Spike Island Spring 2018
Alex Cecchetti Zoë Paul Andrew Mania Open Studios
Exhibitions Café Events
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Exhibition Alex Cecchetti At the Gates of the Music Palace 5 May to 8 July 2018 Preview: Friday 4 May, 6–9pm
‘The molecules in rocks, plants, and water, those in a glass, in a table, or in a hand, all of them are constantly vibrating. Light vibrates too. If something vibrates it has to make a sound. And if everything has a sound, then the universe is an orchestra, and if the universe is an orchestra, happiness must be a form of accord, a note we get all together.’ – Alex Cecchetti Alex Cecchetti’s works often begin with a poem that he transforms into an object, a performance or a situation. At the Gates of the Music Palace is inspired by Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s poem Kubla Khan, in which Coleridge dreams of music that alone is able to erect an entire palace with fountains, underground caves, and a river. Music is ever present in Cecchetti’s exhibition, filling and sculpting the galleries, transforming them into discreet sound environments. The exhibition’s score both guides and responds to visitors as they move through this immersive concert. Each artwork is a musical instrument to be played by the audience; the wind, the light and even the space itself becomes part of the orchestra.
Two major new commissions, Singing Chandelier and Music Hall, invite visitors to make musical notes with their voices and physical movements. Singing Chandelier is a semi-cylindrical sculpture made of a cascade of colourful glass shaped in the form of bird beaks. The audience can enter inside the sculpture where a music score is on a stand, and visitors can sing the partition, their favourite song – even scream. Music Hall comprises a mysterious musical instrument that responds to visitors’ movements, producing sound as they pass through the space. During the course of the exhibition, scheduled performances take place within Music Hall involving a dancer who creates melodies through choreographed movement. At the core of the Music Palace is Cetaceans – an eight channel sound installation – in which holy music, poems and a human choir who sing like whales are mixed together to form a polyphonic composition. See website for details of scheduled performances.
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Alex Cecchetti At the Gates of the Music Palace (2018)
ZoĂŤ Paul Land of the Lotus Eaters (2018) Clay, porcelain, steel, brass, lead, silver
Exhibition
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Zoë Paul La Perma-Perla Kraal Emporium 5 May to 8 July 2018 Preview: Friday 4 May, 6–9pm Zoë Paul’s work examines our relationship with tradition and history. She often works with simple timeless materials and techniques – clay, weaving, drawing and bead making – used throughout centuries and still sourced and crafted with little technology. Having grown up on the Greek island of Kythira, allusions to ancient Greek history, mythology and figurative forms coalesce in her work. However, rather than presenting an eternal image of the past, her ceramic pots, wall paintings, weaves and bead works find their place anachronistically in the present, disrupting common perceptions of archaeological and contemporary artefacts. As a counterpoint to the craft traditions she uses, Paul is interested in how advances in technology affect social rituals. For example, her wool tapestries woven across discarded refrigerator grids are inspired by the arrival of domestic electrical appliances in the Mediterranean climate of her youth. Prior to this modernisation, the act of eating with others had been more of a social occasion. Bead curtains used in Mediterranean summer homes to separate communal and private spaces is a recurring motif in Paul’s work. Her exhibition features a new eight metre long ceramic bead curtain
– the largest she has made to date. Paul builds interlinking figurative forms into the curtain by arranging raku-fired beads by their varying tones of grey and terracotta. The contours of the bodies ripple across the curtains creating the effect of a hologram with the figures coming into view or disappearing when viewed from different angles. The imagery alludes to the land of the Lotus-eaters in the Odyssey and the Greek tradition of spending long summers on the islands enjoying the food of the land. This exhibition revolves around Paul’s work La Perma-Perla Kraal Emporium – a long industrial style marble banqueting table where visitors are encouraged to sit and join in the making of clay beads while engaging in conversation. Herbal tea is served from ceramic head-shaped tea pots. Paul’s interest in creating scenarios for social exchange runs deep in her work. A square fountain with a four-faced head stands in the centre of the gallery. The work references the long standing traditions of the communities who meet around fountains in village squares to gossip and share everyday stories. Here, running water is an analogy for gossip – it always finds a way of getting where it wants to go.
