Sluice 2015

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editorial

SLUICE_ p4 IS WHAT IT SHOWS

The Art World needs more things like Sluice__.

It’s the antidote to the Art World cliché, the swirling morass of big bucks and commercialism.

Where sometimes money talks louder than the art, where success is measured by the amount of money you make. Not the art. The art is secondary.

The cliché perpetuates a world where

Paulette Terry Brien talks to Karl England

collectors throng the auction rooms and trail around identikit art fairs desperate to find the next big thing. These interior high streets section off the galleries, enclosing them in white-walled

GALLERIES

booths not conducive to neighbourly discourse, small retail outlets that only save to focus on the passing collector traffic.

Real art lies in the projects and galleries who are prepared to take risks and show disruptive art. Art that breaks the space. Art that is not immediately sellable. Art that doesn’t set out to please anyone. This is Sluice__.

Sluice__ encourages disruption and noncommercial work. Sluice_2015 is a snapshot of the Art World we inhabit. The open-plan layout demands more from its participants. Discourse is encouraged. The dialogue is principally about the business of making art. Not the art business.

Sluice__ is an entity. It continually morphs to suit its environment. Ever-changing away from the norm. Therein lies the rub. Now it’s a magazine, a publication that contains the disruption and the discourse that the disruption creates.

Sluice__’s art is to eschew the Art-World model. It is not just another art fair and this is not just another art magazine. It is a vehicle for alternative discourse. Something tangible that will live on when Sluice_2015 comes down.

Tash Kahn

Publisher: Susak Press Publishers: Karl England & Daniel Devlin Editor: Tash Kahn Design: Susak Press Production: Imago Advertising and sales: Amy Kirkham contributing editors: Ben Street & Charlie Levine

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p15 Sluice_projects

ArtHelix Blackwater Polytechnic BLOC Projects Caustic Coastal Day + Gluckman Division Of Labour DOLPH Ech-O-Cham-Ber The Florence Trust Galleryell Interview Room 11 Islington Mill Lateral Artspace Look&Listen MADE Gallery North Paper Gallery The Penthouse Qwerty The Royal Standard Saturation Point NEUSCHLOSS 2015 Season p.59 The Place of Dead Rhoades 2015 Slate Projects p.94-95 Saxon Norman Strip 2015 Square Art Projects + The Dorado Project 76 Studio One Gallery 78 studio1.1 80 studio1.4 82 Surface Arts 84 Theodore:Art 86 The Modern Language Experiment 88 Transition Gallery 90 Vacuous 92 Vane

The Missing Chapter

Untitled

p8

COPYRIGHT / COPYLEFT

by Laura Davidson

by Ben Street

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VALUED: Exchange Rates

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//A background script left running for further discussion(s)

Sluice_screens

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The Bushwick International Expo

by Charlie Levine

p26 Things to Come Gordon Shrigley invites Luciano Zubillaga

cC

Sluice_performance

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Sluice_screens cCaims to provide a platform for the public to engage with art made with video, sound and web, whilst enabling the artists to retain control of their intellectual property

The owner of a situation is not always the artist or producer.

With some art, that power is handed over to the viewer p32

by Lucy Dixon Jean-Michel Crapanzano invites

from nowhere

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GODS AND MONSTERS

Thematic shows that interleave contemporary works with those of historical artists are becoming ubiquitous

by Thomas Marks

Boundless creativity: How a chance encounter introduced me to an exciting new art project

by Clara Keating

SLUICE_ IS WHAT IT SHOWS Paulette Terry Brien, co-curator of The Manchester Contemporary and co-director of The International3, talks to Sluice_ co-founder, Karl England.

Can you explain a little about the background to setting up Sluice_?

Sluice_ came into being because we had access to a large venue over Frieze weekend in the middle of London. I’d previously curated shows in the space and struggled to excite anyone’s interest. It struck me that the artist-run sector is completely excluded from the art world extravaganza as exemplified by the global art fair circus. It occurred to us that if we could create a fair that was financially accessible to artistand curator-run projects then we could benefit from the positives that fairs possess – such as their ability to generate interest beyond their direct acquaintances via press and footfall, whilst creating a platform for art practice that is not necessarily art-fair friendly.

The introduction to the 2011 Sluice_ catalogue says, “Sluice_ isn’t a critique, or a parody or a survey, it’s a modest proposal” – can you expand on this?

I think the first fair in 2011 was a tentative experiment, and as we’ve grown we’ve become more clear about what we want to achieve, even if that thing is a desire to remain elusive. We’ve always been clear with ourselves that we are occupying the form of the art fair but are not beholden to it in its current state. Art fairs are not very good at engaging critical debate, I think this is because art-as-commerce reigns in the current model. If you can create an environment where every move is not a reaction to a financial imperative then you might see some art that is more experimental in nature.

Rather than a series of similarsized, white-walled booths, Sluice_ took an ‘open space’ approach to the spaces that galleries occupied.

Can you explain a little about why this approach was taken?

Four reasons. First: Walls are expensive, by not installing walls we can pass that saving on to the galleries. Second: It’s symbolic of the open exchange of ideas and networks that artist-run spaces operate with. Third: Sluice_ is an artist/ curator-run project in its own right, rather than a corporate entity profiting from the creative sector Sluice_ is what it shows, as such we’ve always been interested in the idea of Sluice_ as exhibition, or Sluice_ as artist, in this scenario why would we have walls.

Fourth: We want to get away from the idea of art fairs as trade fairs, getting rid of the booths is a short hand way of visually doing this.

Do you consider Sluice_ to be curated?

If so, how does this curatorial role manifest itself?

On an organisational level it is curated, we curate the galleries, the galleries curate their artists. Every gallery submits a curatorial idea and it is on the strength of this submission that we accept the galleries into Sluice_. The fair is not thematic, as we don’t think we should impose a narrative on the participants.

But I think a narrative (or a number of narratives) tend to emerge of their own accord, and we then build our talks and educational programme around this.

Do you have any involvement in the selection of which artists and which artworks galleries show?

Only insofar as the galleries have to submit a curatorial proposal to be considered for entry.

Do you consider that the ‘open space’ approach to presentation provides a better art viewing experience?’

If so, why? Is this part of the consideration of Sluice_?

I think it creates a problematic viewing experience, which I think is a positive thing. Without walls one gallery pitch bleeds into another, there is a potential for a lot of visual noise, where one artwork is forced into a dialogue with another artwork, often incongruously. If the galleries want to show their artists in glorious isolation they can stay in their galleries. The galleries are always informed of who their direct neighbours will be and are encouraged to communicate with each other in advance of the fair. Sluice_ is a collaboration, on an organisational, gallery, artist and artwork level. How conscious of this some of the participants are is – I feel – irrelevant.

Do you consider that the ‘open space’ approach to presentation provides a more effective sales environment?

If so, why? Is this part of the consideration of Sluice_?

I have no idea. We’re not against sales, and we are developing this aspect of the fair. But we strenuously tell galleries before they apply that they shouldn’t participate in Sluice_ if they’re looking for a direct route to the market. There are fairs out there that cater for entry-level galleries looking to sell art. When galleries choose to participate in Sluice_ and when they select the artists they want to show and when they select the art they want to show – the last thing we want them to be thinking of is the cost/profit matrix.

We want to show the most interesting art, not the most bankable. Sometimes they’re the same thing, but certainly not always.

From your website it suggests that Sluice_ is now evolving into other areas of activity away from the art fair model – can you talk a little about this?

Well, we’re an artist/curator-run project, so from that perspective we’re free to develop in ways that we find interesting. We’re not profitable, we’re not predicated on becoming profitable (sustainable would be nice), staging the fair doesn’t earn us anything, so from that perspective there’s no financial imperative to stage the fair every year – which is one of the reasons we went biennial.

We still – despite our best efforts – haven’t received any funding. So from an accountability perspective the only people we have an obligation to are the participating galleries. So the platforms we create – exhibiting, expositions, broadcasting, publishing – are all with a view to extend the means by which we can promote the art we believe in.

How do you consider the art fair model will evolve?

The top end will continue to be in awe of big money, the middle and lower end will continue to be in awe of the top end.

The top end will continue to fret over its increasing lack of critical engagement, and will continue to co-opt the critically engaged non-commercial in order to shore-up its flagging validity. The critically engaged non-commerical will continue to allow itself to be usurped in return for a place (no matter how temporarily) at the big table.

Then there are the artists and curators that are not interested in playing these games, and these are the artists and curators we’re interested in working with.

Edited from an interview undertaken as part of Paulette Terry Brien’s Mphil research within MIRIAD at Manchester Metropolitan University.

ArtHelix ArtHelix presents the work of three artists whose works are hidden in plain sight. Gaman’s enlarged images are tilted to skew perspective; Degges builds autobiographical content into his work, then steps back; Elizabeth Saveri uses bread-bag ties as a surface for her ‘thumbnail portraits’. artists: Brian Gaman Douglas Degges Elizabeth Saveri

arthelix.com

And so he scanned old drawings and printed out a few pixels to heights of seven or eight feet (the results, however, are far from pixilated). He appropriated corporate logos and ads from the business section of newspapers featuring images of infinity in the form of endless water or sky, tilting them to skew the perspective. In a ‘purpose-driven, achievement-obsessed’ world, Gaman’s economy is Spartan. Deadpan.”

– Howard Foster

ArtHelix of Bushwick is proud to include the work of three artists whose works are hidden in plain sight.

Douglas Degges All of these works are made using photographic images as sources. Each painting ‘riffs’ on a single photograph taken in a public space that the artist frequently visits, but what is intentional in the way these painted images function for Degges is left unavailable to the viewer. The artist builds the autobiographical content into the work, but then steps back, getting out of the way, leaving behind something else in its place.

Brian Gaman “Gaman was interested in the gap between knowing and saying. That means neither knowing nor saying. So the work is terse bordering on mute. To be nearsighted, peering so closely at only the smallest of areas is to be IN IT, phenomenological, experiential but also astigmatic and distorted, like so many of Gaman’s printed black circles. Near and far, of the moment and of history – this dialectic informs Gaman’s enterprise.

Elizabeth Saveri The history of miniaturist painting is alive in the work of Saveri. Trained in large-scale painting she has, over the past decade, and against all current fashion, begun to work in the smallest of formats. ‘Portraits’ of trees painted on fallen leaves of those same trees, or of garbage – a candy wrapper, a lost glove – on blocks of wood small enough to be held in one’s hand, and finally, shown here, thumbnail portraits on bread-bag ties of vast ocean vistas or desert palms.

Brian Gaman – Installation

by Laura Davidson //A background script left running for further discussion(s)

‘It’s Christmas Day. All the shops are closed, yet I’m filling a shopping basket with a discounted Sex Pistols t-shirt and flower crown from topshop. com. E-commerce has normalised shopping 24/7, 365. The first product purchased online was more symbolic of 1960s radical idealism. Arpanet, the predecessor to the internet we know today, was predominantly available in universities. In the early 1970s, computer science students at Stanford in California unwittingly realised the commercial future of the net when they sold weed over Arpanet to their peers at MIT. It is still not known how the substance was delivered (post presumably) or how much was shipped.

Later the exchange of illegal drugs on Silk Road, would prove instrumental in the development of the cryptocurrency Bitcoin which, would revolutionise not just monetary systems but also the international drugs trade. Just like the style of the punks or hippies Topshop likes to appropriate, the countercultural roots of the internet have become buried in the mainstream.’

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An exchange of goods is simplistic; it has no intellectual nuance. For those outside the 1% the intellectualisation of economic systems is the only tangible way to have agency over them. Agency in our contemporary world also comes from free access to information. Perhaps we can all admit at least one instance where piracy has enriched our cultural lives. Sean Parker’s Napster brought access to free music into the teenage homes of those on the cusp of between millennial and Gen X. Free culture grew from first a generational want and into a wider (Western) cultural expectation.

Developments in software came out of the open source movement, where people give their expertise for free.

The operating system on your $$$$ MacBook is a version of Linux; a free operating system. A teenager invented a new way to detect pancreatic cancer by using articles from the JSTOR database downloaded and distributed for free by the late activist Aaron Swartz. The Internet’s Own Boy (2014) directed by Brian Knappenberger details Swartz’s journey through the development of

the Creative Commons to his arrest for the downloading and distribution of the JSTOR database whilst at MIT. Through Wikileaks and information handed over

by Chelsea Manning, Julian Assange distributed information detailing corruption in Western governments.

Curiously Assange also had an early interest in cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin.

Just like video and performance art before it, the immateriality of net-based art proves a problem for capital. These practices do not suit the traditional commercial gallery/object model and have often been in a position to critique economic systems. UBERMORGEN’s Google Will Eat Itself (gwei.org) buys Google shares with money generated from Google Ads. Other artists have offered alternative payment models; Rafaël Rozendaal sells the URLs of works and Bitcoin Cloud (bitcoin.at) “builds a direct relation between the attention it receives and its market value”, which is similar to Petra Cortright’s formula pricing of YouTube videos in relation to view count. In both these works

attention and voyeurism become a currency. Attention and appreciation (often confused as the same thing) carry ‘value’ on social networks like Facebook, Instagram and Twitter.

Our connections, relationships, interests, browser history and ultimately keystrokes carry a value; this is why Google shares are valued so much on the international stock markets. The personal information we give away freely through search engines, social media channels and web-based email clients like gmail is worthy of being mined by advertisers to market products back to us, based on the algorithms corporations like Google create for this very purpose. Erica Scourti explores this world of corporate feedback in Life in AdWords (2012-13) where she emailed a daily journal to herself in gmail for a year. Scourti recorded the advertisements Google played back at her based on her emotional states, life plans and basically anything she mentioned that could be a pivot point for a potential sale. It is also worth stating that these incursions into private communications also have a political value. This particular type of intrusion features in the refrain “I know that you know me better than I know me” of Holly Herndon’s track Home (2014). Written in reaction to the Edward Snowden revelations, Home explores the personal unease felt by the enormity of government-sanctioned information gathering over the internet.

