COLLECTING AND KNOWLEDGE at 176 ZABLUDOWICZ COLLECTION

The Library of Babel / In and Out of Place addresses the production of meaning and our many modes of perception. The exhibition avoids imposing any final meaning on the works shown. Instead, it invites you to discover connections between works and to forge your own interpretations, exceeding received wisdom about particular art works, styles or artists. The salon-style hang in the former Methodist chapel creates an overwhelming environment and invites a more detailed consideration of individual artworks.

On 15th April [DoR] attended an evening Salon event in conjunction with the exhibition The Library of Babel / In and Out of Place, the result of Anna-Catharina Gebbers' one year residency.

Sue Pearce, expert in museum studies, sociologist Sarah Thornton, and Anne Welsh, specialist in cataloguing and classification, discussed collecting, why we collect and how collections help us to make sense of the things.

The first to speak was Sue Pearce, about the way in which collections are built up and how they are perceived as collections. Pearce spoke forcefully of how history can be decoded through the collection of material objects - groups of the 'same' are recognised as a moment in history. Our collections are a bank of our memories, some believe that these objects can actually encompass the essence of your grandmother, your mother. These objects allow us to feel a connection with someone or something that has been lost. An object can represent the physically tangible past in the present.

Sue Pearce recollects that our collections help to create the identity of the collector, that the collector has a relationship with the object - 'I love the object as the object loves me'

These comments led on to the subject of eroticism and the desire and pleasure we draw from material objects - this is not so much true desire as lust. Advertising is a successful example of the way in which humans are seduced by material objects to satisfy a psychological need - 'If I buy these trainers I will be a great runner'.

Pearce believes that collections are immediately created when one object is placed purposely with another, a positive discrimination towards certain objects - 'I choose this over that'.

Humans create meaning in life by emotionalising over a material object and by enhancing their lives through these help to create an identity, the objects we choose to collect and place together are only symbolic to ourselves.

Anne Welsh strongly believes in the classification and categorisation of objects in her case books. For a long time Welsh spoke of the Universal Library, the only aim in life being the importance and need to collect/read all published knowledge. In the present day this has now been summarised to the need to collect 'only the best' / 'only the newest'. Obviously attempting to read everything that has ever been published in one's lifetime is not a realistic tangible goal. Welsh described the pure vastness of the published word, commenting and demonstrating that the huge amount we see and consume is only ever a tiny percentage of what actually exists.

The primary satisfaction we get out of our collection is one of goal setting. Humans tend to set tragets and parameters to complete. 'I have these', 'I need this to complete the collection'. When the collection is complete they have succeeded in thier quest.

How do we ever orientate ourselves without any order?

Is there any point in having everything if you can find nothing?

Books and objects do not need order, we are the ones that need order to make sense of ourselves and the world.

http://www.projectspace176.com/

[Eloise P. Jones]

BEN RIVERS at KATE MACGARRY

12th March - 2nd May

Ben Rivers creates video portraits that portray human environment, lifestyle and memory. The use of an old Bolex camera and frequently out of date film gives the work an apperance of aged or found archival footage. This mimics the charactors and subjects explored within his cinematic worlds.

For Origin of the Species Rivers encloses his film within a wooden dwelling made of salvaged materials. The film conveys an aged male living in a rural cottage in the Scottish highlands developing means by which to survive. Feelings of discomfort and abandonment are echoed in the film's quality and subject.




The environment the audience is forced into to view Rivers film creates feelings of entrapment, whilst acknowledging and understanding the subject's need for solitude, freedom and escape.

www.katemacgarry.com

[Eloise P. Jones]

Forthcoming Exhibition for Victoria Karlsson

At our launch event Victoria Karlsson showed her installation/audio piece 'In Passing'.  Her next exhibition will be:

TOGETHER OUR SPACE GALLERY,12 Old Street, London EC1V 9BE

BLANK SPACE/(Y)OUR SPACE.  THURSDAY 20TH MAY – FRIDAY 2ND JULY 2010
A MULTI - DISCIPLINARY EXHIBITION FEATURING 15 ARTISTS BRINGING TO PASS
THEIR SENSE OF THE VOID.

Victoria Karlsson
www.victoriakarlsson.com

MOB REMEDIES AT PRIMO ALONSO

Mob Remedies is an exhibition of four artists exploring the possibilities of painting, without the constraints of a canvas surface and investigates the industrial use of material, function and method. The exhibition includes work by George Barber, Lothar Gotz, Natasha Kidd and Piers Secunda. The absence of canvas allows the artists the opportunity to explore painting in 3D and enables the works to have free rein of the space, to grow and expand beyond the flat.

