Thursday 11 November 2010

Banners, works on paper 2010







Banner works and new works on paper, all photographs Alan Dimmick

New works 2010







"Keep The Faith", "The Torch", "Trojan", "Fragile Dollar Sign" all parcel tape on perspex
"We are monkeys..." Digital prints & sale banners.

All photographs Alan Dimmick.

Wednesday 7 July 2010

Creative Scotland Dialogue Event, The Briggait, Glasgow 25.05.10

An article commissioned for publication in a-n Magazine July/August 2010 issue and on www.a-n.co.uk/publications

Creative Scotland Dialogue Event, The Briggait, Glasgow 25.05.10

The forth and final Creative Scotland Dialogue Event was held at the impressively refurbished Briggait building, originally a nineteenth century fishmarket, on the banks of the River Clyde, in Glasgow. This was a high profile showcase event to introduce Creative Scotland to the arts communities of Scotland, giving a platform for Culture Minister, Fiona Hyslop and Chief Executive Designate of CS, Andrew Dixon, to outline the progress made towards establishing the new organization that will replace the Scottish Arts Council and Scottish Screen, with Creative Scotland set to be in charge of 30% of the Scottish cultural budget.

Fiona Hyslop began the proceedings by highlighted the strengths and achievements of what has gone before, commending the high levels of innovation, creative genius and contemporary nature of the art scene in Scotland, calling Creative Scotland “a great opportunity for a fresh agenda for culture and the arts, and for creativity and innovation to become a key focus for the economy and society across Scotland”. She was keen to emphasize Scotland’s role as a modern, ambitious, progressive nation, and how she sees creativity and innovation as a key to its continuing success, with the ability to benefit health, education and the economy.

Amongst a list of credits she thanked the SAC and SS for their “patience and perseverance” over the past year, “in being asked to do the impossible”, I presume by this she meant merging together as one organization, with a smaller overall budget but with a far wider remit.

Next up was Andrew Dixon, describing the new organization as a “rallying call” to Scotland’s creative community rather than an institution, assuring us we would start to “notice a change in pace, language and culture”.

He also outlined the achievements of Scotland, the need to champion everything that is good in the sector; to build on the strengths of both organizations, considering the SAC and SS as the most innovative organizations of their kind in Europe, seeing Scotland as a creative nation that punches well above its weight, whose position is currently ranked 18th out of 60 countries, in a cultural branding list.

The quantitative approach is obviously important to AD, seemingly picked up during his six years with a marketing company, as he was proud to recount that in his previous position at the Newcastle Gateshead Initiative, he apparently visited 100 artists in 100 days. Similarly he was eager to list the places, arts organizations, and numbers of artists he had encountered in his three weeks in post, brandishing a couple of artist’s postcards as if to prove the genuine nature of his involvement.

He emphasized the need to focus on a few priorities, to set targets, and objectives. Those priorities have already been identified as “Internationalism and Traditional Arts ”, obviously extending the idea of cultural branding and cultural tourism. “Creative Scotland will be testing a new language, not of funding and subsidy but of investment.”

A chance for the assembled audience to ‘participate’ came in the form of round table discussions of three prescribed questions on the subject of new models of support for investing in the arts; of how to encourage the Scottish people to champion their culture and how to promote these successes internationally. These collective responses were read out from six selected tables with further responses from Dixon and Hyslop.

During these discussions Hyslop and Dixon mingled briefly with the audience in order to show that they were genuinely getting involved in discussion. Andrew Dixon sat at our table and we took the chance to remind him that different areas of the arts need different types of funding, that one size does not necessarily fit all and that organizations need a degree of stability and security in order to create innovative high quality projects. We remonstrated that private sector intervention and philanthropic investments are not always going to have the best interests of the cultural sector at heart, with contributors inevitably expecting a return on their investment. We voiced concerns that there has so far been no Visual Arts Reference group, with what seems like no demarcation of departments within the new organization.

While promising to focus not on organizations but on artists, recognizing creative practice, valuing artists, his outpourings seemed strangely contradictory and misguided. The notion of partnership funding and philanthropy was repeatedly mentioned as a good thing, with Dixon citing examples of his own donations, and how good he felt being able to watch his investment grow etc. This proved to be incredibly bad timing with press coverage the same day of Dixon’s support for Sir John Wood’s proposal to create a shopping centre and car-park in place of Aberdeen’s much loved Union Terrace Gardens. This puts the kai bosch on agreed SAC funding for the development of a new Art Centre for Peacock Visual Arts, with Aberdeen Council cow-towing to Wood’s £50 million investment in his own proposal, despite a public consultation to the contrary.