Herndon’s music currently explores the ambiguous space between corporate and governmental spying; in both systems the consumer/citizen are not compensated for their input.

with $$$$ contemporary art. The money was transferred to the artists and Rhizome in order to support their work commissioning and preserving digital art. It is worth creating a new window here to discuss alternate ways art can be funded; commissions by organisations in particular provide a supportive framework for the development of new (unrestricted) work, young artists and those, currently working under the fatuous banner of ‘digital’, who have practices that are not solidified into a physical object. The essay Working Artists and the Greater Economy (W.A.G.E.)—Online Digital Artwork and the Status of the ‘Based-In’ Artist (2015), commissioned by e-flux, discusses the economics of the current art world and how that impacts on the payment of artists working digitally.

Originally started as a “a tool that sets compensation for digital artworks in relation to the prevailing living wage of the city or region where the commissioned artist resides”. The text in part discusses the impact of wider economic systems on the whole workforce of the art world and aims to utilise this understanding to trace equitable financial compensation for digital art.

Ben Vickers @benvickers_ and Lindsay Howard @lindsay_howard. To cut a long conversation short @arcadiamissa made the point: “ …let’s tlk about survival in major cities post crash and what other options ther r”. This less than 140 character point is salient. We need to evaluate why artists and galleries need increasing amounts of money in the first place. Running a gallery and having a practice based in London is expensive; rising property prices, high rents, depressed wages and the prominence of financial institutions are a few reasons why. Artists and galleries ‘struggling’ for money are symptomatic of much wider ideological issues than merely the sharing of cultural material for free. // Offline reader in print, isn’t it irritating to read content not infused with hyperlinks designed for free and easy sharing?

________________________________notes to editor/designer:

I’ve attached one image which is a screen grab from Twitter. As I have referred to specific

artworks in the longer text, there is scope for

images of those but, wasn’t sure what to do about that re: copyright (that’s ironic)?

When Paddles ON! happened in London during July, 2014, a long debate rumbled on between London gallery Arcadia Missa @arcadiamissa, Karen Archey @karenarchey, Nicholas O’Brien @__nko,

Just to be a pain the title and section headings are emoji (any excuse), so I hope you can see them?

Laura Davidson is a London-based writer, covering emergent themes within digital culture and artistic practices. www.lauraelizabethdavidson.com At Sluice__2015 Laura will be further developing these themes in a panel discussion entitled copyright/copyleft. How is the virality of

In 2013 curator Lindsay Howard organised Paddles ON!, the first digital art auction in collaboration with Rhizome (rhizome. org) and Phillips auction house in New York. The structure of the auction wasn’t to benefit an already wealthy collector or trust; as is often the case on the typified frenzied auction-room floor we associate

digitised art effecting the perception of creative production? What effect do the differing philosophical stances inherent to copyright vs copyleft have on how the art world engages with artists? What light can be thrown on this post-internet battleground by contextualising it within an art-historical framework?

See sluice.info/2015 for details.

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BLACKWATER POLYTECHNIC Blackwater Polytechnic uses a combination of vision questing, Quantum Physics and international ‘local’ research as a springboard for their Sluice_2015 show.

Their theme is psycho-folk, and they get down in the bosky mire with the faeries, sprites and spirits. artists: Simon Collins Ben Coode-Adams Justin Knopp George Ferrandi Brent Owens Freddie Robins

Blackwater Polytechnic was established by Ben Coode-Adams and Freddie Robins in 2008 as an informal educational establishment to bridge the gap between aesthetic quality, design and practical making in the construction industry.

Blackwater Polytechnic has broadened its activities to promote Essex creative people through exhibitions of their work. In 2014, we went international because only in relation to others is the local, local. We went to find fellow travellers and learn from

blackwaterpolytechnic.com

them, people who work with extreme craft skill, poetic agility, and actual real in-your-face objects, artists not always very visible in the UK. We went Swedish at the amazing and inspiring University of Gothenburg Högskolan för Design och Konsthantverk in Steneby, where hardcore skills are taught alongside Bauhausian design courses. It is the mother lode of all the values we hold dear. We went Lithuanian at the Vilniaus Dailes Akademija where Soviet-era national identity is being re-crafted, where loving the local is a bulwark against the overbearing Russian. We went American, with Wayfarers and Theodore:Art in Brooklyn and Season in Seattle, as well as individual NYC based artists.

We have taken this engagement as a springboard for our psycho-folk theme for our Sluice_2015 presentation. If you’re going to be rural you might as well get right down in the bosky mire with the faeries, sprites and spirits.

We embrace the pink shiny glittery as well as the massive scary teeth, truly awesome power of death-wielding elementals. It’s not nice in the woods.

We’ve been doing deep shamanic work with dowser Vicky Sweetlove learning what is happening in the spirit world beneath our feet.

We are loving Hugh Everett’s Quantum theory, the Many Worlds Interpretation which posits that every item faced with a choice splits into two, each version pursuing its own new world. This changes everything.

A combination of vision questing and Quantum Physics is informing our world view.

Ben Coode-Adams Tropical Wings – Birds of Power

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BLOC

PROJECTS The Sylvester Structure by Bloc Projects is an artwork and display system, a multifarious work that takes its name from an oversized pocket knife.

The exhibition is complemented by a selection of posters and editions

by Bloc members past and present. artists include: Heilya Badakshan Sylvia Champion Michael Day Graeme Durant Lesley Guy Tom Ireland Victoria Lucas Dominic Mason Maja Mihajlović Charlotte Morgan Lea Torp Nielson Rebecca Ounstead Lucy Vann

blocprojects.co.uk

The Norfolk Knife The Sylvester Structure is a multifarious work comprised of a number of individual works, brought together by artists associated with Bloc Projects, including members, past exhibitors, staff and board members. Assembled and disassembled in situ, the Sylvester Structure is an artwork and display system. Featuring two- and threedimensional works and conceived at Bloc Projects, based at Sylvester Street Works in Sheffield, the structure takes its name from the Norfolk Knife, an oversized pocket-knife of multiple blades by different cutlers made at Sheffield’s historic Norfolk Street Works for the Great Exhibition at Crystal Palace in 1851. Artists featured by Bloc

Projects will include Heilya Badakshan, Doug Bowen, Sylvia Champion, Mark Chavez Dawson, Michael Day, Graeme Durant, Helen de Main, Lesley Guy, Dale Holmes, Jim Howieson, Del H Hoyle, Tom Ireland, Rebecca Lennon, Victoria Lucas, Louisa Martin, Dominic Mason, David McLeavy, Lindsey Mendick, Maja Mihajlovic, Charlotte Morgan, Lea Torp Nielson, Rebecca Ounstead and Lucy Vann.

The exhibition is complemented by a selection of posters and editions by members and previous exhibitors at Bloc Projects.

Bloc Projects is an artist-led project space in the centre of Sheffield, UK, who present and commission exhibitions, events, residencies, exchange projects and educational activity. Established in 2002, the organisation provides a platform for early/mid-career artists from across the UK and Europe working in a wide range of media to develop new work and present to new audiences.

Their programme encourages experimentation, collaboration and cross-disciplinary projects, and invites critical dialogue among artists and audiences.

Throughout its history, Bloc Projects has also delivered partnership projects with organisations such as Compass Live Art, Sheffield Fringe, The University of Sheffield and Sensoria Festival, and been a long-term member of the Art Sheffield Consortium. They have recently embarked on a period of renovation and expansion.

Louisa Martin The Lighthouse

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Untitled

by Ben Street

Hello, and thank you so much for coming along to the private viewing of this piece. Thank you, so much, for taking the time. Right from the start, let me just say that I know many of you may not be used to engaging with pieces like this. And I just want to say to you: please don’t worry. It’s natural to feel somewhat intimidated by pieces like this. In fact, full disclosure: even I get a little intimidated by pieces like this, sometimes. So please don’t worry if you’re feeling a little intimidated, or not sure what to think. The best advice I can give you is just to keep your mind open and your eyes open, and don’t forget to have fun!

Well, let’s get started by taking a good, long look at this piece. Deep breath!

Heh. You might perhaps start by thinking about its form. In some ways, it’s quite conventional-seeming, isn’t it?

That distinctive overall shape. Those small, repeated component parts. Not so intimidating!

If it helps, have a look at one of those parts and try and figure out where you’ve seen it before. Hello! That’s usually a pretty good place to start – by thinking of what the piece reminds you of. In that way, we can start to make comparisons with what we already know, like: in what way is this piece like other things you might have seen? And: in what way is it not like other things you might have seen? For now, let’s keep having a good, careful look at this piece. I guess what I’d like to ask you, at this stage, is: how does it make you feel?

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Hey, it’s OK not to feel anything at all!

Confession time again: even I sometimes don’t feel anything at all. I mean, when I’m engaging with a piece like this! Not otherwise. But I hope that some of you might be feeling at least something. By the way, it’s totally okay to have negative feelings about a piece like this. Seriously!

Maybe you think it’s a bit repetitive, or a bit obvious. Maybe you think it’s even a bit boring. That’s okay too! But I’d like you to think about why that is. Maybe it’s deliberately like that? Maybe there’s a reason? And if so, why do you think that is? Or maybe you do like it – that’s okay, too! So, why do you like it? What does it say to you? How does it relate to your life experiences? Let’s share our ideas!

Maybe it’s a good idea to give the piece a little more time. After all, pieces like

this don’t just jump out and grab you. We need to keep looking, and above all keep engaging with this piece. So let’s go a bit deeper: what do we think this piece might be trying to say? Is it something personal? Something political? Is it trying to make a point, or is it just – itself?

Saying nothing? What do you think is going on here?

I wonder if you feel differently about this piece, now we’ve been engaging with it for a while? Have your feelings changed?

How so? Do you feel generally more positively about this piece or generally more negatively about this piece? And why is that? And why not? Do you feel generally excited by this piece, or generally a bit bored by this piece? Keep engaging! How do you feel now? Are you having fun? Is it fun?

Sluice_projects

The Missing Chapter

Curated by Charlie Levine Artists: Maurice Carlin Katherine Di Turi Yifat Gat Charlotte Morgan John Ros Matthew Stock

In 2014 a collection of essays compiled

by Francesco Garutti entitled Fairland – Explorations, Insights and Outlooks on the Future of Art Fair was printed.

This book examines art fairs, their history and why they act and look like they do.

It became evident whilst reading it that there was something missing: there was nothing about alternative approaches to art fairs. Fairland examined the failings of commercial fairs but offered no alternatives.

Sluice_ is an art fair that purposefully challenges what an art fair can and should be. With this in mind I wrote a piece that I conceived of as the ‘missing chapter’ of Fairland. This article was the inspiration for Sluice_projects’ The Missing Chapter. Working solely with a selection of artists who are directors and founders of the galleries showing at Sluice_2015, The Missing Chapter aims to highlight

the use of space, play and alternative ways of looking that Sluice_ promotes.

Fairland: The Missing Chapter (an extract) The art fair is in constant battle, whether its opponent be the biennial, art institution, auction house or shopping centre. It is constantly portrayed as being in conflict with others, but now it’s in conflict with itself.

The art fair as we know and understand it today was born in 1967 in Cologne. KUNSTMARKT ’67 showed 18 galleries/art dealers from Germany and America. It also spawned a rival art fair in Cologne called ‘Demonstrative’ and so the art fair arms race was born.

Jump forward to the present day where the art world calendar is organised around the major fairs.

The international over-saturation and formalised presentation of these fairs (the continuous white booths lining corridors and walkways) is so familiar to the art world that it no longer acts as an exciting hub to see what’s new and happening, rather it is the same as the other, as last year, as that one over there. The art-fair format as we understand it via the major players is stale.

The architecture of the venues, the VIP presence, the hidden cash flow and the see-to-be-seen culture has lost its playful edge. Ten years ago Frieze attempted to rectify this by introducing curated not-for-profit activity on site during the fair as well as through a thorough education

programme of talks, events, screenings, performances etc. A side dish to the main attractions.

We should also be thinking about the impact the art fair has on the artist/curator-led scene. How can they compete? How can they afford to participate? And how can they maintain a presence in an art world that continues to expand and seemingly get more and more glossy?

The art fair and its reputation will, at this point, seemingly not diminish.

It is on the rise and has gained such critical gravitas to collectors, journalists and audiences that it will either keep gathering momentum or simply implode. However, art fairs such as Sluice_, Poppositions (Brussels), Supermarket (Stockholm) and Spring Break (New York), and numerous other alternative fairs are taking the more successful elements of the classic fair format and repurposing them for more underground and experimental spaces and organisations. There’s less pressure so these fairs can play and push the boundaries of what can be, and can offer audiences alternatives that the more established fairs can’t. They can take the format, rip it up and start again.

Charlie Levine is associate curator for Sluice_, Arts Development Officer for London Borough of Camden, and an independent curator.

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CAUSTIC COASTAL Caustic Coastal have created a plush, ambient space, heavy on theatrical design.

This real-life exhibition space is also a virtual artwork – digitally manipulated and re-imagined online, with animated characters and features that play out across the project’s social media network. artists: Colden Drystone + friends

Caustic Coastal is an Art Label currently based in Manchester that supports emerging artists through a variety of one-off projects, digital commissions, commercial ventures and various other outlets. The model mirrors the idea of the music label with a multifaceted production of projects for artists, allowing Caustic Coastal to be much more of a production company than a ‘gallery’ or ‘project space’ or anything too specific, with a nomadic feel even when in residence at various venues.

causticcoastal.biz

Caustic Coastal works on a curatorial programme that focuses on importing exciting and engaging artists into new localities, bringing emerging and often unseen talent to a wider audience. Our main model for projects is to commission new site-specific pieces in combination with existing bodies of work mostly in group shows of two or three artists for a tightly curated but fresh, energetic and personal feel, allowing the artists to really gel during the process of the exhibition.