[Details on Request] particularly enjoyed watching an award winning film by George Barber. Barber's video piece Automotive Action Painting saw Barber throw buckets of brightly coloured paint into the middle of a road. As cars hesitantly drove through the paint a painting was created. [DoR] appreciated the act of performance in making the 'painting' and the forced audience participation. Barber's work often explores human engagement in unusual situations.

Another, perhaps biased, favorite work exhibited was Natasha Kidd's painting machine Line (36 metres). A large open tank, with attached pump, containing bright white emulsion paint sat in the one half of the gallery space, this sourced a network of copper pipes, that ran around the walls of the gallery. The paint later returned to the tank through a tap.

'What I find most compelling in the process of painting is the action or event.' Natasha Kidd

www.primoalonso.com

[Eloise P. Jones]

CALL OUT FOR ARTISTS AND CREATIVES

[Details on Request] are looking for creatives to be involved in a new exhibition, taking place in May.   

 

The Production Line seeks to highlight the importance of the creation of the work rather than the outcome.  The exhibition brings together artists, creatives and musicians from across the country to encourage interaction and collaboration, each artisan working with what another has given them as work is passed along the production line.  The process of handing over work for someone else to interpret encourages the artists to yield power to chance and embrace the unexpected.  The exhibition celebrates the originality of art and the value of the bespoke.

 

We are looking for all type of creatives and artisans:

Illustrators,

Graphic Designers,

Photographers,

Painters and drawers,

Those working with textiles, ceramics, metal work

And on and on….

 

The exhibition will be taking place over the weekend of the 7^th May 2010 in the London Fields area of London.

 

If you would be interested in taking part in this performative exhibition please email a short statement about your practice, what materials you tend to use and the way in which you work.  This will help us create bespoke ‘studio stations’ for participants.

 

Please email Amber Ablett at detailsonrequest@hotmail.com

Deadline: 21^st April 2010

CÉLESTE BOURSIER-MOUGENOT at THE BARBICAN

"Trained as a musician and composer, French artist Céleste Boursier-Mougenot creates works by drawing on the rhythms of daily life to produce sound in unexpected ways. His installation for The Curve will take the form of a walk-though aviary for a flock of zebra finches, furnished with electric guitars and other instruments and objects. As the birds go about their routine activities, perching on or feeding from the various pieces of equipment, they create a captivating, live soundscape."

[Details on Request] thought that this was an apt work for the Curve at the Barbican as it is a piece that brings a variety of people in and gets them talking art.  It brought together a wide audience: as a piece of work, for the foyer of the Barbican center it attracts people interested in music as well as art, children and adults alike.

Céleste Boursier-Mougenot creates an alien, otherworldly space.  After walking through a dark, tunnel-like walk-way surrounded by projected animations and electronic sounds, you come out into a wide, bright space in which the walk way takes you around sandy islands with guitars and cymbals on stands.

The artist leaves the work up to chance and in the hands, or claws of the birds, building nests, making the exhibition space their environment.  Letting nature take over a man made space.  I would be interested to revisit the space again to see how it changes and the exhibition continues.

The work is undoubtedly Sensationalist but serves its purpose as an interactive, inviting piece of work.

As a person who has quite a prominent and irrational fear of birds, of course, THREE birds landed on me and froze me to the spot.

www.barbican.org.uk/artgallery/event-detail.asp?id=9713

[Amber S. V. Ablett]

YU AISHAN at ROOM GALLERY

On Friday the 9^th March [DoR] went to the Private View of the Yu Aishan exhibition of work at Room Art Space.  The paintings were ethereal and intense but [DoR] was most drawn to the mersmerising video work.  The still, bleached view of a bedroom with a bay window was disrupted by coloured ink over the film and falling bubbles, matched with the whirring and clicking of the film project, I found myself engulfed in the work.

www.roomartspace.co.uk

[Amber S.V. Ablett]

DRINK AND DIAL AT WILSON WILLIAMS GALLERY

[DoR] was invited to the Private View of Drink and Dial at the Wilson Williams Gallery in Hackney Downs on the 26^th March 2010 but one of the exhibited artists, Marguerite Horner.