Obviously aiming to give a positive spin to the whole proceedings, Richard Holloway, Chair of the joint Board of SAC and SS, managed to give a spectacularly misjudged performance in the form of a speech that encouraged us “to play more”, to “have more fun” and “to do more skipping”. This seemed a shockingly inappropriate approach to take in the light of the package of sweeping cuts to the arts sector, announced the day before by Jeremy Hunt, at Westminster.

Initial comments by Dixon about inheriting the current incarnation of Creative Scotland from a banker and a bishop so “it couldn’t have been in safer hands” and a throwaway comment as he left our table “Its always the Visual Artists.....”, later referring to us as the visual arts table, as if we were the trouble makers, left us in varying levels of disbelief. Having witnessed the spin, and what seemed like fairly predictable political maneuverings, I was left feeling short changed and wondering where was the real chance for dialogue, who is the captain of this ship, and how rough is the voyage ahead.

Wednesday 14 April 2010

HALLelujah 2 Install




Alex and Oliver have been round to install their artworks.

Collage installation by Oliver Braid work in progress.

Images of text work by Alex Hetherington.

HALLelujah 2 Information


HALLelujah 2
A group exhibition curated by Janie Nicoll, featuring artworks by:
Alex Hetherington
Amy Marletta
Anna Francis
Hanneline Visnes
Hrafnhildur Halldórsdóttir
Janie Nicoll
Jim Colquhoun
Karen Vaughan
Kenny Hunter
Kevin Hutcheson
Krisdy Shindler
Elizabeth Rowe
Neil Coombs
Oliver Braid
Rachel Mimiec

Opening event Saturday 17th April 2-4 pm

Venue: 212 West Princes Street, Woodlands, Glasgow G4 9DL
Contact no. 00 44 141 575 9773 mob. 07971 602270
Opening times 17th - 24th April 11-5pm (not Sunday 18th)
25th - 2nd May by appointment.

HALLelujah 2 brings together the work of fifteen artists from Glasgow, Edinburgh, Birmingham, Stoke-on-Trent and North Wales. All the artists are loosely linked by an interest in drawing, print and collage in all their various forms. The work will be displayed within a domestic setting, in the hallway of a Westend tenement flat.

HALLelujah 2 came about as a follow up to ‘HALLelujah !’ a group show in 2009, and other curatorial projects, The Consequence Video Screenings, (screened at Lowsalt, Glasgow, Edinburgh Sculpture Workshop and the Deviant Art Festival, Trolhattan, Sweden); and The TWINS Calendar Project, where artists were invited to make artworks for specific flats in Callendar Park High Flats, Falkirk during a residency undertaken by Janie Nicoll and Alex Hetherington at Callendar House, Falkirk.

The work in this exhibition illustrates a diversity of approach ranging from vinyl lettering text-work by Alex Hetherington; poster-works by Kenny Hunter and Kridsy Shindler; drawings by Amy Marletta, Hrafinhildur Halldórsdóttir, Hanneline Visnes and Jim Colquhoun; embroidered text work by Karen Vaughan; Anna Francis decoupage homage to the 1986 Stoke-on-Trent Garden Festival, surreal photomontage works by Neil Coombs, paintings by Rachel Mimiec, to the collage works in different forms by Oliver Braid, Janie Nicoll, Kevin Hutcheson and Elizabeth Rowe.

Info on featured artists

Alex Hetherington is a performance-based visual artist, curator and writer. Recent work includes: the Alt-W funded A Million Lies; Once and Only Revealed After Death (Triangle of Need) developed during a Creative Lab residency at CCA, presented at Reveal/Reset, Inspace August 2009, Edinburgh Art Festival and at Signal and Noise, Vancouver, May 2010; and Heavy Influence presented at Edinburgh Sculpture Workshop, August 2009, Edinburgh Art Festival. Other recent shows include Warehouse of Horrors, The Embassy Gallery at Swg3, Glasgow, Embassy Screen, The Embassy, Edinburgh; I Am Kurious Orange, at David Cunningham Projects, San Francisco, USA; The Colony Room, New Langton Arts, San Francisco, USA and House/Lights at OPA 0.2 On Performance Art Festival at Bios, Athens, Greece.