For Sluice_2015 we have created an ambient space, plush and relaxing, a contrast to the hard-edged, hard sell of your standard fair. The space is heavy on theatrical design which both bleeds into the artwork and becomes the artwork itself. We have drowned the space in an all over golden flood, a backdrop with the potential to be manipulated (digitally/physically). Think of it as the shimmering, reflective cosmos – the celebrated space in which all other things happen. With an ambient soundtrack hovering above, the arena mixes between furnished chaos and minimal sprinkles of art, subtly curated for their quietness but retaining confidence. We have extended the use of the space by digitally re-rendering the exhibition with animated characters and additional ‘features’ which play out as a separate entity throughout our social media network, thus what you see online is a re-imagined world from the IRL space at Sluice_2015.

Caustic Coastal

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DAY + GLUCKMAN Day + Gluckman’s curatorial interest in historic architecture and art practice informs the parameters of their show at The Bargehouse, playing with ideas of display in heritage settings.

The role of the plinth is referenced, with work based on, and played off, this conventional elevator of art. artists include: Kate Lyddon CJ Mahony Emily Speed Poppy Whatmore Laura White

Day + Gluckman present a selection of artists, whose work represents their past and current programme. A major new project, A Woman’s Place, aims to question and address the contemporary position of women in our creative, historical and cultural landscape, and is inspired by an urgent desire to relocate the simple message of female equality into the cultural fabric of today. The project will see new commissions and exhibitions located within heritage sites including Danson House and the National Trust’s Knole House.

dayandgluckman.co.uk

This curatorial interest in historic architecture and art practice informs the parameters of the works at The Bargehouse, playing with ideas of display in heritage settings.

Referencing the contested role of the plinth in the history of curating and exhibition display, an installation of works are based on, and played off, this conventional elevator of art. Poppy Whatmore’s breezeblock plinth, It Left Me Cold, imbues material, gesture and form with a rueful anthropomorphic narrative. A related work by CJ Mahony presents a geometric sculptural form integrated with a slick, black Perspex base, continuing her exploration of sculptural language and the lived experience. Recent works by Laura White explore the relationship between handling and touch with the plinth acting as a signifier for our separation from objects. Sculptures by Kate Lyddon present works as surreal anthropomorphic trophies, whilst Emily Speed’s Body/Building series locate her interest in the psychological relationship between buildings and the body. Two free-standing antique filing cabinets act as additional plinths, housing photographs and video and works on paper, and include pieces by Jemima Burrill, Rachel Busby, Emma Critchley, Aly Helyer, Evy Jokhova, EJ Major, Nadège Mériau and Lexi Strauss.

Laura White Broker

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DIVISION OF LABOUR Division of Labour presents ooooooooooooooo: “a liminal space where the shape and purpose are in a constant state of flux.

To be in the space is to activate it as an artist, curator, spectator, object or muse… Process, product and participants are reciprocal and interdependent.” artists: ooooooooooooooo

Division

of

Labour

presents…

ooooooooooooooo The course director of Fine Art Critical Studies, Brighton University, Matthew Cornford (Cornford & Cross) invited Nathaniel Pitt (director Division of Labour) and another artist, Fay Nicolson, to visit and offer feedback to the graduating class of 2015.

Numbering 15, artists, filmmakers, designers, writers, collectives all worked in collaboration to curate a joint exhibition: ooooooooooooooo.

www.divisionoflabour.co.uk

“ooooooooooooooo is a liminal space where the shape and purpose are in a constant state of flux. To be in the space is to activate it as an artist, curator, spectator, object or muse. Arriving into the room (booth) engages a person as a part of what the show produces.

Process, product and participants are reciprocal and interdependent.”

Division of Labour embraces critical fine art practice. We recognise and celebrate the ‘difference’, the concept and the investigation of display presented in ooooooooooooooo, it is fitting for the Sluice_ model of an art fair, their generous and experimental spirit of participation and collaboration.

The original group in the graduate show were: Alex Barrington, Louise Byfield, Conner Fitzpatrick, Nierika Grubin, Phoebe Hill, Lizzie How, Amelia Kidwell, Lois McKendrick, Molly Maher, Kiya Major, Joe Markham, Duncan Poultan, Ernesta Simkute, Tilly Sleven and Aimée Satanden. At Sluice_2015 not all of these artists will be represented, however they are all authors of the concept of ooooooooooooooo.

Division of Labour, founded in 2012, is located in both Worcester City and London. The main focus of the gallery is to work with artists who follow themes concerned with production, labour, and collaboration, and are interested in ideas formed from the social, political and economic structures that surround them.

Type fifteen o’s.co.uk !!

ooooooooooooooo

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H A N D C R A F T E D B E E R F R O M E A S T LO N D O N FIVE POINTS PA L E

R A ILWAY PO RTE R

HOOK ISLAND RED

FIVE POINTS I PA

LON DON S MO K E

@FivePointsBrew www.fivepointsbrewing.co.uk

DOLPH DOLPH is intrusive. DOLPH asks artists to share the stuff that is hidden, the thoughts and influences that go on to form their later work. At Sluice_2015, DOLPH are announcing next year’s artists, and in the spirit of the project, have asked them all to make enticing statements of intent. artists: Ambrosine Allen Phillip Allen Jordan Baseman Simon Callery Lana Locke Hanaa Malallah

DOLPH is an ar t is t-run exhibit ion project based in St rea t ham Hill, sout h London, run by Paul Cole and Na t asha Kahn.

We put on six exhibitions a year, for two weeks every alternate month. Each show features a single artist. These are not just a series of solo exhibitions. We ask that the artists be more generous.

The artists’ objective is to frame an exhibition that contextualises the interests and concerns driving their practice. Their task is to curate relevant (or contradictory) works / objects / photos / texts / music etc that have personal significance, inform and support their practice, and present them in an intriguing, cohesive exhibition.

dolphprojects.com

We want to provoke a unique response from each artist that is both revealing and challenging. Our aim is that each artist, whilst being provocative, offers the audience a rare insight into their creative process, affording them the opportunity for greater understanding of their practice.

We started DOLPH because, as artists, we’re interested in how other artists do what they do, and more importantly, why? Our brief asks artists to be generous because what we are asking of them is intrusive.

We want them to share the personal stuff that is often only hidden away as notes to themselves, the thoughts and influences that go on to form their later propositions. This is a unique and daunting challenge for any artist but we hope they will get as much out of doing it as we do seeing their responses.

For Sluice_2015, DOLPH is announcing its 2016 programme. And in the spirit of the project, we have asked that the artists taking part be more generous.

At the fair, each artist is represented by something they feel is significant to their practice and would normally go unseen by the public.

These idiosyncratic statements can take any form, a small installation that encapsulates their whole oeuvre maybe, or perhaps a single book, like a component of DNA from their practice. These disclosures make for an intriguing exhibition and also form an enticing statement of intent for their future DOLPH shows in 2016.

Lana Locke Untitled

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Sluice_screens For Sluice_2015 three individuals variously described as artists, curators and gallerists were each invited to curate one day of screen-based programming. How each person responded to this brief was entirely up to them.

Gordon Shrigley invites Luciano Zubillaga

Things to Come 1968-2015

Gordon Shrigley Thursday 15 October Jean-Michel Crapanzano Friday 16 October Lindsay Friend Saturday 17 October Luis Zubillaga Ongilash Gordon Shrigley and Filmarmalade have pleasure in presenting the UK premier of Luciano Zubillaga’s new feature film Things to Come staring the iconic German actress Hanna Schygulla.

Things to Come is a powerful cinematic essay that poetically meditates on magic, youth, the politics of idealism and the poetry of Rainer Maria Rilke as narrated by Hanna Schygulla.

Things to Come is set within Ex ESMA, the former Argentine military detention camp, notorious for the torture and summary execution of

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political dissidents during the 1970s, and serves within Things to Come as the place to memorialise not just those who have fallen in the fight against fascism, but also the possibility of revolutionaries yet to come and lovers yet to meet.

Things to Come radically reinterprets the art of cinema by exploring the graphic score Ongilash, composed in 1968 by the director’s father Luis Zubillaga as a way of rethinking how the spatiality of our everyday notions of past, present and future, have been fundamentally de-centred as

a result of 20th-century avant-garde art practice and the implications of quantum mechanics.

Things to Come explores the potential for theatre beyond the linear, a fourth-dimensional space where performers and places continually merge into one another.

Things to Come is part of Alien Cartographies, a series of three films

by Luciano Zubillaga that explore how ‘posthumanism’ and ‘decolonial options’ may come to effect how we see and experience narratives of spacetime within moving image and art practice.

Luciano Zubillaga Things to Come Things to Come 1968-2015 will also feature a live performance by the London College of Music Camerata and the English Chamber Orchestra Ensemble, of the symphonic work Ongilash by the composer Luis Zubillaga.

Ongilash will be played by the London College of Music Camerata in partnership with the English Chamber Orchestra Ensemble and conducted by Peter Rudnick. It will be performed as a loop with intervals.

Design, University of West London; Department of Architecture, University of Westminster; Karl England, Director, Sluice_; Filmarmalade, publishers of contemporary artists’ film and video.

Ongilash

Luciano Zubillaga works with sound, moving image, text and performance.

His work combines trans–disciplinary research in the margins of philosophy, science, and collaborative art practice.

He recently exhibited work at Image Movement, Berlin; The Museum of Modern Art, Buenos Aires; The Whitechapel Art Gallery, London; IMT Gallery, London; Art-O-Rama, Marseille; and at Ann Arbor Film Festival. He was born in Argentina and lives and works in London.

Filmarmalade is a DVD label specialising in the publication and production of contemporary artists’ film and video works. Every year Filmarmalade publish a series of works, selected through both invited and open submission, with the aim of encouraging wider access to the moving image. Filmarmalade also specially commission interviews to accompany each publication to provide a greater understanding of how video and film artists situate their work in relation to the history of art and contemporary fine art practice. Filmarmalade is a project by the artist Gordon Shrigley.

The entire Filmarmalade collection is held at the British Artists’ Film & Video Study Collection, Central St Martins, London and at IMT Gallery, London.

The Argentine composer Luis Zubillaga (1928-1995) wrote the symphonic work, Ongilash in 1968. The original score has multiple influences: the music of George Gurdjieff, the reading of a poem

by Rainer Maria Rilke and the first word pronounced by the composer’s son.

Ongilash avoids traditional music notation by embracing the experimental graphic style explored during the 1960s that allow each performer the space to create, but within strict parameters.

Ongilash takes temporal dynamics to the limit: a crescendo from the barely audible to the fortissimo maximo, nontraditional sound attacks, meticulous durations stipulated in seconds and the use of the voices of the performers.

Ongilash received a posthumous premiere performance in 2012 by the Argentine National Symphony Orchestra in Buenos Aires and this performance will be the premiere of this work in the UK.

This special event has been made possible with the kind help and support of: Elda Cerrato, Artist, lifelong partner of Luis Zubillaga; Ciro Ciliberto, Artistic Programmer, Argentine National Symphony Orchestra; The London College of Music, University of West London; The English Chamber Orchestra Ensemble; London School of Film, Media and

www.filmarmalade.co.uk

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Ech-OCham-Ber Echo Chamber bring their AfterCarl project to a conclusion at Sluice_2015 with the launch of a publication and new body of work developed after their research into Carl Andre’s ‘Equivalent VIII’. The project also brings together artists, André de Jong, Cathy Wade and Andrew Lacon. artists: André de Jong Cathy Wade Andrew Lacon

ech-o-cham-ber.org

Sluice_2015 offers the perfect point for concluding the AfterCarl project, both as an internal project to the wider Sluice_ ecology and as an autonomous external project.

Conceptually it not only fits but it is essential to bring the project to London as it will emulate the journey of Carl Andre’s Equivalent VIII from New York to London in 1972.

The presentation at the fair takes two forms: a publication and a new body of work by the participants.

With the successful completion of the exhibition of AfterCarl, as part of Exchange Rates in Bushwick, Echo Chamber has now embarked on the second and final part of the project: a publication with new imagery that responds to the show in New York as well as a commissioned text by Alistair Rider, author of Carl Andre: Things in their Elements (Phaidon, 2011).

The publication is informed by the research undertaken by the group at Tate Britain and in NYC in 2014 adding to, and augmenting onto, an already fascinating history. As an object the publication relates to the discrepancies in the Equivalent VIII saga by being printed in an American Letter size format.

In addition to the exclusive launch of the publication, the members of Echo Chamber have also made a new body work to exhibit at the fair.

Echo Chamber is a collaborative project initiated by the founder and curator of VINYL (Art Space) and has, for its first iteration, brought together: Cathy Wade, Andrew Lacon and André de Jong.

An Echo Chamber could be a space for making an audio recording or it could denote a situation where information, introduced into an enclosed system without any external righting force, is amplified, repeated and distorted; an effect that could be likened to a positive feedback loop where a value is exponentially added to in an infinitely recurring loop.

Occurrences such as these underpin what is known as emergence, the phenomena where a large body of organisms act in a bottom-up, a hierarchical fashion to function as a single organism. Examples of this behaviour could be seen in nature where, for example, a colony of ants can thrive without a leader, or a flock of starlings come together in what is called a murmuration; behaviour patterns that are also observable in network cultures when they go viral.

Known as Dunbar’s number, different species have pivotal numbers that affect and steer such behaviour.

Echo Chamber sets up a situation where a group of artists operate within an enclosed scenario to produce work beyond its boundaries.

