Wednesday, 22 September 2010
Tuesday, 31 August 2010
Exhibition of Documentation
Woodlane Campus, Falmouth, Cornwall
7th-11th September, 10am-5pm
The exhibition displays documentation of the live art event, Art Hub. It experiments with different ways of recording performance art, and examines the legacies that are formed.
The live event featured a programme of performances which explored intimacy in contemporary culture, reacting to the impact of online technologies on human relations. It took place at The Poly on the evening of Saturday 21st August, with an afternoon performance on Falmouth Moor on the same day. The featured artists were Bryony Gillard, Hedva Eltanani, Kathryn Ashill, Kimbal Bumstead, Susan Mortimer and Zierle & Carter. These artists investigated the dynamics of interaction through collaboration, exchange and touch, occurring in both physical and virtual space.
The selection of artists has enabled a range of documentation techniques to be investigated, such as archival objects, photography and video. For several of the artists documents, products or traces are significant in their work. Kimbal Bumstead has stated, ‘I am interested in using physical materials and documentation processes as a way of exploring physical interaction. Both process and product are equally important.’ The displayed objects communicate the narratives of past actions. Many are valuable as traces of the processes which altered, involved or made them, and others were produced after the performance as illustrations of the work. The photographs present framed moments which construct specific interpretations. The video and audio recordings offer multisensory representations, but at the same time are still selective. These various mediums collaborate to achieve dynamic and considered depictions, forming new arrangements and interpretations of the performances. In contemporary live art practice the ephemeral nature of the discipline often challenges the concept of ‘permanent’ documentation; however it is important to develop a history of the discipline for critique and future practice.
LAB4, Hedva Eltanani
Photography: Anon; Andreia Pocas
Hedva Eltanani’s finale to the event was LAB4, which connected the audience at The Poly with another in London. The two locations were linked via live-feed technology, using webcams so that the groups could see each other. Eltanani led a series of activities such as ‘truth or dare’, which engaged the two audiences and also bonded the participants within each group. LAB4 was a chapter in Eltanani’s research into digital performance and how it can be used to create innovative audience experiences. This performance focused on the construction of relationships and communities across virtual space, exploring both the advantages and challenges of online technologies.
Exhibition of documentation
Friend Request, Kathryn Ashill
Photography: Andreia Pocas
In Friend Request by Kathryn Ashill, the artist wore a white dress and stood inside of a circle marked on the floor with chalk and labelled ‘Kathryn Ashill’s Profile’. An adjacent wall panel inscribed in blue outlined instructions to the audience, and blue ribbons hung down from it. As members of the audience approached Ashill, they collected a ribbon and tied it to the artist’s wrist, ankle, or place of choice, with the other end of the ribbon then tied to themselves. Once connected, Ashill introduced herself and described her ‘likes’ then kissed the participant’s cheek and encouraged them to exchange details about themselves. As the performance developed, the gathering of people around Ashill grew, meaning that each exchange was more public. Kathryn invited participants to write on her dress which was her ‘wall’. This performance created a physical representation of relationships formed on online networks such as Facebook, and depicted Ashill’s concerns with the social impacts of these networks.
Exhibition of documentation
Touch Tent, Kimbal Bumstead
Photography: Andreia Pocas; Kimbal Bumstead
Kimbal Bumstead’s Touch Tent, which was secreted in the corner of the event space, disclosed only movements against the tent’s sides and the scent of essential oils to onlookers. The shoes of participants left at the entrance signified when it was occupied. Individuals were led into the tent by the artist’s hand whilst made to stoop. Inside, Bumstead wore a large black sphere to conceal his head, and in rejection of the common reliance on vision he proceeded to touch participants’ faces, drawing what he sensed into a sketchbook with a stick of graphite. The interaction felt exceptionally intimate, as if secluded from the outside and receiving something exclusive; however the sketchbook’s collection of drawings shows how each encounter was one of many.
Exhibition of documentation
Absent Engagement, Zierle & Carter
Photography: Pedro Gil, directed by Zierle & Carter
Zierle & Carter’s Absent Engagement invited lone participants on a journey into the dark cinema, led by torchlight. Instructions in envelopes initiated exchanges between pairs, exploring ways of communication which required imagination and challenged usual social boundaries. The limited availability of this performance simulated mystery and inquisition.