www.alexhetherington.net

Amy Marletta graduated from Duncan of Jordanstone Art College, Dundee in 2002, before undertaking the MFA at Glasgow School of Art in 2008. Recent exhibitions include ‘Self-Made Cavalcade’, Arts Complex, Edinburgh/ Akademie Galerie, Munich; ‘Don’t Cry It’s Only a Rhythm’, Generator Projects, Dundee. Amy is also part of artist collective GANGHUT, recent exhibitions/projects include, ‘Hands Across the Fire’, Dundee Contemporary Arts, Dundee and ‘Ganghut Gala Day’, Scottish Sculpture Workshop, Lumsden, Aberdeenshire.
For more info www.ganghut.co.uk

Marletta’s work for this exhibition is part of a larger series of drawings that relate to video and performance work stemming from ‘Dance Troupe’, an ongoing project, which is a hangover from the artist’s disco dancing youth. Always roping in friends and other artists she is the only constant, making up music, routines, t-shirts, props etc. Having repressed this need for group dance activity for many years, she feels that she doesn’t yet have it out of her system, as she continues to feel more and more ridiculous. The drawings form a set of ambiguous instructions for movement alongside advice for everyday life.

Anna Francis is an artist, based in Stoke-on-Trent. Her work examines private histories, public space and civic languages; using forms of intervention, mapping and photography to investigates the impact of art and culture on the regeneration of cities. The decoupage kit is part of her investigations into the 1986 Garden Festival for the first time. Francis is interested in excavating the site as it is today, uncovering the physical remnants of the Festival, as well as probing the impact and legacy in other ways. How does this piece, specific and relevant to one city instigate conversations in another?

www.annafrancis.blogspot.com


Elizabeth Rowe, has recently completed residencies at Het Wilde Weten, Rotterdam, NL, 2009, and Dudley Library, UK 2009. Solo exhibitons include If Distance was an Object Between Us, HWW, Rotterdam, 2009; Tiny Details, Grotesque Proportions, New Art Gallery Walsall, UK, 2008; My Sponsor is the Leader of the Country, MAC, Birmingham, 2006. She lives and works in Birmingham, UK.

Rowe makes work from material she accumulates. Things that are given to her, objects she finds in the streets or buys from 2nd hand shops, newspapers, magazines and free advertising. Through a range of processes such as cutting up, reassembling or drawing over, she attempts to control the mass of stuff she gathers and to edit her self into the work
With an interest in questioning the nature of different ‘realities’ while realising that the only one she will ever know is her own, she mashes up and reinterprets different sources, histories and ideas. The results are overlaps, ruptures and spillages of meaning that open spaces between public and private experience and make connections between the global and the local.

www.elrowe.com

Hanneline Visnes, orginally from Norway, is a painter who lives and works in Glasgow. She completed a BA at Glasgow School of Art in 1997 and the MFA at GSA in 2002. In 2005 she undertook the SAC Amsterdam Residency and has exhibited nationally and internationally. She currently exhibits with doggerfisher Gallery, Edinburgh.

http://www.doggerfisher.com/

Hrafnhildur Halldórsdóttir was born in Reykjavík, Iceland, spent parts of her childhood in Denmark and has since 1998 lived and worked in Glasgow. She graduated from Glasgow School of Art in 2001 (BA Hons) and 2007 (MFA). In her sculptures and installations the psychological nature of the negotiation of circumstance and contradictory forces of chaos and control are combined with the formal concerns of negotiating form and space. She has exhibited widely both nationally and internationally including recent solo shows in Overgaden-Institute for Contemporary Art, Copenhagen and Galleri Box, Gothenburg and group shows in Artnews Projects, Berlin, Glasgow International, Intermedia/Glasgow and Galerie LHK, Paris.
www.artnews.org/hrafnhildurhalldorsdottir