In regards to the image(s) for the catalogue the group felt it important to further incorporate the concepts from the researc underpinning the project. We would like for your designer to choose (and use) one the following for the project’s image: 1) Create a block for the area where the image would have gone and fill it with a ‘bluish-white’ colour 2) Create a block for the area where the image would have gone and fill it with a ‘yellowy-brown’ colour 3) Divide the area where the image would have gone into two vertical blocks and fill one with a ‘bluish-white’ colour and the other with a ‘yellowy-brown’ colour 4) Divide the area where the image would have gone into two horizontal blocks and fill one with a ‘bluish-white’ colour and the other with a ‘yellowy-brown’ colour

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FLORENCE TRUST For Sluice_2015, the Florence Trust play on their founding principle of exchange, as well as showcasing the diversity of their artists’ practices. Their exhibition draws from current and past resident artists, notably William Martin, whose work relies on audience participation to function. artists: current and alumni Florence Trust resident artists

The Florence Trust is a selective yearlong artist residency for twelve artists at a Grade I listed church in London’s Highbury. Our resident artists form a supportive community and valuable network whilst at the Trust.

A practice development programme consisting of one-to-one sessions, peer critiques, workshops and gallery tours helps our artists establish themselves in the London art scene and develop their practice. We hold two exhibitions every year, a winter open in January and a summer exhibition in July which is accompanied by a full-colour catalogue.

florencetrust.org

The Florence Trust was founded as an educational charity by painter Patrick Hamilton in 1990. During the 1970’s and 1980’s Hamilton worked in a large studio in Florence and he was inspired to replicate in London the beautiful surroundings and atmosphere of exchange that he found so productive in Italy. In the Florence Trust he sought to create a communal atmosphere he saw as an essential resource for artists and a space where the surroundings themselves provided inspiration.

Our booth at Sluice_2015 is drawn from current and previous Florence Trust resident artists to play on our founding principle of exchange as well as showcase the diversity of our artists’ practices. Ceramicist William Martin, a resident artist from 2014-15, presents two artworks which rely on audience participation to function. With Help Yourself (2015) the visitor selects a glazed ceramic vessel in which to take their refreshment and, if they like the cup, they can leave a donation and take it home. Babel (2015) is a tower of bisque-fired, wheel-thrown cylinders that are intended to be disseminated worldwide with their new locations and functions later documented by the artist. On the wall is a selection of prints, paintings and other wall-based artworks by current and alumni Florence Trust resident artists.

William Martin Help Yourself

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Sluice_screens

Jean-Michel Crapanzano invites

FROM NOWHERE An « alien » is a « hypothetical form of life range from simple bacteria-like organisms to beings far more complex than humans. » This can also be « an introduced alien, exotic, non-indigenous, or non-native species, living outside its native distributional range, which has arrived there by human activity, either deliberate or accidental. Non-native species can have various effects on the local ecosystem. » Source Wikipedia.

In a conference in the U.N. in 1985, the President of the United States

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of America, Ronald Reagan, said to Mikhail Gorbachev: “ …if suddenly there was a threat to this world from some other species from another planet outside in the universe. We’d forget all the little local differences that we have between our countries … ” What does it mean when a foreign factor arrives or is put into a certain context? What kind of change does it take to adapt from both parts? The figure of the « alien » can be seen as many forms as we can. It refers to our primal fear of the Unknown. This actual and sensitive subject determines the

general psychological and political structure of our societies.

METAMATRIX ARTLAB is an experimental platform for interactive projects, founded by multimedia artist Jean-Michel Crapanzano. Based in the Netherlands, it works in partnership with individuals, galleries, art centres, and museums to develop and organise new media-oriented art projects, international exhibitions, conferences, workshops, and educational programmes. www.metamatrixartlab.com

Sluice_screens

Lindsay Friend invites Laura Pawela

From Nowhere Lindsay Friend will be screening a brand new edit of the ongoing video work Frames by award-winning, multidisciplinary artist Laura Pawela.

Frames derives from her time working as a TV editor in Poland, during which she collected single frames from poor quality or badly edited tapes alongside footage that had become misplaced or otherwise lost in amongst television and film archives. Using these stills as the basis for her work, Pawela is interested in bringing into focus images that would otherwise be rejected in editing or unseen by the human eye. As such, Frames presents a video heterotopia of anomalous and fugitive materials interacting to create frenzied, cryptic narratives. Frames is an evolving video

work which has been exhibited in a previous version in 2014 at IMT Gallery, London, with the support of the Polish Cultural Institute.

Pawela’s work is driven by the concept of the imagination as a filter for reality. Her diverse practice includes video, sculpture, drawing, installation, and other time-based mediums and often features cultural references that explore myths and representations of art making. She investigates multiple realities suggested by the characterisation of contemporary society as an Information Age and the interaction of the fictional, the virtual, and the physical. She was recently awarded the prestigious Silesian Voivodeship Artistic Award for achievements in the

field of the visual art. Recent exhibitions include: You Cannot Step into the Same River Twice at the Pump House Gallery, Battersea, Crimestory at the Centre of Contemporary Art, Toruñ, and Fake Films and A Few Frames More at IMT Gallery, London. Pawela studied at the Wroclaw Academy of Fine Arts, the Institute of Art at the University of Opole and the University of Warsaw. She is currently working on the mockumentary Pink Horizon, with Tomasz Kolankiewicz, with support from the Polish Ministry of Culture.

Pawela is represented by IMT Gallery, London. www.imagemusictext.com

Laura Pawela Frame n.368

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galleryELL galleryELL present an exhibition that celebrates their love of art and discourse.

The visual research that occurs everyday is humbly offered up to the Sluice_2015 audience in a show that is a culmination of media and meanings from a variety of visual experiences. artists: Joel Bacon Fiona Buchanan Don De Mauro Jodi Hays Anna Hoberman Nancy Hubbard Kirsten Nash John Ros

galleryell.com

Our mission statement is to create art that impels everyday viewers to be critical-thinking observers of the contemporary culture that surrounds them. We want to transform art and inspire each and every individual to be more active in service of the common good. galleryELL is proud to present an exhibition of veteran galleryELL artists as well as some newcomers from the U.S. and those new to the London art scene.

The spatial and temporal collide in this culmination of media and meanings from a variety of visual experiences. These conversations are started in the studio and perpetuated throughout rigorous practices, bringing vital conversations to the forefront of our contemporary moment.

They are playful, direct and open – most importantly, they are constant.

The visual research that occurs everyday is humbly offered here as a starting point and a way to reach out across space and time in order to come together in a way that celebrates our love of art and discourse.

galleryELL is a transient hybrid gallery. We have a strong digital presence of curatorial projects and critical reviews that reach viewers every day. We bring this ethos of art’s accessibility and necessary everyday presence to the non-digital physical, with exhibitions, alternative art fairs, artist events, talks, studio visits and more. We believe that the digital and physical function within the same abstract space and rely on each other to secure a strong and lasting connection between people and their communities.

We encourage critical thinking and civic action through art. We compel artists, academic institutions, galleries, museums, to question how art is exhibited and how it can be disseminated for the benefit of all. We are a growing, evolving entity and look to each other and our communities to challenge our ideas. We blur the lines between ‘fine art’ and the everyday inundation of cultural content we all experience. galleryELL was founded in 2008 in Brooklyn, New York.

Anna Hoberman Composition III

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Sluice_screens

cC Sluice_screens is a new development in the Sluice__ screens strand of programming.

Created with assistance from ascribe, Sluice_screens aims to provide a platform for the public to engage with art made with video, sound and web, whilst enabling the artists to retain control of their intellectual property.

Sluice_screens is a new platform dedicated to the support and promotion of artists working within the digital realm. Sluice_screens takes the form of a free-toenter open submission award. Ten artists will be shortlisted. From the shortlist, one artist will be selected to be exhibited at Sluice_2015 on Sunday 18 October as part of the Sluice_screens programme and will receive £500 prize money. All ten shortlisted artists will subsequently be exhibited at The Hospital Club, in London’s Covent Garden. This new and innovative prize is designed specifically for a new generation of artists who are working digitally with video, sound and web.

The programme will be critically expanded upon by a panel discussion during Sluice_2015.

How is the virality of digitised art affecting the perception of creative production? What effect do the differing philosophical stances inherent to copyright vs copyleft have on how the art world engages with artists? What light can be thrown on this post-internet battleground by contextualising it within an art-historical framework?

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jury: Ali Hillman (Curator – The Hospital Club) Charlie Levine (Curator – Sluice__) Masha McConaghy (Curator, consultant – ascribe)

Sponsor:

Supporter:

Sluice_performance Lucy Dixon

Amelia Beavis-Harrison The owner of a situation is not always the artist or producer. With some art, that power is handed over to the viewer. As a viewer of performance art, there is an awareness that if we were never present the work would in some way fail to exist. It is the process that is crucial, the act of performing and spectating.

Each practitioner engages with their own particular themes, whether it be the body, sound, film or political turmoil, each performance is never the same twice. As artist Sarah Hill states: “As an artist I am split into two selves: one that watches and one that makes.”

One of performance art’s strengths is

its ability to provoke whilst remaining fluid, flexible and mobile. As a spectator we have the responsibility to take over this fluidity and complete the piece. We are asked, principally, to consume.

By shifting the focus from a finished product to an artistic process, the artists’ message is produced live, often through an abstract narrative.

Beth Kettle highlights this in her focus on analysing the structures used in producing work, Naomi Kashiwagi in her use of old techniques to produce new, contemporary sounds. Kate Spence and Amelia Beavis-Harrison both, in very diverse ways, push the

performers’ bodies to their limits creating new and experimental visuals, accentuated in their new location.

Sluice_2015 then, as a location to question, adjust and explore, showing the best of emerging and artist-led talent, is the ideal context to show performance. By placing performance within this setting, it naturally arrives at questioning the nature of performance art today and the conversations that dominate it. Why has performance art not enjoyed the commercial success as that of other mediums?

What, as viewers, do we wish to get out of consuming art and how can performance fulfil our needs?

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INTERVIEW ROOM 11 Interview Room 11 are interested in work that responds to current political and economic malaise. For Sluice_2015, they have developed the concept of art as a material strategy for civic resistance, and are showing work that explores a general sense of austerity as a productive tactic. artists: Susan Boyle David McDiarmid Alberto Condotta Derek Sutherland Brian Cheeswright SpartAn Janie Nicoll Magdalen Chua

ir11.org.uk

The political and economic patterns that govern our everyday are marked by increasingly catastrophic fluctuations.

This cumulative experience of structural instability, suspended for several decades, is the context that informs any current social assessment – instead of a societal evolution we might be witnessing a breakage, a stuttering global paradigm shift. An artist’s response to this condition is to track, dig, point and question, but also to wait, listen, manoeuvre more slowly.

From this position, we have explored in our programme contemporary artist strategies that deal with a general sense of restraint: lack, scarcity, economy of thought or means, in search of a more nuanced account of the contemporary condition. We are interested in a tactic that stops at the border, takes a second look, withholds judgment, suspends belief; art that counts down, draws a breath, pauses. The sense of some kind of prohibition, omission, reversal or

loss can be experienced in many ways – as absence, through memory and distance, through a system or method of various constraints, or addressed as rhythms and patterns of small personal actions. The eight artists and groups whose work we have at Sluice_2015 all respond in their own way to the immediate state of the world, as seen and experienced through their material practice of making.

Interview Room 11 (IR11) is an Edinburgh-based, artist-led gallery and project space supporting work of local and international early-career artists as well as established visual arts practitioners. Since opening in October 2013, IR11 has shown the work of over 150 artists across 16 exhibitions.

Our programme consists of committee-run projects, solo and group exhibitions selected through an open submissions process, and invited curatorial projects. In addition to the exhibitions, events and publications, we collaborate with other artist-led spaces.

The gallery is run by a committee of co-directors, all contributing to managing it on a voluntary basis. As an artist-run resource space, we are open to experimenting with exhibition models and the ‘expanded’ notion of curating: our curatorial stance is ‘productive’ in the sense that each exhibition affords us the opportunity for testing an artist’s work in relation to new contexts and other practices or disciplines. We strive to collaborate with the artists to push the boundaries of what an exhibition can do.

We have developed a particular curatorial interest in text-based art, new painting, and work that responds to current political and economic malaise. For Sluice_2015 we have further developed the concept of art as a material strategy for civic resistance.

The artists whose work we are showing have each explored a general sense of austerity as a productive tactic.

Derek Sutherland Untitled

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ISLINGTON MILL Islington Mill takes on the tropes and expectations of the Art Fair to present 3 artists who have adopted the roles of Gallerist, Artist and Portfolio Maker. Sammaneh Poursh, Neil Robbins and Michael Holland use performance, painting, bookmaking and video to create an off-kilter art fair experience. artists: Sammaneh Poursh Neil Robbins Michael Holland Islington Mill is a leading independent UK arts organisation based in Salford, in NW England. Structured around an organic network of independent artists, Islington Mill runs innovative interdisciplinary public arts programmes and artists residencies alongside studio spaces and an artists’ B&B. Drawing on the radical and subversive creative energy running through its arts activities, Islington Mill also has a reputation for putting on legendary experimental gatherings, events and parties. Based in the evocative buildings and courtyard of a former Victorian mill, Islington Mill is a unique and inspiring environment where the architecture of Industrial Britain is fused with the creative energy of industrious artists at work and play.

islingtonmill.com

Islington Mill promotes a particular sense of how artists can live, work and develop their practice within the ecology of the building.

This builds from an infrastructure of autonomous participants who have gravitated towards the place. Members of the Mill community each develop specific approaches to creativity which are continually evolving into an allencompassing environment which actively questions how a practice can be developed and allowed to thrive amidst a shifting landscape.

From this potentially utopian standpoint, Islington Mill often travels out beyond its 4 walls to explore how this approach aligns with other contexts.