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Exhibition
Andrew Mania Snapshot of a Collection 5 May to 8 July 2018 Preview: Friday 4 May, 6–9pm Andrew Mania explores identity, sexuality and nostalgia through portraiture drawing. His works have been described with the Portuguese term ‘Saudade’ (Martin, S., 2016) a word with no English equivalent, meaning a deep emotional state of nostalgic or profound melancholic longing for an absent something or someone
beloved. Mania develops these drawings within assemblages set on decorative backgrounds such as hanging printed fabrics. A voracious collector, he here creates a dialogue between a series of early vintage photographs selected for their aesthetic or mystery, and his own drawings that capture a state of mischief and yearning.
Andrew Mania (2018) Collage featuring Carl Van Vechten 1940s portraits of Marlon Brando and Sidney Lumet
Related Events Exhibition Tour: Alex Cecchetti If all matter jiggles, the universe is an orchestra Saturday 5 May, 11am Led by Alex Cecchetti Free, booking essential This performative exhibition tour by artist Alex Cecchetti invites the audience to resonate like musical instruments along with the artworks.
Exhibition Tour: Andrew Mania Wednesday 23 May, 6pm Free, booking advised Annabel Other, Head Librarian of The Bristol Art Library, leads a tour of Andrew Mania’s exhibition, including a visit to the artist’s studio at Spike Island.
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Exhibition Tour: Alex Cecchetti Saturday 30 June, 2pm Led by Vanessa Boni, curator Free, booking advised Join curator, Vanessa Boni for a tour of Cecchetti’s exhibition with a focus on the relationship between storytelling, gesture and sound.
Table Conversations with Zoë Paul Saturday 16 June, 2pm Free, booking advised Zoë Paul and invited guests discuss subjects ranging from permaculture, plant communication, fungi ecologies and ancient Greek civilisation.
Zoë Paul La Perma Perma Kraal Emporium (2017) Installation view, The Breeder, Athens.
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Events
Bristol New Music 20 to 22 April 2018 Bristol New Music is a testing ground for both established and emerging artists who fearlessly explore new realms in sound. www.bristolnewmusic.org
AUDINT Unsound: Undead Friday 20 April, 6–8pm, Saturday 21 and Sunday 22 April, 12–5pm Free entry As part of Bristol New Music, AUDINT present an installation that tunes into the hidden dimensions of sound. At its centre is an ‘Unsound System’ – an acousmonium of multiple infrasonic and ultrasonic speakers, operating at frequencies that are felt as much as heard.
Live Performances: Elysia Crampton Red Clouds, Coby Sey, Laurie & Olly, SIREN DJs and AUDINT Friday 20 April, 8pm–1am Tickets £12.50 (plus booking fee) via headfirstbristol.co.uk A night of visionary contemporary live music.
Readings and Performances Saturday 21 April, 2–5pm Free, booking advised An afternoon of readings and audiovisual presentations on wider themes of AUDINT’s sonic research with Steve Goodman (Kode9), Eleni Ikoniadou & Demelza Toy Toy, Toby Heys, Ayesha Hameed, Lee Gamble, Matt Fuller & Olga Goriunova.
Test Space Test Space is programmed by studio holders based at Spike Island and offers artists a chance to exhibit new works and test ideas. Artists from within the Spike Island community and beyond are included. Please ask at reception for access.
Skulptur Parc 5 to 20 May 2018 Preview: Friday 4 May, 6–9pm Test Space invites members of the public to make and display their own sculptures. Polly Kelsall 23 June to 8 July 2018 Preview: Friday 22 June, 6–8pm An exhibition exploring what an ecosystem can be: an interconnected system of ideas, materials, images and objects.