Janie Nicoll is a visual artist based in Glasgow, who originally trained in Painting at Edinburgh College of Art and graduated from the Master of Fine Art course at Glasgow School of Art in 1997. She has exhibited widely both nationally and internationally, most recently in the "Getting Up -Windows In the City", Inverness Old Town Art Project; Scottish National Portrait Gallery in ‘Rough Cut Nation’; ‘Heavy Influence’, Magazine 09 at Edinburgh Sculpture Workshop: Jamie Radcliffe Exhibition at SWG3; ‘Meddle With the Devil’ and ‘Garlands’ at The Park Gallery, Falkirk; Magazine 07, ESW; ‘Associates’ at the Embassy Gallery, Edinburgh; ‘The Consequence’ at Intermedia Gallery, CCA, Glasgow; the Deviant Arts Festival, Trollhättan, Sweden; Red Wire Gallery, Liverpool; Generator Projects, Dundee; Chapter Gallery, Cardiff; Lowsalt Gallery and EmergeD VSF Gallery, Glasgow; The Waygood Gallery, Newcastle; The Changing Room, Stirling; the Crawford Gallery, Cork and the Künstlerhaus, Dortmund, Germany amongst others. Her video works have been shown internationally including the Museum of Modern Art, New York.

Nicoll's work generally takes the form of site-specific installation often involving multiple digital images, collage techniques, drawing, painting, and assemblage that allow a process of translation.

http://www.axisweb.org/artist/janienicoll

Jim Colquhoun is an artist and writer based in Glasgow. His work seeks to negotiate the boundaries between art and life, waking and dreaming, fiction and fact. To this end he produces drawings, installations, performances and texts. Colquhoun is a recent graduate from the Environmental Art Department and Master of Fine Art Course at Glasgow School of Art. He has shown recently in Edinburgh, Copenhagen, New York, Stockholm and Glasgow.

Karen Vaughan graduated from Glasgow School of Art in 1991, and from the Master of Fine Art at the University of Ulster, Belfast 1992. She was a founding member of Catalyst Arts, Belfast.
Much of her work deals in minutiae: from cracks in the pavement to graffiti on the wall and often combines technology - the camera, with labour-intensive processes that include stitching, embroidery and knitting.

Kenny Hunter studied sculpture at GSA, graduating in 1987, lives and works in the Glasgow.
The winner of the Benno and Millie Schotz Award in 1991, he has exhibited widely in the UK, France and Scandinavia, including the major shows Hyperboreans, Glasgow (1992) and Work 1995-98, Bristol (1998), and has won several prestigious commissions for public sculpture in Scotland.
His work in Glasgow includes the Cherub and Skull, Tron Theatre (1999), The Calf, Graham Square (1999), The Castlemilk Dome, Castlemilk (1999) and Citizen Firefighter, Gordon Street (2001). Outwith Glasgow, he has executed public work at Hamilton, Four Youths (1998), and Sunderland, Interalia Stevenson Trail (1995). One of his most recent commissions, Man Walks Amongst Us (2000), a statue of Christ, was awarded by Glasgow City Council to mark the Christian Millennium.
His work is represented in the Scottish Arts Council, the British School in Athens, SNPG and GOMA.

Kevin Hutcheson was born in 1971 and currently lives and works in Glasgow. Hutcheson graduated from Chelsea College of Art & Design in 2002 and has since exhibited in a number of group shows including a solo exhibitions at Jack Strenz Gallery, Frankfurt, Alexandre Pollazzon, London, and The Collective Gallery, Edinburgh and group exhibitions at LEARN TO READ Tate Modern, London, Transmission, Glasgow; Maribel Lopez Gallery, Berlin; EAST International, Norwich Gallery, Jack Hanley Gallery, San Francisco; f a projects, London; Country Grammer at the Gallery of Modern Art, Glasgow and The Birthday Party at the Collective Gallery in Edinburgh.

Krisdy Shindler is a visual artist from Vancouver (Canada). Krisdy completed her ‘Masters of Fine Arts’ degree at The Glasgow School of Art in 2006. Her work in painting and animation has been exhibited in Canada, Israel, Denmark, Sweden, Wales, Puerto Rico, Columbia, and across Spain, the UK and Scotland. Recent exhibitions: When a Painting Moves… Something Must be Rotten, curated by Paco Barragan, exhibited at the Museo de Arte de Puerto Rico, Centro Colombo Americano, Bogota (Colombia), and Fundacion Godia (Barcelona); Listening to Silent Propaganda at Candyland Gallery in Stockholm a solo show featuring new works made on a residency at the Malongen Guest studio in 2008; International video art: Two-sidedness curated by Sandra Weil at the Kulturhuset in Stockholm 2008; Video Killed the Painting Star curated by Paco Barragan and Javier Panera at DA2 Salamanca Spain.