With this in mind, for Sluice_2015 Islington Mill takes on the tropes and expectations of the Art Fair, to bring 3 artists who will adopt the roles of Gallerist, Artist and Portfolio Maker.

Sammaneh Poursh, Neil Robbins and Michael Holland will use performance, painting, bookmaking and video to create an oblique and off-kilter art fair experience.

“In their galleries and shebeen-like clubs one might encounter artists and performers who will never be seen in an officially sanctioned arts centre thanks to their inconvenient habit of saying or doing things that upset apple carts, frighten horses and offend the delicate sensibilities of committees and funding bodies. With its semi-formal and slightly ramshackle portfolio of debates, discussions, DIY learning and peer support they are becoming the guardians of diversity, experiment and opportunity in a culture of homogenised indifference. Here the doors remain open.”

Chris Lethbridge, Islington Mill, March 2015

Sammaneh Poursh Performance Documentation

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Lateral ArtSpace From their base in a Romanian paintbrush factory, Lateral ArtSpace are kicking against the superficial, self-centred, money-obsessed establishment.

Their Sluice_2015 show is the essence of their dreams and nightmares.

And they have the artworks to prove it. artists: Dragoș Bădiță Flaviu Cacoveanu Cristina Curcan Ioan Grosu Mihaela Hudrea Lucian Indrei Radu Oreian Lea Rasovszky

Lateral ArtSpace is a non-profit artist-led exhibition and project space located at the Paintbrush Factory in Cluj-Napoca, Romania. It was founded in April 2012 and is coordinated by three Romanian artists. We are open to various projects and collaborations, workshops and interdisciplinary research.

lateralartspace.com

We founded Lateral ArtSpace several months after our Masters graduation as a response to the lack of exhibition possibilities for emerging artists. There are still a few places where young artists can exhibit that offer a good context. We tried to do that.

Even though we didn’t know too much about it. It was, and is, hard to tell where this is going. Maybe because we don’t come from privileged backgrounds with large networks and extensive resources, but rather from a culturally and economically handicapped country – by history, by others, and by its own people; and then some others again and so forth. Yet, compared to many we are doing well and cannot complain.

This is what our project is about, a reflection on our condition, trying to have a purpose in this making-it-atany-cost existence. This superficial, self-help, self-centred and moneyobsessed establishment. And we are not distancing ourselves from it. This is what we grew up in. This is the essence of our dreams and nightmares. And we have artworks to prove it.

Lucian Indrei Life is Life

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LOOK&LISTEN Look&Listen’s Black and White is an observation of the monochrome.

Removing colour allows work in a variety of media to be united in appearance.

Their exhibition at Sluice_2015 is part of an ongoing exploration that began as a curatorial post on their blog a few years ago. artists include: Justine Frischmann Andrew Seto Erin Lawlor Rob de Oude Rieko Koga Espen Erichsen Yifat Gat Karl Bielik Ky Anderson Brian Cypher

www.lookelisten.net

LOOK&LISTEN is an art space located in the historical buildings of the ‘L’ancienne Poudrerie’ in Saint Chamas, a fishing village in the South of France, located between Aix-en-Provence, Marseille, Arles and Avignon.

L&L evolved through the notion of research, and the belief that opening up the artistic process to a variety of people is beneficial to all parties.

L&L grows through collaboration and exchange with artists, institutions and non-profits worldwide, on a variety of projects. L&L aims to connect, inspire and engage people from different backgrounds through art. Our space includes a gallery, a workshop room and an art library.

Originally, L&L was a blog, exploring the territory of international contemporary abstract painting.

Looking to establish a vocabulary and expanding the context in which myself and my colleagues act in, L&L became an Association in 2013, curating exhibitions in different spaces. We opened our first permanent space in 2014.

BLACK AND WHITE is an ongoing exploration that started as a curatorial post on our blog a few years ago. So far it has been shown as an exhibition in two versions; the work of 40 artists was shown in the second edition. We are now starting a blurb version of the selection, hoping to print a publication by next year.

Working in monochrome easily creates a unity across work from a broad artistic range, from illustrative to grid-based, from work on paper to embroidery, formal or intuitive, allowing us to create a curatorial observation that focuses on work mechanisms rather than its appearance.

Installation view with Alain Biltereyst, Gabriele Herzog

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MADE MADE investigates the physical and emotional surface tensions we create for ourselves, others, and our environment.

Our artists explore the push-pull between intention and accident; attraction and repulsion; and constructive and destructive interventions. artists: Susan Chrysler White Beth Dary Travis LeRoy Southworth

In nature, surface tension is caused by intermolecular attraction, which allows the surface of liquids to act like an elastic film giving drops of liquids their shape and allowing the surface to support light weight objects.

made-art.com

MADE is pleased to present artists Beth Dary, Susan Chrylser White and Travis LeRoy Southworth. Each makes work that explores how our physical and emotional tensions sometimes buoy, sometimes destroy, and sometimes create mutant experiences that reshape our world. Their work ranges across mediums, including paintings and digital images, to hand-built sculptures and site-specific installation.

Launched in late fall 2014, MADE helps people who are interested in learning about contemporary art – but might be reluctant about visiting traditional galleries – find and acquire art in unexpected interactive and social settings. MADE presents work through curated ‘pop up’ events at a variety of venues that give attendees the opportunity to engage with the artists and see the work in different contexts.

MADE events have been hosted in artist studios, homes and commercial spaces.

MADE was founded by NYC-based artist and curator, Katarina Wong, who has curated critically-acclaimed independent exhibitions. Her own work is exhibited regularly within the U.S. and internationally.

Susan Chrysler White Untitled

4

[NOT AVAILABLE IN GOOD BOOK SHOPS]

RECLAIMED POETICS IN THE AGE OF AUTOMATION

Reclaimed Poetics In The Age Of Automation “This absorbing and inspiring text delivers precise accusations as well as well defined insults.”

Contemptible Art Magazine

SUSAKPRESS / SPIRALBOUND

www.susakpress.org/spiralbound

VALUED: Exchange Rates The Bushwick International Expo

by Charlie Levine

Exchange Rates was the sum of many parts. Its impetus was via two separate conversations that came together. At Sluice_2013 five New York galleries staged a talk entitled “Why Brooklyn?

Why Bushwick? Why now?”. Stephanie Theodore of Theodore:Art – one of the leading protagonists – connected the dots between issues raised in this talk with conversations she’d been having back in Brooklyn with Paul D’Agostino of Centotto Gallery about starting an expo in Bushwick.

Over many months of emails and Skype conversations the format and scope of Exchange Rates was forged. In total, over 30 galleries from all over the world descended on Bushwick where 20 galleries and venues played host to them. From Los Angeles to London and Berlin to Beijing, these 50+ galleries took part in the four-day expo which included performances, talks, exhibitions, rooftop parties and lots of conversations.

Exchange Rates came out of “this belief that objects brought together can constitute an identity” (Elmgreen & Dragset). No matter where in the world the galleries and artists came from, by all working together under the Exchange

Rates umbrella we were one single identity for those four days. This is very much in the vein of what Sluice_ does: it brings together many parts to make a whole. It is itself an artwork, it moves “away from art as product to art as idea or art as action” (Lucy Lippard via Miwon Kwon), and becomes a place for value exchange. Value in this instance can be described not only as monetary, but also as service, experimentation, encounter or experience.

Sluice_ usually appears as an art fair. Alternative in its delivery, its unusual venues and booth-less appearance encourages experimentation; it is about exchange both economically and culturally. Exchange Rates was a continuation of this ethos, however, based much more on the value of social and physical exchange. It looked at value not in the typical ‘how much’ context of growth, productivity and profit; rather it saw value of opportunity and experience for galleries, artists, audiences and beyond. Exchange Rates encouraged art to be seen in galleries, in frames, projections, performances, talks and discussions, parties, sound and games.

It did not limit itself to art that sells (or what commercial art is understood to look like): rather it encouraged play and participation.

“Art as idea, art as action, in conceptual art, performance art, Happenings, and so on – attempt to install alternative models of exchange that counter, complicate or parody the dominant market – a profit-based system of exchange. In fact, many of them engage the logic of the gift economy as one such alternative. By this I mean that the artwork in such cases functions as a mechanism to instigate social exchanges or interactions that specifically put into motion a circuit of obligation and reciprocity.” (Miwon Kwon) Exchange Rates is a proposition. It explores how art can be seen and why we insist on making and exhibiting it. It questions what commodity and exchange in art is. It subverts the commercialisation of art and makes us look at art as commodity and experience as value, a tangible asset that can be traded in any currency.

As German philosopher and sociologist George Simmel comments in his essay Value and Money: “Need and enjoyment alone do not comprehend either value or economic life, which are realised simultaneously through the exchange between two subjects each of whom requires a sacrifice by the other (or its equivalence in the self-sufficient economy) in order to be satisfied.

Exchange, i.e. the economy, is the source of economic values, because exchange is the representative of the distance between subject and object which transforms subjective feelings into objective valuations.”

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GALLERY

NORTH Gallery North presents an exhibition

by NEUSCHLOSS, NEUSCHLOSS presents an exhibition of David Dye’s work, alongside documentation and discussion around his practice. Much of Dye’s work is concerned with the interrelationship of content and form, identity, and the body. artist: David Dye

Gallery North presents NEUSCHLOSS presents David Dye. Gallery North opened in 2009 and is one of several exhibition spaces at, or affiliated with, Northumbria University in Newcastle upon Tyne.

Formed in 2014, NEUSCHLOSS is a group of artists, writers and curators at Northumbria University. In 2015 they will be working with Gallery North to present a solo exhibition by David Dye. David, a Senior Lecturer at Northumbria for many years, was working towards the exhibition when he died earlier this year. At Sluice_2015, NEUSCHLOSS are presenting work by David alongside documentation and discussion around his practice.

gn.northumbria.ac.uk

Hi Joanne,

I thought I’d do that thing and write an email about some thoughts about David’s practice and ‘Tattoo’ in particular.

What interests me about his practice is its relationship to identity, and to a lesser extent, the body. I understand his practice as having a kind of unfixed relationship to his own identity – which comes out more explicitly in the early film works exploring ideas of authorship and the signature. The painting/objects from the 1980s also seem to have something of this quality in the way they work with an image of the body. The way the ideal male body has become a motif to be repositioned and played with. There is also David’s conversation about how this work was working up against the machismo figurative painting of the time, in the work of painters such as Julian Schnabel.

I’m also interested in how this set of painting/objects that David produced in the 1980s were a kind of cul-de-sac for his own practice and perhaps a kind of culde-sac in a more general sense in relation to what is now deemed ‘significant’ art from the last 40 years. In this sense there is something interesting about David not just showing one of these objects again, but it being explicit about it being re-made now. I think it might provoke thinking about how such dominant narratives are determined and hint at a more complex picture. I find ‘Tattoo’ as having another layer of interest in that I feel there is an aspect to it that will look ‘contemporary’. The image of the body becoming animal and of an object having a certain ritualistic quality chimes with philosophical ideas that seem to have a particular currency within contemporary art at present.

See you later

Tom

David Dye working on a re-make of Tattoo

5

PAPER

GALLERY PAPER present an exhibition of gallery artists alongside a time-based performance

by Ruby Tingle, performed within an installation. In addition to this, Lisa Wilkens will be launching her new publication, ‘The Shadow of an Unseen Power’. artists: Andrea Cotton Bethan Hamilton Phill Hopkins Sharon Leahy-Clark Ellie MacGarry Ruby Tingle Eleanor Watson Graham Watson Lisa Wilkens Simon Woolham

paper-gallery.co.uk

PAPER is an artist-led, commercial gallery based in Manchester and represents a range of emerging and mid-career artists whose practice is based around the medium of paper.

Our presentation at Sluice_2015 encompasses drawing, painting, collage, print, video work, animation, and performance. Using paper as a starting point, our represented artists have created works that embody these aims. PAPER seeks to shift the nature of a commercial gallery, wrestling control back to the artists, whilst manipulating the format so that artists can decide the framework in which their work is viewed.

For Sluice_2015, PAPER have curated an exhibition of gallery artists. Alongside this, PAPER are presenting the following events for visitors to the fair: Manchester-based artist and musician, Ruby Tingle, has created a time-based performance, Menagerie in Blue. Acting within the performance, Ruby will move in and out of a series of timed poses, recreating poses from the life-drawing class. This is being performed within an installation created by the artist and the audience can draw from the tableaux. Transforming a 2D work into a 3D ‘living painting’ blurs the boundaries of framing and thus, forces the idea through a cyclic process of ‘paper to performance to paper’.

Lisa Wilkens is using Sluice_2015 as a platform to launch her new publication, The Shadow of an Unseen Power – Art and Activism in the Nuclear Age. Wilken’s work revolves around current and historical perceptions of a nuclear threat and aims to create a visual platform for artistic and political discourse, informed by personal experiences of joining anti-nuclear demonstrations during early childhood.

There is also a conversation between Lisa Wilkens and Reece Jones during the fair about the project.

Ruby Tingle Menagerie in Blue

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THE PENTHOUSE Masquerade // Murmuration is a twoperson show by The Penthouse artists, Rosanne Robertson and Debbie Sharp.

Freedoms and limits are pitched against each other in Masquerade /, while / Murmuration exhibits external forces of nature and physics with silent investigations. artists: Debbie Sharp Rosanne Robertson The Penthouse Press Gang

The Penthouse is an artist-led space occupying the top floor of a 60’s office tower block in Manchester city centre’s Northern Quarter, run by artists, Debbie Sharp and Rosanne Robertson.

The Penthouse acts as a place of indeterminacy and experimentation whether it is acting as a studio, project space or experimental performance space. Ironically named, The Penthouse embodies the opposite of luxury – it demonstrates a necessity to create with as much freedom as possible.

thepenthousenq.com

“ …elevates Manchester’s underground scene to the fifth floor of a tower block”– The Wire.