Exhibition of documentation
Walk the Line, Susan Mortimer
The event at The Poly opened with Susan Mortimer’s Walking the Line. The artist’s image was projected into the event space via live-feed technology as she performed in a studio in Durham. Mortimer walked continuously over four hours, following a blue line that was taped to the floor. Spectators became physical counterparts by enacting her movements on a line in The Poly. As Mortimer existed both physically in Durham and virtually in Falmouth, it depicted her concerns about the identity of the body in cultural space as advancing technologies cause significant shifts.
Exhibition of documentation
Nail Art, Bryony Gillard
Art Hub commenced with Bryony Gillard’s pop-up nail bar, Nail Art on Falmouth Moor. Gillard collaborated with a local nail technician and created five nail designs inspired by famous artworks. Passers-by were given free nail painting with these designs, and as the technician gave the service she spoke about her knowledge of the artwork. Nail Art explored intimacy through the giving of this popular service which can only be done by an artisan as opposed to a machine. The exchange of knowledge between the technician and participants also achieved bonding and challenged the social barriers surrounding art, regarding its hierarchical position. Nail Art’s location on Falmouth Moor mixed with the local shoppers and traders.
Creative Claws, nail and beauty salon, Helston
Exhibition of documentation
Saturday, 14 August 2010
Kathryn Ashill
Statement of Practice
Kathryn Ashill uses touch within her practice in order to reconnect with people and site. The artist believes that a unique perspective is gained through these embodied encounters of a social and physical landscape. Ashill also aims to highlight the British reserve and the problems of personal space through her simple durational performances. Collaboration is a key element to the artists work as her performances focus around social interaction and interventions.
The performances are often in response to personal experiences, her understanding of a landscape and the people within that given environment. The artist has invited kissing, touching, hugging, squeezing, washing and holding to forge a bond with participants and the locality.
Art Hub
Friend Request
You are invited to confirm or ignore Kathryn’s friend request. In confirming the new friendship you will become physically linked to her. The artist is hoping to create an embodied, physical social network in response to her removed experiences of socialising on networking sites.
Biography
Kathryn Ashill graduated from the BA Fine Art (Combined Media) at Swansea Metropolitan University in 2007 with first class honours. In view of her Tawe Performances 06-08 she was the recipient of the Mission Gallery’s Student Prize in 2007. Kathryn has collaborated with a variety of businesses and social groups (including a leech farm in Hendy, South Wales) to produce site specific performances. Her work often takes place in the public domain, busy city centres, rivers, workplaces, home. These live, public performances are documented through film and photography.
Kathryn recently created a new site specific performance for Milton Keynes Gallery, and has just returned from a residency CERBYD in which she was selected to travel Wales on a bus with 9 other Artist’s in the pursuit of new collaborations.
Ashill has recently been awarded an Arts Council of Wales grant to undertake a residency at Craig Y Nos Castle where the artist intends on creating a series of new site specific performances. The outcomes of this project will be exhibited in her first solo exhibition at Pontardawe Arts Centre in October 2010.
Link
Axis Profile
Wednesday, 11 August 2010
Art Hub Programme
Saturday 21st August
Falmouth Moor:
12-3pm Bryony Gillard, Nail Art
The Poly:
6.30-10.30pm Susan Mortimer, Walk the Line
7-11pm Kimble Bumstead, Touch Tent
8-9pm Kathryn Ashill
7-10pm Zierle & Carter, Absent Engagement
10-10.30pm Hedva Eltanani, LAB4
Falmouth Moor:
12-3pm Bryony Gillard, Nail Art
The Poly:
6.30-10.30pm Susan Mortimer, Walk the Line
7-11pm Kimble Bumstead, Touch Tent
8-9pm Kathryn Ashill
7-10pm Zierle & Carter, Absent Engagement
10-10.30pm Hedva Eltanani, LAB4
Sunday, 1 August 2010
Monday, 26 July 2010
Zierle & Carter
Artist Statement
Alexandra Zierle and Paul Carter's collaborative work is interdisciplinary, multi-sensory and site and context responsive spanning from live art/performance art, happenings and interventions, to sound, video and installation. Through their practice, Zierle & Carter critically examine different modes of communication and what it means to be human both as individuals and as a collective entity. Their work addresses notions of belonging, cultural identity, the dynamics within relationships, harmony through conflict and the transformation of limitations.