 

Life Without Her, Rie Hale

Kiki, Kate Wiggs

The exhibition looks our society’s custom of making drunken phone calls to ex/lovers.  'A staggering 95% of us have drunk & dialed at least once in our lives according to a recent survey - often to devastating, embarrassing and comedic effect.'

 

Rie Hale, one of the artists featured in our Launch Night Exhibition was also showing work in this exhibition: a piece titled ‘Life Without Her’ which shows all 500 pages of George Perec’s Life: A User’s Manuel miniaturized and printed onto a single length of paper with the word ‘Her’ crossed out throughout. 

 

[DoR] found the performance Kiki by Kate Wiggs brilliant.  Throughout the private view a phone call was carried out between a couple, drunk and arguing.  The disputing couple fitted in marvelously, being just the type of person found at a Private View and convincingly unaware that their conversation was intruding on other people.   By staging the performance in this way they made the audience an unwitting participant in the piece and played with the idea of eavesdropping and our fascination with other people’s lives.

www.wilsonwilliamsgallery.com/dial.htm

www.riehale.com

www.margueritehorner.moonfruit.com

www.katewiggs.moonfruit.com

[Amber S. V. Ablett]

MORE PICTURES OF THE LAUNCH NIGHT

Mixed media painting by David Butler,  Ausgabe 1.4 by Rie Hale.

 

Detail from London Fields by Laurie Lax.

Museum of Us 

Zion by Matthew James Kay

A walk from the East End to Southend,  LIBERTY ROWLEY AND MARK JAMES

 

Airimages Performance

Audience/performer with Airimages

Bettina & Jaime from Airimages

Eloise P. Jones and guests infront of In Passing, Victoria Karlsson

LAUNCH NIGHT!!!!

For the Launch Event we have worked with a total of 15 creatives who have added their own input to this evening, from the graphics you see, the clothes we are wearing and the music you’ll hear without even including the art work on display.

Eloise P.Jones & Amber S.V.Ablett, dressed by y.not.i, infront of a David Butler.

The Launch Exhibition aims to highlight the production over the product.  An artist’s ideas, research and the process of making a piece of work are rarely seen; it goes on ‘backstage’ and the audience is presented with an outcome that encapsulates what has gone before.  The works exhibited tonight show evidence of their own making and, in some cases, the process continues throughout the evening.  We, the audience help to produce the work as part of Airimages’s performance and to understand Karlsson’s installation we must get inside it and assist in its deterioration.  Matthew Mackisack’s Techne…Psyche…Edison…Baird invites us to read aloud and so we become a part of the piece when we do.  

Joseph Alber stated that ‘art is concerned with the how and not the what’ and added to this should be ‘the why?’.  By highlighting ‘the how’ these works demand that the viewer asks why were they made.  When the process is apparent the viewer is made aware of the time that has been spent on the work, and evidence of time can be seen as evidence of existence; a way of drawing attention to the artist themselves as we can see their hand in the making of the work.  

AIRIMAGES

Airimages are a collaborative project that invite the audience to both observe and make the work.  Infact, audience participation is an integral part of the work; they choose the direction that the performances take, a brave task for Airimages, giving up an amount of control to the hands of their viewers.  Airimages create theatrical images and tableaux influenced by a background in fashion but rather than attempting to capture a single moment in a photograph, they create a live event in which change and experimentation is supported and developed.  The process of their work does not have a definitive terminus as they encourage the audience/participants to take copies of the images produced and leave feedback, continuing the performative act without them.

www.airimages.org

Airimages Performance

MUSEUM OF US

Museum of Us is Ablett and Jones’ attempt to understand each other through the objects they possess. If we personally select and cherish the items that surround us they must indicate who we are and what we hold most dear.   The Museum of Us is the celebration of the everyman who is so frequently passed over and ignored.  Here Ablett and Jones seek to draw attention to the importance of the individual within the masses.   Museum of Us consists of two displays. One depicts Jones’ representation of Ablett through a selection of her personal belongings and the other, Ablett’s portrait of Jones. The clinical display of exhibits and samples reflect society’s macabre fascination with other people’s lives. 

www.detailsonrequest.blogspot.com

Detail from Museum of Us

MATTHEW MACKISACK

Techne…Psyche…Edison…Baird mixes the passive act of watching film with the physical engagement of reading a text aloud.  By inviting the viewer to read the text, he is asking them to become ,and create , part of the work, making the act of reading and watching an integral part of the work itself.  Like David Butler, Mackisack draws our attention to what is perceived, playing with what is real and what is intentionally misleading.  