Masquerade // Murmuration is a two-person show by artists and founders of The Penthouse, Debbie Sharp and Rosanne Robertson, with a mini accompanying sound and performance programme.

Masquerade / by Rosanne Robertson exhibits inner forces and discord that manifests in relationships with, and between, objects, assemblage, costume, sound, and performance sculpture. Freedoms and limits are demonstrated against each other in compositions celebrating form amongst chaos and chaos amongst form. Interactions and improvisations with assemblage and performance sculpture punctuate the exhibition and roam Sluice_2015. / Murmuration by Debbie Sharp exhibits external forces of nature and physics with silent investigations via internal structures of sound and matter with works that are drawn from the darkness of existence in-between life and death.

The Penthouse Press Gang is a new publishing project and collective of associate artists. For Sluice_2015, the press gang explore the art fair format as pedlars and buskers, with various areas of the fair acting as concert space for mobile performance and a publishing house.

Debbie Sharp Murmur #1

5

GODS AND MONSTERS

by Thomas Marks Museums great and small have ramped up their contemporary art collections in the past decade. Thematic shows that interleave contemporary works with those of historical artists are becoming ubiquitous. Such exhibitions present an opportunity for critique but are not without risk.

‘Admiring an old painting is just like pouring our purest feelings into a funerary urn.’ So wrote F.T. Marinetti in The Futurist Manifesto (1909), advocating a steely future for art that was predicated on the need to ‘destroy museums, libraries, academies of any sort’. A good number of modern artists followed his spirit, even if they didn’t take up the directive. Perhaps more potently – and despite much evidence to the contrary – Marinetti’s manifesto ushered in a critical norm in which modern and contemporary art came to represent a clean break with historical tradition.

More than a century on, that notion has been, and continues to be revised – and perhaps nowhere more so than among those historical collections that Marinetti would quite blithely have obliterated.

Museums great and small have bolstered their contemporary art departments in the past decade, institutions with no tradition of collecting in this field, such as the National Gallery in London and the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna, now have specific programmes that interleave works by historical and contemporary artists. Other venues,

60

including the Metropolitan Museum in New York, have ramped up their acquisitions of contemporary art.

Thematic shows, or those that collapse art-historical categories, have become ubiquitous. Auction houses, art fairs and gallerists have followed suit.

Of course, this trend is to some degree driven by marketing imperatives, and the recognition within historical collections that contemporary art promises a bridge to younger and more diverse audiences than they have traditionally been able to attract. And there are risks to introducing contemporary works among the Old Masters, particularly in the case of installations that may reduce the art of the past to a set of props in the theatrical exhibitions of the present. But many such displays have a quality of surprise that is rare in more conventional shows; and at their best, they offer fresh perspectives on both the old and the new.

The most focused exhibitions of this type are those that bring together works that are directly related, examining congruities and divergences between a contemporary work and its source.

At the National Gallery currently, the dedication of an entire room to just two works, one of Anthony Caro’s wooden assemblages from the Duccio Variations series and The Annunciation panel from the Sienese painter’s Maestà altarpiece, offers a rare insight into both the compositional ambiguities of the latter and the unexpectedly poignant spatial inquiries made by the former.

Larger exhibitions often respond to the mood of a collection, and to the history of its accumulation and display. In particular, the Wunderkammer aesthetic so prized

by Joseph Cornell, Damien Hirst, Pablo Bronstein and many others has forged a strong link between today’s practitioners and an otherwise challenging mode of historical presentation. Indeed, exhibitions such as ‘Grayson Perry: The Tomb of the Unknown Craftsman’ (at the British Museum; 2011–12) help to restore a sense of curiosity or enigma to otherwise neglected objects. This is the artist not so much as curator as enchanter.

Of course, there are other artists for whom such exhibitions present an opportunity for critique, whether institutional or art-historical. But for me, the most rewarding are those in which unexpected juxtapositions mute the noise of historical context and shift the focus back to process and technique, and to the imaginative possibilities of composition and form. Artists engage differently with such things, which can carry more resonant ideas and arguments than reductive explanatory texts attached to gallery walls.

Thomas Marks is the editor of Apollo Magazine.

This article will be expanded on at the Sluice_2015 talk ‘Contemporary Art and the Old Masters’. sluice.info/2015 for more details

QWERTY QWERTY want you to lie in a coffin, talk about death and plan your own funeral.

All in the name of art. The Funeral Service manifests our worst fears and forces us to talk about it. The experience is purposefully unnerving, but their consulting service is on hand for those who want to talk. artists: Jens Andersen Mikkel Larris Indigo Richards Morten Tillitz Anders Qvist Nielsen Camilla Gaugler John Krogh

tifinger.dk

Pre-planning your funeral or cemetery arrangements gives you and your loved ones peace of mind. ‘Don’t wait. Make your plan online today’ (dignity memorial. com). At Sluice_2015, QWERTY has a large coffin as a centerpiece. We invite guests to make plans for their death and choose funeral urns. Guests can experience the feeling of lying in a coffin, seeing if it fits.

We want to create an unsafe experience for the audience, and then show them something totally different.

Show them art, make them participate; give the audience genuine experiences and make contact. The Funeral Service is a manifestation of our worst fear – our own death. This is something we all share, and don’t talk about. Why should we? QWERTY wants to, in a new context and with individual expressions, invite the audience to participate in our investigation of dying. Each artist will bring his or her own interpretation of the burial urn.

We want to provide a consulting service to the public, whether you are looking for a priest or a therapist.

At a QWERTY exhibition you will always be spoken to and be involved in the art. At present, QWERTY is an art initiative, with 7 active artists from Denmark. QWERTY is constantly evolving its artistic methods and the organisation of their collaboration. The group represents an alternative to the more established art scene. QWERTY doesn’t have a permanent showroom.

Exhibitions and projects are organised together with alternative art projects, galleries and at art fairs.

QWERTY has continuously made research on the themes: Exchange, consumerism and the definition of value. The frame for investigation being – a Real Estate agency (QWERTY Real Estate), a clothing shop (Foreign Exchange), a gift shop (Mess Production) and a bakery (QWERTY Baking, Breaking Bread). Instead of the classic work-based art form, QWERTY is engaged in relational aesthetics, and the interaction between regional and local environment/context. QWERTY’s method is open and flexible, the artistic outcome will sometimes first show itself at the end of a project.

QWERTY makes a design in which the individual member can improvise and create artworks that fit the given situation, often in collaboration with the audience.

QWERTY Dying 1

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THE ROYAL STANDARD The Royal Standard take a wry look at the state current of the Art Fair by foisting the cold, functional, neon aesthetic of a convenience store upon Sluice_2015. TWOOOLS brings these two realities together, placing artists at the centre of these two worlds in a similar way to the Art Fair. artists: Frances Disley James Harper Keiron Finnetty Linny Venables Madeline Hall Marianne McGurk Emma curd Kevin Hunt Sophie Bower Jack Welsh Ellie Barrett Gregory Herbert

the-royal-standard.com

At an art fair again, are you?

Tired legs?

Thirsty?

Too hot?

Bored?

Haven’t got a pot to piss in? Frustrated by your ignorance of the ebb, flow, or complexity of current cultural paradigms? You need TWOOOLS! We tried to help two years ago. This year, we’re doing it all over again. The Royal Standard Studio Members present the most useful things they can possibly think of, at the most reasonable price they can possibly sell them for. Art has a purpose and ours is here for you.

Taking a wry look at the current state of the Art Fair, studio members have taken their practices and moved them into a place of total functionality, assisting their audience. The Royal

Standard have quite literally set up shop, bringing the convenience-store model to the art-fair format, simplifying the viewer-consumer-benefactor-collectorartist relationship to one of pure exchange.

At Sluice_2013, The Royal Standard set up shop above the rest of the fair, using found shop fittings as a nod towards a shop environment. These fittings were provided by Studio members themselves, often borrowed from their ‘day’ jobs. The retail environment is not one that many artists situate their work within, but is instead one that they have set their reality in.

TWOOOLS brings these two realities together, placing artists centrally between these two worlds, in a similar way to the Art Fair.

At Sluice_2015, we have remade our space entirely, foisting the cold, functional, neon convenience aesthetic upon the fair.

The Royal Standard is an artist-led gallery, studios and social workspace in Liverpool. Through a dynamic and challenging gallery programme that brings together local, national and international artists, we aim to showcase the most exciting, innovative exhibitions and events that we can, working with the most outstanding recent graduates and emerging artists as well as more established practitioners and other artist-led initiatives.

The Royal Standard is dedicated to promoting exchange, dialogue and experimentation, providing a supportive and critically engaged environment to work in, and acting as a social hub for our studio membership of over 40 artists, as well as the wider cultural community. Our multipurpose project space offers a testing ground for artists to push their ideas in new directions, and is a setting for more spontaneous events and activity happening independently to the main gallery programme.

The Royal Standard

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SATURATION POINT Saturation Point are showing work by contemporary artists who all adopt a reductive position in the context of current art practice. The exhibition demonstrates that the genre has a strong, ongoing presence and that its traditions continue to be developed and explored. artists: Judith Duquemin Patrick Morrissey Laurence Noga Andy Parkinson Charley Peters Hanz Hancock

Saturation Point is an online editorial project for reductive, geometric and systems artists working in the UK. It went online in May 2014 presenting interviews with contemporary artists working in the reductive abstractive tradition, exhibition reviews and articles.

Its curatorial section, Saturation Point Projects, is curated by Patrick Morrissey, Hanz Hancock and Charley Peters, and develops exhibitions and events that explore reductive practices in contemporary British art.

saturationpoint.org.uk

Saturation Point’s activities aim to raise the profile of reductive-, geometricand systems-based practices in the UK, where there is a burgeoning interest hitherto only seen internationally.

Through the website and curated projects, Saturation Point works towards establishing a community of practice through new writing and ways of contextualising reductive abstraction.

We work with an intergenerational group of artists to encourage dialogue around historical and contemporary perspectives on these practices.

Clear Sight presents a reductive approach to art practice, by six artists working today in the UK. Their practices explore the tradition of international minimalism, which originated in the 20th century. Practitioners from that period left a significant legacy; their place in art history is acknowledged through their contribution to a new understanding of making and seeing art. Ad Reinhardt, whose reductive, almost all-black paintings anticipated a wider adoption of minimalist standards, reflected on the values of a reductive approach: “The more stuff in it, the busier the work of art, the worse it is.

More is less. Less is more. The eye is a menace to clear sight.”

This exhibition shows a selection of work by contemporary artists who all adopt a reductive position in the context of current art practice. ‘Reduction’ as a term is not limited to defining a single artistic movement; however, the threads or references contained within the semiotics of their work demonstrate a consistency – in the use of geometric metaphor, iconographic presence, systems-related elements, and a number of other characteristics associated with the methodology of constructivism and its stylistic/intellectual descendants.

The exhibition demonstrates that this genre has a strong, ongoing presence and that its traditions continue to be developed and explored.

Hanz Hancock Howl Drehevel

6

susakpress.org/spiralbound names off a list, I decided to explore the gallery for myself.

Somehow from my seat in the coffee shop to the gallery itself the small paintings that I had envisaged had morphed into something else entirely.

It wasn’t a private view, it was the launch of an exciting new publishing venture. Each pristine rectangle was a book, displayed like an art exhibit. I had unwittingly strolled into the inaugural

Boundless creativity: How a chance encounter introduced me to an exciting new art project

launch of Spiralbound’s first twelve books at studio1.1 which has become its headquarters. The way that the pieces on the walls of the gallery transformed from art into books before my eyes, felt almost like magic but is actually a very honest representation of the

by Clara Keating

Spiralbound

W

collection

from

Susak

Press. They have a way of taking writing

e all have friends who are usually late,

I was immediately drawn to it. The

and capturing its kinetic energy in the

and always seem to have a valid excuse

barista told me that it was studio1.1, an

most artistic form of publishing that

for it. When meeting this particular

art gallery. Before too long a gaggle of

I have ever come across. It’s unlike

friend, I’m so accustomed to their

intriguing people gathered outside the

anything that I’ve ever seen before.

tardiness that I’ve taken to slipping a

door. A variety of ages, some sporting

Which is why I had to delve deeper.

good novel into my bag before I leave to

Shoreditch beards, some rather more

As well as being able to admire

meet them each time. It was their choice

conventional in their attire. I watched

the book covers in their artistic state,

to meet in Lambretta, a hip coffee shop

them for a while, attracted to the buzz

I was also able to hold them in my

in the chichi area of Redchurch Street,

of energy and excitement that quivered

hands, flick through and marvel at the

Shoreditch. I sat in the window, nursing

between them. I imagined that they

text and imagery and even meet some

my coffee and gazing out into the

were waiting for a private view of

of the authors, artists and the people

street beyond. I couldn’t help but

an exhibition, and a s they entered I

behind

notice the door opposite sprawling

caught a glimpse of small canvases

titles from Spiralbound are a rich mesh

with vibrant blue graffiti, a sudden

punctuating the white of the walls.

of differences and diversity.

burst of colour and chaos in the

Realising that my coffee was running

subdued

the

out, my friend was unlikely to appear

result

rest of the street. It felt like it was

anytime soon and no-one seemed to

separate rants from three different

sticking the finger to society, and

be showing tickets or checking their

artists, making one text. This is

trendy

chicness

of

this new meta-project. The

The key part of Manifesto is the of

splicing

together

three

followed by a collection of distressed photographs of unsung artists, poets, musicians

and

thinkers

who

the

authors believe deserve recognition.

Books such as Captain Ska and Manifesto of a Tranny manage to capture the magic that sparks from live performance by combining text and video stills. Video stills are also used in Socrates The Artist. These frozen images really sum up the essence of the

Spiralbound

collection.

