We don't only show art - we make it too!

The complexity of working contemporary culture today is based on communication. Conversation is now seen as a productive method for producing new ideas, expanding relations and creating diversity. This type of collaboration is at the heart of The Showroom's latest exhibition by Ciara Phillips. The screen print artist has transformed the gallery into a living and breathing workshop in which guests, artists, women's groups and local people are invited to make prints with Phillips, surrounded by her large scale works on newspaper and cotton.   

Ciara Phillips,2013, Dyed screen print on cotton (monoprint)

 
Repetitive black and white graphic posters line the walls of the gallery, incorporating the text 'New Things to Discuss' in a billboard-esque style backdrop reflecting the fundamental collective objectives of the exhibition. Layered over this wallpaper ground are multiple screen prints in cotton. The combination of graphic print, irregular marks and painterly colour is complex, but true to Phillips style, providing an example of what could be aesthetically achieved within the workshops.    

Although, it's not always about the finished article, the process and the act of making is clear and is just as - if not more important than the results, highlighting that the making does not have to stop just because it has entered the gallery. Viewers can appreciate the trace of the artist and those whom Phillips has worked with, there is still an active atmosphere in the air, gaining a sense that The Showroom is not only displaying art but making it too.

The scope and potential for the collaborative nature of Phillips' practice reaches over and above the fields of art. The act of print making is used as a vehicle for people from different backgrounds, with different areas of knowledge to come together whilst experimenting with the practice of screen printing. Activism, alternative advertising and community activity are what Phillips predicts will be the final conclusions of this exhibition - extending the project out beyond the confines of the gallery. 

Trace of the Process

Photos by LJ Onions

London: Day 4

Yesterday was my last day on the Curating Contemporary art course at Chelsea. We spent the majority of the day in Peckham, a community which is not what it used to be, with galleries, cafe's and small shops cropping up around the town, it is developing a cultural scene.

The 'Art Scene' is good for the economy and image of a city. It stems from people being plugged into and engaged with all aspects of people and places within a specific cultural sphere. The origins of the scene and its organisation was the topic of our lecture today, given by Pil, artist, curator and one half of the Pil and Galia Kollectiv.

Due to a shift from material labor to immaterial labor (working through conversation, verbally and mentally) work does not stop at the office anymore. It is carried always, at home, in the pub and on our phones. The contemporary art scene moves in parallel to the world of work and therefore there are no boundaries to curatorial practice, ideas and projects emerge from conversation, always in flux.
The scene is an extremely functional part of contemporary networking, generating relationships based on a shard identity. Having the ability to liaise, discuss and communicate with others upon the discourse within the scene is vital to a persons integration within it.
Try this for a tongue twister:

'Whoever is not seen 'on the scene' does not belong to the scene, and the scene which is not seen is a non-scene.' Pascal Gielen writes in The Art scene (2009: Pg15).

View from Bold Tendencies, Peckham

During this course I have most definitely increased my historic and contemporary curatorial knowledge. But perhaps more importantly I feel I am able to view exhibitions with more appreciation, with greater understanding upon how curatorial decisions effect the successful-ness of an exhibition and the viewer experience. I have also been introduced to non-conventional galleries by lecturers Pil and Galia, such as this massive gem - Bold Tendencies.

Benedict Drew, Now That's What I Call Feedback (2013)

For three months in the summer Bold Tendencies takes over the upper levels of an unused multi-storey car park. Artists are commissioned by curators to show in this vast and unusual venue. A space such as this allows for artists to realise large scale sculptural pieces that comment upon the current developments of sculpture today, along with having a mutually impactful relationship with the direct surroundings of Peckham, the skyline of London and the urban, concrete architecture of the car park.

Approaching Benedict Drew's piece on a slope reaffirms this connection. The dark, low ceilings create an almost cave like space in which Drews video acts a futuristic, moving cave painting. The sketchy animation continually revolves and pokes itself in the eye, playfully drawing attention to ways of looking, liking and commenting in the social media and online driven culture of today.  

Bold Tendencies 2013 is on show until the 30th of September.

Ruth Proctor, I see You Liking Everything (2013)