Krisdy is also co-founder and Co-Director of Lowsalt, an artist-run initiative and gallery that has delivered over 30 gallery exhibitions and site-specific art shows in Glasgow Scotland since inception in 2006. Positioned at the crossing of ‘DIY’ gallery culture and institutional networks, Lowsalt provides a platform for creative and cross-disciplinary practitioners to collaboratively produce and exhibit their work, www.lowsalt.org.uk. Her practices are now based both in Vancouver and Glasgow.
http://www.krisdyshindler.com/

Neil Coombs is an artist and writer based in North Wales. He is a lecturer in Art and Media at Coleg Llandrillo, Colwyn Bay and is currently researching Humphrey Jennings and British Surrealism for a PhD with Liverpool JMU.

The work in this exhibition is taken from the ongoing photomontage series The Phantoms of the Places that I Haunt. Each work in the series consists of photographs taken during micro-dérives in places that Neil visits regularly. The photographs are then placed in a repeated formal arrangement creating a sequence of faces, each one a phantom figure from the location visited. The Phantoms of the Places that I Haunt series takes its inspiration from the paintings of Giuseppe Arcimboldo and the work of the Czech and Slovak surrealist group, particularly the photographs of Emilia Medkova and the animations of Jan Svankmajer.

www.ncoo.co.uk

Oliver Braid graduated from Falmouth College of Arts in 2006 and is currently working towards his Master of Fine Art at Glasgow School of Art.
Selected exhibitions include You're A Voigin Who Can't Droive (Film Screening), CCA Glasgow 2009, Jamie Radcliffe: The Exhibition, SWG3 Glasgow 2009, Frieze Art Fair, London 2009, Climate for Change, FACT Liverpool 2009, Next Up, the Bluecoat Liverpool 2008.

Rachel Mimiec studied at The Glasgow School of Art, graduating from the Master of Fine Art department in 2000. She lives and works in Glasgow.
Rachel’s work is as varied as the contexts she responds to but can be linked as explorations of public/ private dialogue and exchange. She recently spent eighteen months as artist in residence in The Hidden Gardens at Tramway culminating in the exhibition Looking Out, Lookin In, as part of GI 2008.
www.rachelmimiec.com

Saturday 3 April 2010

HALLelujah 2 works arriving..







Artworks have begun to arrive for the exhibition in the shape of Decoupage packs from Anna Francis (Stoke-on-Trent) , and surreal Photo-montages from Neil Coombs (North Wales).


In addition to this I have selected intricately constructed collage works by Oliver Braid, and Alex Hetherington will be creating a white on white text work using vinyl lettering. Kenny Hunter will be dropping off a posterwork, and we'll be receiving a black on black drawing by Rafla, Kevin Hutcheson is making a new collage work, Krisdy is creating a new animation. Looking forward to seeing the other works as they arrive next week.

Wednesday 24 March 2010

HAllelujah 2 !! On its way...

Last year's exhibition was so much fun I've decided to do another one. Watch this space for more info...

Here is a list of the artists to be featured. They are all loosely linked by an interest in drawing, print and collage in all the various forms. Hopefully it will make for an interesting show !! I think so !!

Artists confirmed are as follows

Alex Hetherington
Amy Marletta
Anna Francis
Hanneline Visnes
Hrafnhildur Halldórsdóttir
Janie Nicoll
Jim Colquhoun
Karen Vaughan
Kenny Hunter
Kevin Hutcheson
Krisdy Shindler
Elizabeth Rowe
Neil Coombs
Oliver Braid
Rachel Mimiec

Venue: 212 West Princes Street, Woodlands, Glasgow G4 9DL
Contact no. 00 44 141 575 9773 mob. 07971 602270
opening times 17th-24th April 11-5pm (not Sunday 18th)
25th - 2nd May by appointment.
opening event Saturday 17th April 2-4 pm


Its gonna be beautiful!!

For images of the first HALLelujah! exhibition check earlier posts on this blog .. March, April 2009.

Thursday 25 February 2010

Tuesday 9 February 2010

Fragile Dollar Sign

A small version of "Fragile Dollar Sign" on show at Embassy gallery, Edinburgh 'Salon Show'. 23.01.10 – 07.02.10

Other images of the show are on their website //www.embassygallery.org/previous/salon/