Taking

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DRAFT TEXT — NOT READY FOR PUBLICATION

K

something that is fluid and in motion,

text, explore ideas differently and

The books exist in an in-between

and freezing it for just one instant

create a text that is in flux. A copy of

world. They are not part of the

so we can observe it and consider it,

spiralbound book at the launch might

commercial world of publishing, yet

before letting it roll away, evolving

not be necessarily the same as a copy

have the same finesse and quality that

as it tumbles. Socrates The Artist is

bought at Sluice_, the book might

you would expect from more traditional

introduced by a great text by David

have evolved, sometimes with subtle

publishers. Yet they are not part of the

Perez.

changes, other times drastically, it

art world either. They are brimming

In Many Weathers the text explores

might have grown, changed direction

with art and creativity, yet are a far

walking the same route, down an

or stayed exactly the same. The

throw from the world of pamphlets,

embankment every day for a month. No

important thing is that the text is not

catalogues and zines.

Exit, A, B and D is a candid exploration

static, if it has to change, it can.

of overhead conversations.

Spiralbound don’t claim rights to

This not only breathes life into

the authors work, they are happy for

the text but it also opens the artists

the authors to publish the words in

and authors up to taking risks, to

different formats in the future.

experimentation and encourages them to delve beyond their usual art practice.

Spiralbound see it as taking a snapshot

of

Something

live

organic

text. and

fluid that is captured in one instant and continues to evolve, grow and develop.

This is a highly unusual and fresh concept in the world of publishing and Skip I Am Far Above You is an

allows books to shine with

imaginative an humourous work that

personality and adds a

uses spam and spell checks. I Forgot to

vibrancy that manages to

Tell You, I Really Enjoyed That Sandwich

capture the essence of live

combines text and the absence of

performance as well as the

paintings to impart its message. The

expressive nature of art.

constant revisiting and evolving of

The

work is expressed beautifully in The

project

is

Compass and The Pencil which was

profit.

The

been redrawn and handwritten three

between the Spiralbound

times, each repetition slightly different.

collective and their authors

There is also a satirical short story,

is an artistic collaboration

The Glass Slipper which speaks of our

and

dependence on technology.

relationship.

Spiralbound fully

art

not-for-

relationship

not

a

business

Spiralbound is an alternative kind of

Spiralbound don’t seem

publishing. Led by an artistic collective

to have a specific kind of

as an offshoot of Susak Press; they

book they are after as long

produce high quality, beautiful books

as they excite and engage

in collaboration with visual artists,

them, and as long as they

poets, writers and musicians.

are not racist, sexist or

The books are printed in small runs,

homophobic.

as they are print on demand. Spiralbound

This has resulted in a

hold events several times a year and

diverse collection of books

the books are reprinted for each one.

with

This allows the artists to evolve the

honesty to them.

Q

real

integrity

and

And if you were wondering… the books are not spiral bound.

SEASON For Sluice_2015, Seattle-based Season brings together two American artists, Andy Heck Boyd and Mike Simi.

Through its thought-provoking shows, Season aims to provide a new platform for conversation among artists, critics, curators and collectors. artists: Andy Heck Boyd Mike Simi

SEASON was formed out of a dual need to have a space dedicated to underrecognised local artists and to bringing shows of national and international artists to a Northwest audience.

SEASON produces four shows a year. The three-month show schedule allows for multiple visits and produces shows that are fluid and changeable during their duration. Since my inaugural show in October 2010, I have shown artists from Munich, the Netherlands, New York City, San Francisco, Chicago and of course, Seattle. SEASON presents intelligent work from artists at any stage in their career, working in any media. I aim to provide a new platform for conversation among artists, critics, curators and collectors.

season.cz

For Sluice_2015, SEASON is exhibiting the work of two American artists with very different backgrounds and a shared love of drawing.

Andy Heck Boyd is a prolific self -taught painter and video maker. His drawings are driven by his paranoid schizophrenia. Often referencing pop culture and institutional icons, they mash up imagery with childlike scrawls to produce simple, aggressive and beautifully composed fantasy scenarios.

Andy lives and works in Exeter, New Hampshire.

Mike Simi graduated with an MFA with a concentration in ceramics. His thesis project involved a self-directed robotic beef stew monster. Since then, his work has decidedly settled into a place that celebrates technology but with a low-brow appreciation of universal symbols. His drawings often point to a technology that has recently expired with self-referencing pathos.

Mike lives in Chicago, Illinois.

Andy Heck Boyd Untitled

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16-18 October 2015Admission free 11am - 6pm open daily, admission free

BARGEHOUSE OXO TOWER WHARF SOUTH BANK LONDON

Slate Projects DOLPH Saturation Point studio1.1 The Florence Trust Day + Gluckman Transition Gallery Studio One Vacuous

Sluice_2015

T.M.L.E. studio1.4 Ech-O-Cham-Ber Caustic Coastal Paper Gallery The Penthouse Islington Mill Vane Gallery North

Blackwater Polytechnic Interview Room 11 BLOC Projects The Royal Standard QWERTY Lateral Art Space Look&Listen Made Art

Square Art Project The Dorado Project Gallery ELL Theodore:Art SEASON Surface Arts ArtHelix Division of Labour

sluice.info/2015

susakpress.org/expo201

SLATE

PROJECTS By playing on functionality, appearance and identity, the ubiquitous DIY store provides a rich source of materials and metaphors for contemporary art.

Slate Projects take these high-street staples and use them as the theme for their site-specific installation, ‘There’s No Place Like Homebase’. artists: Lewis Betts Oliver Hickmet Rae Hicks

There’s No Place Like Homebase For Slate Projects’ presentation at Sluice_2015, three artists – Lewis Betts, Oliver Hickmet and Rae Hicks – have been invited to explore the There’s No Place Like Homebase. The cultural impact of industrialisation, standardisation and democratisation reaches its strongest expression in the ubiquitous DIY store.

slateprojects.com

Often overlooked, these stores shape our common experience of domesticity, masculinity and aesthetics. Shaft walls, MDF, power tools, household paint, AstroTurf®, potted plants, curtain rails, mouldings, photo frames etcetera have become the basic units of house and home. Playing on functionality, appearance and identity, the hardware store is a rich source of materials and metaphors for contemporary art. The three artists exhibited here have created a site-specific installation, a kind of ‘arrested renovation’ which speaks to this universal process of fashioning meaning from pre-fabricated images and components.

Founded in 2013, Slate Projects is an itinerant curatorial project which promotes young European artists who work in a variety of media. We organise a regular programme of exhibitions, each focusing on pertinent themes in current artistic practice. The shows are organised in various locations across London, from white-walled gallery spaces to old factories and soon-to-bedemolished mansions. The building itself often plays the role of both stage and protagonist, compelling us to experiment with the typical exhibition format, and offering visitors a peek into the wings of London’s construction boom. Slate Projects also publishes illustrated catalogues with expressly commissioned essays in order to sustain a dialogue with collectors, critics, and institutions across time and space.

Rae Hicks Los Simpsons

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SQUARE ART PROJECTS + THE DORADO PROJECT London’s Square Art Projects have linked up with The Dorado Project from Jersey City, U.S. to present a dialogue between four international artists. Despite their linguistic differences, the artists are united by the language of abstraction – the theme for the exhibition. artists: Guillermo Carrión Lee Lee Chan Paul Simmons Michael Swaney

For Sluice_2015, Square Art Projects, London and The Dorado Project, from the New York area are joining together to present an insightful dialogue into the practices of international contemporary artists today. The artists that have been selected to show in the fair work with abstraction, which is the linking theme between the two artist-run projects.

A style which is open to interpretation regardless of social and linguistic backgrounds, abstraction is in some ways a metaphor of contemporary global existence. The selected artists are: Guillermo Carrión (Spain), Lee Lee Chan (Hong Kong), Paul Simmons (USA), Michael Swaney (Canada).

thedoradoproject.com / squ-are.com

Square Art Projects is an artist-run organization that presents contemporary art exhibitions in unique non-gallery spaces on an international level, showcasing the work of early and midcareer artists. Renowned for the quality and innovation of its shows, Square creates memorable art experiences in novel settings which bring together viewer and art.

Originally set up and run from a former lamp workshop in Barcelona in 2005, since its relocation to London in 2011, Square has adopted a mobile platform, organizing pop-up exhibitions in uncommon spaces.

The Dorado Project is a Jersey Citybased project space and compendium of select local, national, and international contemporary art. With a focus on emerging artists and innovative works, The Dorado Project seeks to unearth and weigh the very best of arts’ rich reserves. The Dorado Project: mining art, sharing gold.

Michael Swaney Nina Rara

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STUDIO ONE GALLERY

Concrete Whispers is an exhibition

by Studio One Gallery that examines the ostensibly opposing notions of the overheard and overlooked. It looks at how the things we don’t want to hear and the things we don’t notice can be used to relate and refract the disparate aspects of our culture and experience. artists: Marg Duston Paul Tuppeny Kathy Taylor Tori Day Caleb Madden Charlie Day Gus Watcham Paula Day Studio One Gallery is an artist-run space within the artists’ studio complex Collective Studios, an ACAVA building in Wandsworth. An initiative of four graduates of Central Saint Martins, ACAVA and The National Federation of Artists Studio Providers, since 2008 we have been run by, and for, recently graduated and early career artists. From the outset, our gallery has provided a space for experimentation, and as a showcase for the work of our artists, and the wider community in Wandsworth.

studio1gallery.co.uk

Overheard is something we didn’t necessarily want to hear; the snatches of conversations flying past our heads every day, and which we can overhear if we aren’t plugged into some electrical device.

Overlooked, however, is something we don’t notice, or it’s that ‘something there’ in the corner of your eye. It takes a strong will to take the time out of our hectic days and lives to go back, be still, and contemplate it.

Concrete Whispers is a group exhibition celebrating the overlooked and the overheard. This exhibition examines the ostensibly opposing notions of the overheard and overlooked.

It looks at how these concepts, as a thread running through a varied selection of contemporary art practices, can be used to relate and refract the disparate aspects of our culture and experience that may be hiding in plain sight – whispers made concrete.

Kathy Taylor Head Up

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studio1.1 SHOWROOM is studio1.1’s response to consumerist pandemonium. It is a promotion of the empty lifestyle choices of the rich and tasteless, while providing exquisite art that speaks to an elite. studio1.1 want to be taken seriously. They are taking a megaphone to the masses. artists: Robin Seir Marcus Cope Will Cruickshank Keran James Jay Cloth

studio1.1 is an entirely not-for-profit space set up in 2003 in East London.

We have attempted to survive without compromise. We have evolved with a range of shows as diverse as possible, presenting artists at any stage of their career, from any country, in any discipline. Our commitment is to the work itself, and to fostering the three-way relationship between artist, artwork, and viewer; looking for what Cage, in another context called ‘the quality of encounter’. Art isn’t a distraction, or an act of consumption, but a relationship. Or, as Richard Foreman said, “Art attempts to evoke something that you are not yet.

Entertainment only talks to that person that you are now.”

studio1-1.co.uk

Finding ourselves in the middle of the consumerist pandemonium that is Shoreditch we have observed over the years the ineluctable growth of style over substance, and then style eclipsed by fashion and even fashion descending into ever emptier posing. Art has simply devolved into image-making, without any sense of shame. We have bewildered the denizens of Redchurch Street for long enough. Now in SHOWROOM we ironise our position to the point of invisibility.

Neither beating them nor joining them but maintaining a laughable distance from their shallow posturing. We are promoting the empty lifestyle choices of the rich and tasteless, with no aspiration too low, while providing exquisite art that speaks to an elite – the elite of people who can think for themselves.

All the work must be handled with white gloves – we are to be taken seriously. Nothing funny about that. No beauty without cruelty… Sluice_2015 is the only voice ‘in’ the art market that is not ‘of’ the art market, studio1.1 is similarly to be listened to – we are taking a megaphone to the masses.

Keran James Madam I’m Adam

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studio1.4

Let us substantiate the space in between: look upon this as your art bazaar of contemporary practices with a twist, one that drives one not only to compare,

[SUSAKPRESS]

contrast and create new meaning, but further to appraise uninhibited, and ultimately to cast aside the artworks

There are two sides to studio1.4’s exhibition Who is best: Jonny Hannah, Daniel Devlin or Herzog Dellafiore? – the highbrow, priceless art presented on white walls, and the unkempt, bargain-brow items displayed as affordable art tokens. This is an art bazaar of contemporary practices with a twist.

for what they represent as standalone statements, valuing them instead as the sum of their parts. By piecing together the meanings promoted by the artists’ differing

world

views,

we

see

the

emergence of a viewer’s patchwork quilt, sewn collectively in, and by, the minds of the spectators.