Open Studios
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Friday 4 May 2018, 6–9pm (party till late) 5 to 7 May, 11am–5pm, Free entry Spike Island Open Studios sees artists and tenants throw open their doors. You are invited to explore the working environments of hundreds of artists, designers and creative businesses. The weekend includes a programme of family friendly activities, talks and tours. Highlights include a Raku workshop with artist Sarah Wilton, a Poem Brut literary event and an interactive projection mapping experience by SHOP. Some of Bristol’s best street food traders host pop-ups including Wood Chop Pizza, Sri-Licious, Dawsons Pasties and Buckland Burgers, while our very own Spike Island Café offer a colourful organic menu. To get here from across the harbour, catch a Bristol Ferry Boat and experience artworks on board.
Behind the Scenes Studio Visits Free, booking advised Chat with artists based at Spike Island, explore their studios and view works in progress during these informal encounters. Each artist gives a brief introduction to their practice followed by an opportunity for questions and discussion.
Photograph by Lisa Whiting
Kamina Walton Saturday 2 June, 2pm Kamina Walton talks about the importance of communities and collaboration in her work, alongside her current collaborator, young artist Anna Rathbone.
Éilis Kirby Saturday 23 June, 2pm Éilis Kirby discusses her work which uses found objects, images and texts in the production of artists’ books, collages and installation.
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Events
Book Launch: Mutter Physics Presented by Ben Owen and Kit Poulson
Book Launch and Conversation: Alice Rawsthorn Design as Attitude
Thursday 12 April, 6.30–9pm Free, booking advised Artists, musicians and writers combine for an evening of performance and visuals to accompany the launch of Kit Poulson’s new book Mutter. Hosted by Gavin Everall, Editor at Book Works.
Wednesday 9 May, 7–8pm At Waterstones, Union Galleries, Broadmead, Bristol BS1 3XD £5/£3, booking advised Alice Rawsthorn, the award-winning design critic, author and former weekly design columnist for The New York Times, introduces her new book in conversation with designer James Langdon.
Film Screening and Conversation: Bidisha and Taban Othman Thursday 17 May, 6–8pm £5/£3, booking advised Writer and filmmaker Bidisha screens her debut film An Impossible Poison, alongside experimental filmmaker Taban Yasin Othman who shares her awardwinning film made while living in Iraqi Kurdistan.
An Impossible Poison (2018) Film still, courtesy Bidisha
Alice Rawsthorn, photograph by Michael Leckie
Literature Novel Writers £5/£3, booking advised Each month we invite a debut novelist to read from and talk about their work in an informal setting. Prior knowledge of the text is not essential. Topics of discussion include theme, structure, inspiration and the craft of writing. These sessions are a great way to discover new writing talent and great books.
Jessie Greengrass Sight Thursday 19 April, 6.30pm Sight is a self-aware and reflective novel about a young woman who loses her mother and struggles with concurrent emotions of desire and fear at the prospect of having her own child.
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Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi Kintu Thursday 24 May, 6.30pm Makumbi’s award-winning debut vividly reimagines Uganda’s troubled history through the cursed bloodline of the Kintu clan.
Sophie Mackintosh The Water Cure Thursday 28 June, 6.30pm Hypnotic and compulsive, The Water Cure is a fever dream, a blazing vision of suffering, sisterhood and transformation. Sophie Mackintosh brings us face to face with the brutality of love, demanding to know the price of survival in a hostile world.
Azareen Van der Vliet Oloomi Call Me Zebra Thursday 10 May After the death of her father, an exiled Iranian man of letters, 22-year-old Zebra embarks on this adventure, love story, and paean to the power of language and literature, starring a heroine as quirky as Don Quixote, as introspective as Virginia Woolf, as whip-smart as Miranda July, and as spirited as Frances Ha. Azareen Van der Vliet Oloomi
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Activities
Baby Art Hour Friday 20 April, 10–11am Friday 25 May, 10–11am Friday 22 June, 10–11am £3 for the first child in a family group £1 for each additional child All materials provided Booking essential Led by artist Éilis Kirby, these monthly sessions in Spike Island Café are for under fives and their carers. Come play with colour, shape, texture and learn easy ways to create, using simple methods and materials.