Techne…Psyche…Edison…Baird, Matthew Mackisack

VICTORIA KARLSSON

Victoria Karlsson’s installation In Passing looks at a physical involvement with physical objects.  By inviting viewers to walk through paper strips hung from the ceiling, In Passingechoes the act of reading a book, creating the physical involvement

of turning each page, along with the mental escape of being separated from the real world, inviting exploration of the space.  The sounds created are recorded, so that as the paper disintegrates and deteriorates we are left with an audio imprint of the piece. Each time the piece is displayed there is a separate and individual audio track which documents it.

www.victoriakarlsson.com

In Passing, Victoria Karlsson

 

DAVID BUTLER

The way in which each person views the world is formed and fashioned by their perceptions and David Butler’s paintings seek to highlight this.  His use of less traditional painting mediums and use of bright colours and jagged compositions illustrate the way in which they have been made.  David Butler is studying for a PhD in Fine Art and Contemporary Critical Practice at Reading University,

RIE HALE

The components of Ausgabe 1.4 are those that you can see.  There is no question to the medium or the how and because of this simplicity it demands that the viewer asks what or why.  The unassuming quality is what draws the viewer’s eye to the sculpture.  The piece has almost alchemic properties, using a liquid to make a solid, so the materiality of the sculpture is undefined and transient.  Rie Hale has recently completed a MA at Central Saint Martins.

www.riehale.com

MATTHEW JAMES KAY

Zion is a sculpture, partly made by Matthew James Kay and partly made by the contribution of nature.  The cardboard mountain is left to deteriorate and change by the elements. Kay gives up control over the sculpture to the environment and lets the work take its own course.  

www.matthewjameskay.com

LAURIE LAX

Laurie Lax is in her final year studying Fine Art at Bath Spa University.  Lax’s drawings were made on site for this exhibition, taking material from walks around the area.  Referencing traditional pigment making methods, she uses found plant matter rolled into small balls strategically rubbed onto the paper’s surface.  The remnants of the works creation, found on the floor below the drawings, highlight the production.  The size of the piece envelops the viewer within the marks and textures, constantly moving the eye around without a focus.  

LIBERTY ROWLEY AND MARK JAMES

The short film A walk from the East End to Southend, is a collaborative project between Liberty Rowley and Mark James.  The film is made up of still images taken during a walk from the artist’s home in the East End of London to the Southend Pier, presenting the viewer with one image at a time to be absorbed before it is replaced by another.  The artists are interested in the act of walking rather than the destination, setting themselves a long and tiring task.  It is almost an absurdist challenge to complete and once the target has been completed they turn around and return.  This in itself draws attention to the doing rather than the outcome.  The artist’s are also interested the links between the act of walking and madness, looking at Sid Barratt of Pink Floyd’s walk from Chelsea to his mother’s home in Cambridge, the poet John Clare’s walk from one mental institution in Epping Forest to another in Northampton and Van Gogh’s walks across the South of England.

http://fourfeetfilms.blogspot.com

Y.NOT.I STYLISTS

The [DoR] team have been styled by Heather Lyttle and Gemma Hyslop, who work collaboratively under the name y.not.i.  Known for their styling and direction of avant guard Editorial, TV Production and Performance Art, y.not.i endeavour to create a platform for contemporary designers and artists.

y.not.i.styling@googlemail.com

SHAUN TURNBALL

Shaun Turnbull has designed the graphic material for the Launch Event.  With the concept of emphasising production over product Turnbull designed a booklet advertising the Launch that opens up to a poster.  The simple and eye-catching design ensured that they captured the attention of any passers-by.  Turnbull graduated from Bath Spa University and is currently employed by Sea.

www.shaunturnbull.co.uk

ROSS JONES

The evening’s event will be documented in photographs by Ross Jones, a freelance photographer based in Finsbury Park. His work covers a diverse range of subjects, from music to travel, urban, press and commercial.  Jones has worked his way round the festival, club and gig circuit over the past few years, capturing some of the country’s leading rock and pop stars along with the audiences who are as much part of the events as the performers. 

www.vitreumphotography.com

All image rights: Ross Jones/[Details on Request]

[A.S.V.Ablett]

 

THE PREPARATIONS

Its over now....but how hard we worked!

Many thanks to R. Pressley, B. Johnston, H. Buckley, Pedro, Mark, Dave and all at Under the Dust for lots of advice and hands on help.