Electro Studios Project Space Open

New artist-run project space in St Leonards on Sea

http://www.electrostudiosprojectspace.co.uk

Jarman Award

Hold Your Ground 2012 by Karen Mirza and Brad Butler was screened as part of the line-up at the Jarman Award day held at the Whitechapel gallery on the 3rd Nov. I didn't manage to see all that was on offer, as there two separate sites to the days talks and screening but was glad to catch Karen Mirza and Brad Butler's talk about there new film Deep State 2012.

I would like to have seen Benedict Drew talk about his work and thought the screening set-up didn't do his work justice.

Marcus Coates film Vision Quest - A Ritual for Elephant & Castle 2012 was one of the strangest films, I enjoyed the mix of tension, politics and humour but wondered if it were a little too much like an kind of extended Ali-G sketch!

James Richards video Disambiguation 2012 was a sensual over-load. The free association of random film and video clips with the addition of accompanying sound-tracks and music was cleverly done although it was a lot to take in one sitting. There were a few porn clips, to include at least 2 of male ejaculation which added an edgyness to the screening and made me ponder weather this young artist may win the award!...He did win the award but it would have been great to see the radical act of this award going to artists like Karen and Brad who's practice reaches far and wide beyond the final commodity of the artwork (as I'm sure Jarman himself would also of found attributable)

Juliana Cerqueira Leite

The Juliana Cerqueira Leite exhibition at TJ Boulting was a great opportunity to see some of the Brooklyn based artists work. The large sculptural pieces had been made in London specially for the show and others had been bought over from Brooklyn, making a nice link between the two locations that she has inhabited over the last 10 years. 

Surrounding the sculptures in the show at TJ Boulting were a series of large cyanotypes called ‘Summertime Blues’, which had been made in mid-summer on Brooklyn rooftop. The prints are made up of multiple exposures of the artists naked body, where a series of mirrored poses were struck on the light-sensitive fabric. 
'The evidence of the summer heat is captured in the starburst forms produced by dripping sweat. The final image is therefore a composite, generating a new anatomy, an impossible body, made feasible by the mechanics of directly capturing time'. 

Also I have added some of Juliana's thoughts in response to her performance for the SOLO exhibition on this post:

http://soloexhibition.blogspot.co.uk/2010/12/solo.html

'Solo' Exhibition

....All the moving image works in the SOLO show were playing at once. A chorus of teetering, grappling, pacing, hobbling, heaving, weaving, spinning, pressing and fingering was accompanied by the constant whirring of the 16mm projectors and the sounds of the various actions. Not all of the works included sound and there was no dialogue in any of the works shown. The absence of dialogue was a conscious decision to bring about more of an experiential interaction with the work, to bring us closer to an empathy with the defiant, dogged determination and a self-will that the artists employed in these individually performed tasks. Through the sounds and actions, some hugely arduous and others slight, all played in unison, we were also bought closer to understanding or even touching the very fabric of the works. Many of which are punctuated with moments of vulnerability when things do not quite go to plan and something slips, misses the target or breaks.. .

SOLO exhibition

This exhibition focuses on the work of nine women artists who primarily work in film, video and performance. They are all present in the work immersed in a solo reverie, acting out tasks and actions that range from the very bodily and visceral to the banal and distant. 
There is a connectivity between the works on display together due to the earnest endeavours and intimate obsessions of the artists and their shared engrossment in the materials they wield, whittle or balance.

Big Screen and Film Gallery at Latitude

It was a great success. We had an audience of art enthusiasts and interested passers by who came to see what was going on at this relatively ‘underground’ event in the woods at the festival. The word soon spread that this was an event not to miss.

During the day the Film Gallery show-cased experimental expanded cinema by James Holcombe, Adam Asnan, Zoe Brown, Jim Hobbs and Rie Nakajima and Nick Collins. These live performances were mostly improvised  and transformed the normally quiet retreat of the gallery space into more of an audio-visual workshop. The events worked well in the chapel-like gallery situated next to the big screen in the woods, the intimate nature of the space concentrated the intensity of the activities within it. The audience enjoyed being able to get close to the work and experience the mechanisms of the analogue apparatus.

All the videos shown on the Big Screen at dusk and into the night looked amazing, there were beautiful, thought provoking, mesmerising and amusing pieces by Saskia Olde Wolbers, Sebastian Buerkner, Karen Mirza & Brad Butler, David Blandy, Benedict Drew, Semiconductor, Vicki Thornton, Graham dolphin and the late great Jeff Kean, to name a few.

Although The Big Screen had less publicity than some other, more established events, we still managed to draw a good crowd and as the night progressed the Dj’s and Vj’s attracted even more people and with the combination of a cinematic screen and good sound system we ended up with a full-on rave! This was all down to the excellent work of David Wilson, Dennis (DJ) McNanny (all the way from Brooklyn), the legendary Don Letts and the resident DJ Harry K. 

Also, this was all possible because of excellent technical assistance from two lovely, helpful, down to earth and good humoured assistants Emily Ballard and Alex Duckworth.

Latitude Festival 2012

James Holcombe and Adam Asnan in the Film Gallery

The Big Screen late at night

Don Letts and Paul Burgess

The Big Screen and Film Gallery was a huge success thanks to all the excellent work and assistance from all the participants, assistants, helpers, audience and Lavish Production.