Rooted in a fine art context their work adopts a simple yet rich visual aesthetic, which employs various approaches and guises. The work fundamentally explores societys conventions, traditions and rituals both old and new, often flipping them on their head, peeling them back, reversing orders and disrupting the norm. Zierle and Carter's work sites an embodied investigation into human interactions with their immediate environment and exemplifies a profound curiosity of the unknown, the void, of embodiment, and the now.
Art Hub
Absent Engagement
You are invited on a journey into the dark of a cinema, led by torchlight. Here you will find what is not there and discover a way of communicating that doesn’t involve speech but requires your imagination to guide the dialogue.
The work is shaped by the audience’s interactions, each performance holds the key to the next journey and by the end of the evening the fragments delivered by each participant will tell an intimate story.
Biography
Zierle & Carter's work has been exhibited nationally and internationally, including MOMA, New York, US and Plymouth Arts Centre, UK as part of Marina Abramovics Institute for the Preservation of Performance Art and The Pigs of Today are the Hams of Tomorrow. Their work has been shown at IMAF 2009, Odzaci, Serbia; Exit-ence and Exist in 08, Brisbane, Australia; Contaminate, Boston, US; Beyond the Abject, Collision 08 Festival, Area10 project space, London; Videophile, Phoenix Gallery, Brighton; Buenos Aires Zonadeartenacción - Foto y Video Acción 2007 and Bases and Conditions, Buenos Aires, Argentina; Transitions, Out of Bounds and Invigorate, The Exchange and Wastelands at Newlyn Art Gallery, Penzance.
In 2006 Zierle & Carter received the Ferdinand Zweig Memorial Scholarship to produce new work in Patagonia, Argentina. As members of The Western Alliance we have presented To Good To Be True, URGENCY/AGENCY Residency exhibition with The Western Alliance and Turkish artists Iz Oztat and Volkan Aslan as part of the Visiting Arts Artists to Artist scheme, The Delfina Foundation, London, UK.
Further information to be added soon.
Links
Artist Website
Thursday, 22 July 2010
Kimbal Bumstead
Summary of Practice
Kimbal Bumstead's ongoing research is into performer- participant relationships and the documentation of intimacy. He works with people as his subject matter - bodies and faces - exploring the issues surrounding physical contact and control through live interaction and sensory experiences. His work is about the here and now- about you and your relationship to touch.
Bumstead plays with the power relations that exist between the performer and the participant, where mutual vulnerabilities and insecurities are exposed, it's about being human and lovingly tortured.
There are two vital facets to his work that intertwine and support each other: the physical experience of interacting with another human through touch, and the process of documenting that experience through photography, video, drawing and email correspondence.
Art Hub
Touch Tent is a nylon dome tent with two people in it - a private installation for one audience member at a time. Inside there are rules. This is a performance with aims and objectives. You do not have to do anything. It's an experience for you. The rules will be broken once you go inside.
A man encapsulated in a cannonball wants to draw your portrait, he cannot see you but he knows you are there.
This performance is part of the artist's Touch Drawing project in which he constructs portraits based on the journey of touch across the face, discovering cheek bones, sockets, flesh, scars, he documents this journey with a stick of graphite on paper. Each sheet is then also marked with the audience member's email address. A few days later, they receive a photograph of their drawing.
Biography
Kimbal Bumstead graduated with a first class BA in Fine Art and Art History from the University of Leeds and is currently completing his MA in Performance and Theatre from Queen Mary University of London.
He has exhibited and performed solo work worldwide, in Russia, Mongolia, Vietnam and Poland. He recently performed and exhibited at the Beijing Biennale in China, Transit Station: Art as Event in Copenhagen, Denmark, Act Art 8, London, Wrong Love at the A Foundation, Liverpool, and North By Northwest at Tate Liverpool.
He lives and works in London.
Links
Artist Website
Tuesday, 20 July 2010
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)