News

On Saturday 9th July, Paul and I took part in a project titled Bitterweed in Studio 20 at Dartington. The project by artist Kate Marshall and curator Gareth Ballyn takes as a starting point the novel The Bitterweed Path by Thomas Hal Phillips. This novel published in the US in the 1950s gives an account of coming-of-age and coming to awareness of sexuality in the Southern US in the early 20th century. It is one of a small number of ‘gay’ novels from the period.

Marshall and Ballyn’s project will generate zines and interaction and images to excavate memories, to consider how books live on after their time or beyond being read, and to explore images of men together.

More information at the Bitterweed blog.

I’m currently working with Liminal (David Prior and Frances Crow) on their project Organ of Corti. This project won the PRSF New Music Award 2010 and will tour to four sites in England during July and August 2011. There are full details of the project at the website www.organofcorti.co.uk

Next week we are doing a trial build of the installation, getting all the elements together and building the work to see how long the installation takes, and to check for any snags. We’ve been given space at Dartington, the old Theatre at Foxhole, so there is enough room to have all the tubes and base units and to put them together. We hope to have a sneak preview of the assembled Organ of Corti at Foxhole Theatre on Monday 20th June.

We’re using big rolls of polystyrene sheeting to wrap the fragile Perspex tubes. Each is 3.5 metres long.

On April 15th I attended the launch of ‘Build Your Own’ a new project by Low Profile (Rachel Dobbs and Hannah Jones) at DXDX Studios, Plymouth. The project has developed out of the artists’ reaction to the structures and institutions around practice-based / practice-led PhDs in the Arts. Faced with difficulties of finding a context where they might pursue a joint research project, or find funding to support a significant period of joint research, Dobbs and Jones have embarked on raising the funds and resourcing to Build Their Own …

The event was held at the new DXDX artists’ studios at Regent Street, Plymouth.

Low Profile

DXDX Studios

Tim Ellis, The Tourist

exhibition at Spacex Exeter

12 March to 30 April 2011

On Saturday 12th March, I attended the launch of Tim Ellis’s exhibition ‘The Tourist’ at Spacex, Exeter. I’ve posted a review of the show on the Interface section of the a-n website.

The body of new work, a mix of sculptures, installation and paintings, sits well in the varied room spaces at Spacex. The work is amusing and witty, drawing together aspects of Modernist aesthetic with contemporary bricollage to critique the certainties or ideals of the Modern, and to question our easy dismissal of Modernist aspirations.

Review at Interface (a-n.co.uk)

A print version of the review will be published in AN Magazine, June 2011.

Creative Conversations: Art, Culture & Society

March 3rd 2011

Pool Innovation Centre, Redruth Cornwall

This event reviewed the work to date on Creative Inclusion in design and planning for the Heartlands Project. This is a large scale Lottery funded regeneration project on the site of the former Robinson’s Shaft mine near the village of Pool, between Redruth and Camborne in Cornwall. I was invited to participate in this event by Sarah Williams, who is Project Manager Art and Culture for Cornwall Council.

The morning included a set of presentations and facilitated conversations that addressed a number of the key concerns of the Heartlands team. The presentations reviewed the strategies for Creative Inclusion during the planning and development process for Heartlands, and introduced some of the inclusive design methods that were used. This included work by Bas Raijmakers of STBY, Yanki Lee, and Kingsley Baird. Those present were then divided into groups of about eight people and invited to discuss future possibilities for arts and culture within the project.

Working with two themes, we generated material that will be collated to influence the next stages of Heartlands. The first theme was, “Can art and culture tackle inequalities, create stronger communities and invite different people to the table?” and the second was, “Could and should, art and culture continue to make an active and forceful contribution to Heartlands in the future? What are / will be Heartlands core ‘creative’ activities?”. Both topics produced lively and diverse comments, with some strong strands emerging in particular around the need for key leadership on the cultural direction of Heartlands. The project team were congratulated on the methods of inclusion implemented so far, and it was felt that they offered a strong model for other community or area regeneration projects.

After lunch at the Pool Innovation Centre, we were taken on a tour of the Heartlands site. It is a huge area, stretching from Pool village, to South Crofty Mine, and from the back of Pool Indoor Market to Cornwall College. The overall project will be an exciting addition to the cultural landscape of Cornwall, in particular for the Pool, Redruth and Camborne area which in many ways is less developed than other parts of Cornwall.