A Lecture From Behind The Screen

I'm currently on the No.w.here Summer School: A Lecture From Behind The Screen. Led by Maxa Zoller it also includes workshops and lectures by Thomas Hirschhorn, Mikhail Karikis, Uriel Orlow, Hillary Koob-Sassen, The Otolith Group, Martina Mullaney, Camille Barabagallo, Frances Rifkin and Chto Delat, amongst others. 
James Holcombe is leading the hands-on lab based workshops. 
Week one was full of diversity and dynamic discussion, already I feel like I've experienced and learnt alot.
Here's a taste of the kind of thing we've being doing so far: 


http://www.nowhereopenstudio.blogspot.co.uk/2012/06/how-i-shot-andy-warhol-performance-with.html

Trisha Baga: Rock, Benedict Drew: Gliss

TRISHA BAGA: ROCK 

Vilma Gold 5 APRIL – 19 MAY

'Baga is a young artist working mainly in video and performance. In terms of technology, plot and resources however, her approach to making is inclusive, playful and highly improvisational, so that her practice begins to unfix such distinctions. Though precarious by its nature, this tack also thrives on the possibility that arises when everything around becomes potential material for narrative making'. 


Benedict Drew: GLISS 
Cell Projects 20th April - 27th May, 2012

'This step by step visual account documents the artist's futile attempt to implant the living into the inorganic. GLISS is an immersive and visceral installation, which goes further to provoke human sensory and cognitive responses as sound and image induce sensory powers of calm and well being, but it also highlights our anxiety and rejection of technological systems. The exhibition features a chorus of melodic TV talking heads singing a version Cloud Busting, a Kate Bush track based on the bizarre cloud bursting machine of psychologist, Wihelm Reich,  to an enormous anthropomorphic lump of clay defiantly rejecting its relationship with technology. Drew’s unlikely material combinations are fused with the electrical pulse of computer technology to catalyse and transform the obsolete nature of analog media'. 
                        -------------------------
Both these installations are indeed 'immersive and visceral' Baga's is much more random, intuitive and spontaneous and Drew's could be considered as far more orchastrated and slick ( perhaps to an extent the 'hers' and 'his' of moving image installation).

http://bigscreen-filmgallery.tumblr.com/

The Big Screen and Film Gallery at the Latitude Festival 2012 
Produced by Louise Colbourne with assistance from Jim Hobbs, Paul Burgess, DJ Harry K, and No.w.here. In association Cine-city film festival, LUX, Tank TV and the BFI

The Big Screen and Film Gallery will run for the three days of the Latitude Festival

from 13-15th July 2012.

The Big Screen presents a selection of different artist’s film and video work each evening, and will then go on to show-case experimental film, alternative sound-tracks and re-workings of classic cinema footage. Also there will be late night VJ’s and DJ’s.

The Film Gallery will focus on artist’s 16mm and 8mm film work and will include curated programmes and events by No.w.here, Jim Hobbs  and  Louise Colbourne 

ARTISTS: James Holcombe, Malcolm Le Grice, Jeff Keen, Laure Prouvost, Henry Hills, Tanja Goethe, David Blandy, Keran James, Philip Hausmeier, Karen Mirza & Brad Butler, Mordant Music, People Like Us, Stan Brakhage, Len Lye, Tracey Emin, Luke Losey, Jayne Parker, Zoe Brown, Semiconductor, Sebastian Buerkner, Iain Forsyth & Jane Pollard, Squint, Jasper Goodall, Paul Burgess, Benedict Drew, Saskia Olde Wolbers, Emma Hart, Kevin Gaffney, Ian Helliwell, Oliver Bancroft, Tim Simmons, Graham Dolphin, Katy Dove, Jaye Ho, Tim Riley and Georgina Elizey, Vicki Thornton, Rosa Barba, Nick Collins, Annie Whiles, Toby Tatum

VJ/DJ by David Wilson, Jee Day (Dennis Mc Nanny), Don Letts and DJ Harry K

Delaine LeBas & Louise colbourne

          Figurine found in Robert's Curios in Hastings

Performance by Delaine LeBas and Louise Colbourne May 2012

Jack In The Green

Jack In The Green festval in Hastings

Towner Art Gallery

East Sussex Open exhibition.

'Reverberation'


Painting on milliner's stand with projection 2012

Small oil paintings on paper

Landscape at Dungeness

In the catalogue for the Graham Sutherland exhibition at Modern Art Oxford, George Shaw links Sutherland's landscapes to memories of  the 70's sci-fi drama Children of The Stones.


'The Children of the Stones helped me to identify more than a passing concern with the British landscape and the ancient presence of man and beliefs....but what is most compelling is the sinister atmosphere, the sensation of a world beyond ours...'

Visiting Dungeness recently, I thought about the dark brooding landscapes of Sutherland's paintings, and The children Of The Stones. This bleak and desolate location is also full of a sense of  other-worldliness through it's space, structure and the incidental remains of past human activities, pass-times, industry and creativity.

Graham Sutherland

An Unfinished World
Graham Sutherland at Modern Art Oxford
works on paper curated by George Shaw

Dark Hill 1940 water colour and gouache on paper

Little Mountain Study 1944 water colour, pencil and chalk on paper

'The concluding episodes (of The Changes )- set amongst the rocks of a Welsh quarry, which uncover the power that holds nature and the progress in balance- prefigures my interest in the concerns of the Neo-Romantic movement and Sutherland's work of the 30's and 40's in particular. Similarly the ITV series The Children Of The Stones helped me identify more than a passing concern for the British landscape and the ancient presence of man and of beliefs....Sutherland himself wrote somewhat mysteriously in 1973, conjuring up the ghost of Arther Machen, the Welsh author and mystic,in whose dreams and nightmares time dissolves and the ancients come calling: 'If I could barricade myself within a ring of rocks I would be pleased.'




George Shaw from the Sutherland catalogue ( Modern Art Oxford)