No.4

A talk by the artist Peter Ashton Jones

 The Eye of The Blackbird and Some More Recent Paintings, and Possibly Some Older Ones

March 18th 6.30pm

Peter Ashton Jones talks about the ideas that lie behind the paintings from his last solo show, The Eye of The Blackbird, which was inspired by a poem by the great American poet Wallace Stevens. It is likely that this talk could extend into a range of related issues to do with contemporary painting and its relation to history. Either way, this talk will be, fundamentally, about painting in the twenty-first century and questions are welcome.

Like many painters Jones has had to support his practise with part-time work: Jones was the curator of The Nunnery Gallery from 2000-2004, Arts Director of Limehouse Arts Foundation from 2004 to 2006, and in 2007 he co-founded the painting magazine Turps Banana with Marcus Harvey. In 2012 he established and is currently a co-director of the Lion and Lamb Gallery. Alongside the above, Jones has curated numerous exhibitions in commercial and ‘project’ galleries in the UK and in Europe.  

Location: Bermondsey Project 

Ground floor screening space

46 Willow Walk 

London SE1 5SF 

http://bermondseyproject.com

no.3

Cedar Lewisohn and Nevermeter 

(Ian Allison and Kieron Livingstone) in Conversation with Iphgenia Baal

25th February 2014

The Nervemeter is an autonomous, non-profit magazine which is sold on the streets by the homeless. Founded by writer/editor Ian Allison and designer Kieron Livingstone, The Nervemeter has no advertising resulting in the magazine having a unique visual style and critical content.  Each issue addresses a prescient social theme; past issues have dealt with wealth, madness and 'alternative' employment.

                          

Cedar Lewisohn is an artist and curator based in London. He has recently been working on The Canals Project, a series of public art works for the canals of East London. In 2013 organised The Hecklers, a group exhibition for The New Art Gallery Walsall. Between 2005 and 2011 he worked as a curator for Tate. Lewisohn is the author of two books published by Tate and Merrell and has edited and published many publications over the last ten years.

The talk was a great opportunity to hear voices from a truly diverse audience, to get to grips with content, distribution strategies and the difficulties in maintaining an independent publication. 


http://www.nervemeter.co.uk

 

Working with Commercial Galleries

  A talk by gallerist Ceri Hand

11th December 2013

 

Opening up some of the mechanics of the art world gallerist Ceri Hand discussed the relationships between artists and commercial galleries. Ceri was refreshingly honest in discussing possibilities for regulation in commercial galleries and some of the more covert practices within the industry, such as discounting.

Initially trained as an artist, Ceri Hand draws on over twenty years in the art world. She has previously acted as Director of Metal (Liverpool), Director of Exhibitions, FACT (Liverpool, where she was a contributing curator to Liverpool Biennial in 2004 and 2006), Deputy Director of Grized...ale Arts, Cumbria and Director of Make, London. Ceri Hand Gallery was founded in Liverpool in 2008 and relocated to London in 2012. The gallery has a special focus on conceptual and performance art, producing and exhibiting major new works on and offsite, including publications, editions and multiples. Fostering relationships between gallery artists and their work provides a strong peer support for artist's development and engages curators and collectors. The gallery has actively contributed to developing a regional market in the UK through local, national and international activity and a challenging programme of exhibitions and education events.

Follow Ceri's blog: http://www.cerihandprojects.co.uk/


Ceri Hand Gallery
6 Copperfied Street
London, SE1 0EP
www.cerihand.co.uk

Series 2; Talk No.1

Show Me Something Different: Kubrick, The Shining, and Repetition

A talk by Chris Fite-Wassilak

27th November 2013

Was it 58 times that Stanley reshot Jack Nicholson crossing a street in The Shining in the hope that, as he told me, ”something interesting would happen”?

- Ian Watson, New York Review of Science Fiction, 2000

Writer and curator Chris Fite-Wassilak and artist and filmmaker Tom Flanagan began a multipart documentary film project exploring the myths and methods that hover around the making of Kubrick's version of The Shining (1980). Carrying out in-depth interviews with Kubrick’s colleagues and collaborators, as well as with experimental re-stagings of particular scenes, the project seeks to examine a methodology entirely separate from Kubrick himself and the usual 'troubled genius' portraits. Taking his constant re-shooting of scenes as a focus on a way of working, this talk will provide a glimpse in to their research and process in asking, how do you know when you’ve found what you’re looking for?

The talk included an exclusive ten minute preview from the documentary aspect of the project.

