Sandy Moffat), I have been heavily involved in the planning and organisation of this event. I will be performing my own personal one minute manifesto at the event.

AHM’s third and final State of Play: Art and Culture in Scotland Today symposium will bring together the main themes of previous symposia in a debate about the role of art and culture in shaping Scotland’s future. A key element of the day will be the spoken delivery of one-minute artist manifestos where artists have the opportunity to give voice to their concerns and ambitions about where they feel visual art stands today and what the future might hold.

Speakers are Gerry Hassan a leading writer and critic on culture and politics, Jenny Brownrigg Exhibition Director The Glasgow School of Art, artist Ross Sinclair and Jean Urquhart MSP.

More information can be found at http://theahmblog.blogspot.com/ or by contacting ahmglasgow@gmail.com

Tickets can be purchased from Dundee Contemporary Arts Box Office either in person or by calling +44 (0)1382 909900 Mon - Sat 10am - 8pm, Sun Midday - 8pm with a credit or debit card. Tickets can also be purchased online at http://www.dca.org.uk/