Consider

this

exhibition

as

one

staged primarily to fulfil the function of an installation: what is being set up

artists: Jonny Hannah Daniel Devlin Herzog Dellafiore

Who is best: Jonny Hannah, Daniel

and observed is a scene within each

Devlin or Herzog Dellafiore? explores

viewer’s

the idea of value in art. There are

the unequivocal reactions elicited and the

two converse sides to this show: the

viewer’s assessment as to who is the most

contemporary

of

prominent artist of the three – which begs

on

white,

the question, whose very buttocks sit

and

then,

flush on the indents of the throne? In the

incongruously adjacent, the typical art

exhibiting of artists via an accessible route

bazaar of art droppings, which is an

that not only prompts public involvement,

abruptly encroaching scene of unkempt

but strongly promotes it, there is evidently

items displayed as affordable tokens of

a concomitant absence of either profound

art. This is highbrow versus bargain-

or, indeed, superficial meaning. Is their

brow. Exploration of these contrasting

circular connection to be considered post-

faces of artistic representation reveals

irony or neo-formalist?

priceless

art

impressionable

susakpress.org/studio1-4

and

familiar

presented walls,

face

consciousness,

incorporating

one powerful difference between the two

A duck. A figurative mallard that

(apart from price): their artistic ‘validation’

quacks a language we neither understand,

varies only in the amount of intellectual

nor feel we want to – and we watch as

and conceptual jargon surrounding each.

the people’s duck ruffles feathers with

When artistic talents collide they give

its perplexing yet also manifestly self-

birth to something utterly mesmerising

explanatory wade through the derisive

which holds no permanent place in any

world of the oblivious ostrich. Sort of

artistic era. Adjacent artworks create

like how you have just waded through

an uncomfortable conflict that is both

this utterly nonsensical text… are you

beautiful and torturous to gaze upon – yet

are still reading? Really? I’m impressed.

our egos do not allow us to look away. The

The purpose of this text was to give the

divergent space between the canvases has

impression that this exhibition has some

untouched value; it is a movement in itself;

kind of meaning, to make it look as if it

a quasi-divine asymmetrical intersection

might have intellectual and conceptual

forged by one artist’s style crashing into

content. It was never my intention to

another’s; a relationship seldom explored

mislead you in any way. Lately, I have been

by curators but, rather, avoided.

thinking a lot about blancmange…

La Révolution Surréaliste — n.3 [15 April 1925]

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SURFACE ARTS Surface Arts presents Distance Between The Journeys II, an exhibition themed around the challenges and delights of geographical displacement, local knowledge, international vistas and territorial extension. artists: 9 to the power of 9 TAIL Surface Arts is a connective organisation that builds relationships between individuals to produce residencies and other innovative projects with a view to facilitate ongoing exchanges. We build collaborations between artists, exposing methods of working that strengthen networks and encourage new questions within culturally-crossed contexts.

DISTANCE BETWEEN THE JOURNEYS II For Sluice_2015 Surface are presenting an exhibition themed around the challenges and delights of geographical displacement, local knowledge, international vistas and territorial extension. The artwork is produced jointly by two collectives – 9 to the Power of 9 and TAIL.

surfacearts.co.uk

Surface Arts is part of and often curates the London-based art collective 9 to the Power of 9. The artists hail from Thailand, Sweden, Germany, Peru and the UK, and all reside or have studied in London. Now based between London and Thailand, Surface works internationally to create partnerships with organisations, galleries and institutions to develop collaborative and unique projects.

The Surface presentation is a continuation of a recent project at Tadu Contemporary Art in Bangkok where Surface Arts and 9 to the Power of 9 worked with other Thai artistled groups to produce the exhibition Distance Between the Journeys. The exhibition aimed to introduce and connect artists in preparation for a larger project in 2016. Throughout this project they have worked together with three art collectives; TAIL (Thai Art Initiative London) based in London, 9 to the Power of 9, based in London, and a collective of Silapakorn graduates based in Bangkok.

Surface Arts has successfully hosted a residency program in Thailand since August 2013. Now this residency program is moving to Bangkok at HOF Art Space. Surface are presenting this new and exciting space at Sluice_2015.

This programme will also be linked to future projects in London.

Through these projects and activities Surface Arts aims to raise the profile of contemporary art from South East Asia by providing a context for critique and promotion that explores the paths of contemporary art in South East Asia and how this engages other global art activities and markets.

Taryn Takahashi Afloat

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Theodore:Art In keeping with the Sluice_ ethos, Theodore:Art present work that offers aesthetic pleasure and conceptual provocation. Photographs by Oliver Wasow and work by gallery artists belie their modest scale. In addition, Theodore:Art introduce the tote project, a collaboration with Josh Spero. artists: Sharon Butler Jack Davidson Alasdair Duncan Juliette Losq Richard Paul Gary Petersen Joyce Robins Michelle Vaughan Oliver Wasow

Hope springs eternal.

“Art can cease to be a report on sensations and become a direct organization of higher sensations. It is a matter of producing ourselves, and not things that enslave us.”

Guy Debord Theses on the Cultural Revolution, (I.S. #1, June 1958, trans. John Shepley)

.

theodoreart.com

Disguised by the noble intention of bringing high culture to the masses is money. The art fair as elegant trade show aims at particular socioeconomic market segments behind a façade of connoisseurship. Mercantile ambitions rule the day. Don’t touch the tomatoes unless you’re forking over the dosh.

But there are always a few moments that make it all worthwhile – visitors connecting with artwork, engaging in meaningful discussion. Any curator, artist, or gallerist – anyone who presents art for an unknown audience – seeks to create epiphanic situations, wherein ideas are offered and received.

Something good is taken away.

Sluice_ strikes a blow for the idealists among us in the art world, by bringing together alternative spaces and galleries whose commercial concerns are dialled down in favour of aesthetic experimentation.

Art fair: the bastard child of Deptford High Street market and the Salon des Refusés.

For Sluice_2015, Theodore:Art is pleased to present recent works by renowned photographic artist and curator Oliver Wasow, as well as a selection of multiples and unique pieces by gallery artists. In keeping with the Sluice_ ethos of accessibility, Theodore:Art present artworks that offer aesthetic pleasure and conceptual provocation belying their modest scale.

Size is just a number.

In addition, in collaboration with journalist Josh Spero, Theodore:Art present the tote project, a subjective and selective view of the art world from the perspective of the shoulders of insiders.

Oliver Wasow David

8

THE MODERN LANGUAGE EXPERIMENT Using researched-based documentation from the past and present, The Modern Language Experiment present a two-part film/installation investigating a world where human workers are faced with a system that is as complicated as it is absurd. artists: Alan Magee Gordon Shrigley Keh Ng Matthew Stock Mitra Saboury Paul O’Kane Robert Crosse Warren Garland

In a world run by machines, who will fix the machines when they all break down? or From Labour to Ruin or Ruins of a world run by machines.

Mankind has ever been interested by ideas of advancement. How do we produce more for less? How can we maximise resource? What is the secret to optimum efficiency? These and other such questions have led us down many paths which can often seem far from what makes us human.

modernlanguageexperiment.org

The Modern Language Experiment are showing a two-part film screening/ installation for Sluice_2015 that investigates a world where human workers are faced with a system that is as complicated as it is absurd. With research-based documentation from the past and the present, questions of a future workforce begin to emerge.

Themes of capitalist market forces and the creation of a language that is not universally understood seem apt not only for an art fair but also for the times we live in. By collaborating with a selection of artists, we intend to create a video installation that allows the viewer to assume the position of an observer.

The Modern Language Experiment was established in 2007 by Matthew Stock and Keh Ng as an artist-led contemporary art project based in London. Engaged in the development, discussion, contemplation and execution of the changing language of art today that manifests as art exhibitions, collaborations, talks, seminars and screenings.

The TMLE is a collaborative artist project that focuses on alternative modes of artistic production and through this process aims to enable new ways of spectatorship and engagement with contemporary art. This ongoing conversation and debate within contemporary visual art is focused to encourage new forms of discourse and learning. We continue to work with other independent artist-run organisations such as Sluice_, art institutions and universities (both within the UK and internationally).

Mitra Saboury Sweepstakes

8

TRANSITION GALLERY The Names is an exhibition about the artist’s signature and its role in the art world. Is it still a vital addition to an artwork? And if the value of a piece of work depends upon its maker, why do some artists omit it entirely?

All the work in the show is about the name or signature of the artist who made it. artists include: Phil Allen Annabel Dover Russell Herron Paul Housley Jasper Joffe Paul Kindersley Cathy Lomax Alex Michon Alex Pearl Harry Pye Alli Sharma Corinna Spencer Mimei Thompson Rose Wylie

transitiongallery.co.uk

Artist-run Transition Gallery started in a garage in Hackney in 2002.

Since 2006 we have been in Regent Studios, which was built by the GLC as a home for small businesses on the site of a speedway track. The gallery is constantly transformed with a programme of exhibitions by artists of varying experience. In recent years Transition has also curated shows in historic houses in the UK and in galleries in Brooklyn and LA. We also produce publications and periodicals which we sell at the gallery shop and on

the website. We aim never to stay still and are constantly in transition.

For Sluice_2015 we have created The Names, an exhibition that takes the artist’s signature as its theme.

From Duchamp’s subversive R. Mutt to Josh Smith’s shameless painted autographs, artists have cavorted with the significance of the signature.

As a rule, in the early 20th century, the signature was a vital addition to the front of an artwork, embedding the artist’s identity into the work with showy authentication. In contemporary art, however, the signature is generally discreetly placed on the back of an artwork and a prominent signature has become the signifier of very bad, amateur taste.

Denying the name on the front of the work is an art-world game. The value of an artwork depends upon its maker – so excluding the name means only those in the know, know for sure the veracity of the work.

In contemporary culture ‘bad taste’ can quite legitimately be resurrected and become a sign of the most adventurous tastemakers. Thus, there are now artists who knowingly embrace the potential of the signature by signing their work prominently and defiantly on the front.

The Names features a number of small works; each one is about the name/ signature of the artist who made it.

Transition Found Image

9

VACUOUS In Unspecified, Vacuous questions how we view ordinary everyday objects. Artists are asked to re-interpret and re-imagine the use of miscellaneous materials, things that would often be overlooked or discarded, so their position becomes elevated into something of value. artists: Murray Anderson Mel Cole Alice Kelway-Bamber Ania Levy Zac T Lee Helen McGhie Harry Pye Sue Stephens Sarah Tew Barry Thompson Tracey Payne

Unspecified looks at how artists re-interpret and re-imagine the use of discarded materials. Looking at miscellaneous material as a precursor and how it is then applied, within artwork. As a foundation for work to be constructed, these artists have used humble, cheap materials such as a plastic bag, wire coat hangers, packing foam. Worthless objects that could be seen as junk. Materials that

vacuoussss.tumblr.com

would often be overlooked or discarded have transitioned and become elevated into something of value, by achieving a dominance and presence. This has been done through taking suggestions and substituting them with alternative ways of seeing, which are realised using the rearranged latent matter. These reused objects have taken on new signifiers within the artwork; their intended use is only temporary and no longer fixed, nothing is rigid, the object has become de-objectified. Material that is reused is identifiable, yet unspecifiable. Hito Steyerl suggests that things are never just inert objects, passive items, or lifeless shucks, but consist of tensions, forces, hidden powers all being constantly exchanged.

Vacuous is an emerging non-profit, small-scale artist-run project that started in 2012. The intention is to work with a variety of artists in an attempt of reciprocal exchange, acquired through the shared experience of being a part of a variety of projects – exhibitions, symposiums and publications.

Zac T Lee Backstage 6

9

VANE Vane’s gallery artists use found objects or images, the everyday, the playful and the subconscious as source material for their Sluice_2015 show. Inspired by everything from popular culture and everyday ephemera, to art history and science, they have created work in a variety of media. artists: Kerstin Drechsel Mark Joshua Epstein Nick Fox Simon Le Ruez Jock Mooney Michael Mulvihill Stephen Palmer Morten Schelde Matthew Smith Flora Whiteley

An exhibition of work by gallery artists in a variety of media, using sources ranging from found objects or images, the everyday, the playful and the subconscious – whether drawn from popular culture/mass media, souvenirs, everyday ephemera, art history, mythology, politics, the environment (both built and natural) or science.

vane.org.uk

Vane is a curatorially-led gallery based in Newcastle upon Tyne. The exhibition programme is focused on work by a group of emerging critically engaged artists from the North East of England, across the UK, Europe and the U.S. The gallery also shows the work of invited guest artists in collaboration with other regional, national and international galleries, as well as collaborating with festivals and on projects by guest curators. Vane has also participated in a number of international art fairs in the UK, Germany, Italy, Mexico, Puerto Rico, Spain, Switzerland, and the U.S. The gallery directors are Paul Stone and Chris Yeats.

Stephen Palmer AdrianIsAce Detail

9

Advertise in issue two of Sluice_magazine.

Due out in Spring 2016

What happens when artists and curators get together and selforganise? Sluice__ is a number of propositions never fully resolved.

How do Artist/curator run galleries and projects defined primarily as sites of communication manifest?

What position do/can/should we occupy in relation to the broader arts ecology, to the commercial art world, to institutionalism? How can we advance emergent discourse via increased interaction on a local, national and international level?

Can adopting and re-purposing existing structures benefit the self organising artist and curator? How is social capital accrued, by what mechanisms and for what can it be exchanged? Does participation equal collaboration? Does authorship become fluid in the artist/curator-run context? Is an exhibition an artwork?

Is an organisation an artist?

Supporters: Bargehouse is owned and managed

by Coin Street Community Builders: www.coinstreet.org

Publishing Schedule Issue 2 Edition: Spring Booking Deadline: 1 Feburary Artwork Deadline: 15 Feburary Publication: 1 March

Contact Amy Kirkham Marketing Production Coordinator marketing@sluice.info sluice.info/advertise

ENTRANCE

1 Susakpress/ Spiralbound Sluice_publishing

2

Ech-O Cham-Ber

Sluice_ Performance Lateral Art Space

3

Square + Dorado

Talks

4

Day + Gluckman

Slate Projects

Theodore: Art SEASON

MADE

studio 1.4

ArtHelix studio 1.1

Islington Mill

QWERTY

Gallery North

Saturation Point

Florence Trust

Transition galleryELL Gallery

Look & Listen

BLOC Projects

Royal Standard

Blackwater Polytechnic

Division of Labour

PAPER Gallery

DOLPH

5

The Modern Language Experiment

Vacuous Surface Arts

Sluice_screens The Penthouse

Vane

Studio One

Caustic Coastal

Interview Room 11

www.sluice.info www.susakpress.org

SLUICE_MAGAZINE [AUTUMN 2015] UK £5 / US $8 / EU €7