For more information on Chris Fite-Wassilak and Tom Flanagan:

http://www.growgnome.com 

http://cfitewassilak.wordpress.com

http://vimeo.com/tomflanagan

http://www.artspacegalway.com/artistdetail.asp?id=118

Eight

8. 19/06/13

Painting Experience

- a strange place in one's practice

 A talk by the artist 

Rebecca Meanley

 Rebecca Meanley Dissembling #2 2012

Rebecca Meanley Hybrid Painting 2013

A strange place in one’s practice – an odd in-between place – a transition - an impossible to ignore experience - the impact on one’s practice

Working from one’s own experience - is this self-indulgence or self-analysis, reality or authentic life experience?

Painting as a place which absorbs all of these domains, forms hybrids, finds a voice

From a place slightly dumbfounded by the inability to articulate an experience too great – to seek to manifest such experience in painting – through painting

To try to describe, to try to solve

Work becomes a vehicle with which to communicate or attempt to – 

Isn’t that what it’s supposed to do?

Not abstraction versus representation BUT how can the two polar opposites fold into one another to form another kind of entity?

And how can the artist navigate this space – to seek to find – to interpret, to fathom, to understand, to try to solve

A very honest consideration of how a life-threatening experience can affect ones’ practice.

Rebecca Meanley will discuss the impact serious illness has had on her practice, with a close analytical look at the last year in painting.  

Dissembling#2 is currently on show at the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition 

More works can be viewed at: http://www.rebeccameanley.com/

Seven

7. 5/06/13

'The Flowering of Art Nouveau'

A talk by the artist Susan Finlay

Métropolitain  

Susan Finlay always paints in acrylic on shop-bought, pre-stretched canvases, while her more recent ceramic works were built by hand using cheap school clay. Both are intended to highlight the use of ‘poorer’ and hence ‘stagier’ materials, as well as the repetition of certain art nouveau motifs which reoccur across both the two and three-dimensional elements of her practice. Her work is very much concerned with the feminine (what Adolf Loos would term erotic) aspects of certain early modernisms, and in particular those which may have previously been dismissed as minor due to their engagement with graphic and/or sculptural elaboration, capriciousness and play. Simultaneously, the work acknowledges the construction of this, so-called, decadence, and in so doing consciously prevent the viewer from fully indulging in the worlds that it alludes to . . .

This talk centres on Susan Finlay's work from the previous three year years and its relationship to art nouveau.

Six

6. 23/05/13

London Seizure

A two-part screening series
curated by Carmen Billows

Part One: Urban DISease

Mike Stubbs Cultural Quarter

London, as with many other urban centres, functions as an 'island of desire' in commonplace perception, advertising freedoms in lifestyle and self-fulfilment. But, the urban dweller must compensate for these luxuries with certain sacrifices. On the one hand seduced by the allure of the urban multitude, he has to on the other hand accept the city's pace and, often passively, a role in its systems of mediation, surveillance and control. 

The origins of a certain ‘urban DISease’ very often lie beyond grasp but are instead sensed as underlying and immaterial threats to the status quo. Adaptation, or a healthy sense of disregard is needed in order to adjust to an environment of constant shifts in social politics; here is it easy to unknowingly submit to the powers at play.

London Seizure, a two-part screening programme of artists’ moving image works suggests to take a step back from this hypnotic swirl. 

The artists featured in part 1, Urban DISease, use processes of close observation and contemplation to engage with their immediate surroundings. They share an interest in capturing instances of disruption in everyday social or political life and give a voice to a general sense of discomfort.  

The artists featured in part 2, Extension of the Zone of Operation, take an extra interest in current housing politics and regeneration processes that endanger interpersonal links and nurture isolation and individualism.

Contextualised within institutions in two London boroughs currently strongly affected by regeneration processes, this two-part project aims to trigger an exchange of voices from a Southwark to a Hackney Wick context. 

Urban DISease

John Smith, The Black Tower, 24 min., 1985-87.

Piotr Krzymowski, The shape of things to come, 6,20 min., 2012.

Alexander Costello, All you need to know right now (1), 8,27 min., 2001.

Claire Hope, Boy Nature, 1,30 min, 2009.

Emily Richardson, Block, 13 min, 2009.

Mike Stubbs, Cultural Quarter, 10 min, 2003.

Steven Ball, No-Way Street, 1 min, 2007.

Hector Castells, Film, (2012), 7.13 min, 2012.

Matthias Kispert, The Funeral of Baroness Thatcher, 4,09, 2013.

Followed by a Q&A with the artists and curator

Location:

Bermondsey Project

46 Willow Walk

London SE1 5SF

http://bermondseyproject.com/

http://arttalksandtea.blogspot.co.uk/

Part 2: dates and location tbc; a detailed programme will be announced shortly.