Bronze Casting Workshop With Ore and Ingot Saturday 26 to Monday 28 May, 10am–5pm £330 / £280 concessions (two scholarship places are available, see website for details) Limited to 10 places, all materials provided To book please call 0117 9292266 or visit Spike Island reception Join Ore and Ingot for a three day introductory course to learn how to cast bronze using the lost wax ceramic shell process. Gain the basic skills and hands-on experience of bronze casting in a safe and supportive environment and leave with a cast of your own.
The Unobtainable Chamber Workshop With artist Lisa Scantlebury Saturday 9 June, sessions at 2–3.30pm and 3.30–5pm £5, limited places available, booking essential An exciting afternoon of clay exploration using hard and soft slab building techniques, considering form, function and decoration.
I Am Making Art: Make Some Noise Together With artist Laura Phillips Saturday 7 July, 2–5pm Free, booking advised Learn how to make your own DIY cinema in this interactive workshop led by Laura Phillips and her band Viridian. Create tactile percussive sounds and explore mark making on film. I Am Making Art are regular activity sessions led by artists and take place in Spike Island Café.
Coming Soon
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Nina Beier 21 July to 16 September 2018 Preview: Friday 20 July, 6–9pm Danish artist Nina Beier excavates the strong signifying potential of objects. She combines readymade objects that have particular functions or social histories – such as wigs, hand-woven Wagireh rugs or mechanical bulls – to question the ways in which value is defined, mutated and reinforced. For her solo exhibition, Beier convenes a series of sculptures and gestures that trouble the relationships between our hybrid physical and digital reality.
Nina Beier Beast (2018) Mechanical bull, plastic tanks, powdered milk
Harriet Bowman All Round-er (sad sale) Harriet Bowman presents an ongoing series of works based on a progressive narrative about a fictional character called Fled who explores Bowman’s own curiosities for cars, horsepower and the language of advertising. Bowman’s story writing generates symbolic objects that act as physical footnotes to the text and embody a language of design which leads the work to take form of a showroom, revealing these objects in a theatrical diorama.
Courtesy Harriet Bowman
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April Thursday 12 Thursday 19 Friday 20
Saturday 21
Calendar 6.30–9pm Book Launch: Mutter Physics 6.30pm Novel Writers: Jessie Greengrass 10–11am Baby Art Hour 6–8pm AUDINT: Unsound: Undead 8pm–1am Elysia Crampton, Coby Sey, Laurie & Olly, Siren DJs and AUDINT 2–5pm Unsound: Undead: Readings and Performances
p.10 p.11 p.12 p.8 p.8 p.8
May Friday 4 6–9pm Open Studios Launch Exhibition Previews: Alex Cecchetti, Zoë Paul, Andrew Mania, Test Space: Skulptur Parc Saturday 5 11am–5pm Open Studios to Monday 7 Saturday 5 11am Exhibition Tour: Alex Cecchetti Wednesday 9 7–8pm Book Launch: Alice Rawsthorn (at Waterstones) Thursday 10 6.30pm Novel Writers: Azareen Van der Vliet Oloomi Thursday 17 6–8pm Film Screening: Bidisha and Taban Othman Friday 25 10–11am Baby Art Hour Wednesday 23 6pm Exhibition Tour: Andrew Mania Thursday 24 6.30pm Novel Writers: Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi Saturday 26 10am –5pm Bronze Casting Workshop to Monday 28
p.9 p.2–6 p.8 p.9 p.7 p.10 p.11 p.10 p.12 p.7 p.11 p.12
June Saturday 2 Saturday 9 Saturday 16 Friday 22 Saturday 23 Thursday 28 Saturday 30
2pm 2–5pm 2pm 10–11am 6–8pm 2pm 6.30pm 2pm
Behind the Scenes Studio Visits The Unobtainable Chamber Workshop Table Conversations: Zoë Paul Baby Art Hour Exhibition Preview: Test Space: Poly Kelsall Behind the Scenes Studio Visits Novel Writers: Sophie Mackintosh Exhibition Tour: Alex Cecchetti
p.9 p.12 p.7 p.12 p.8 p.9 p.11 p.7
Book for events online at www.spikeisland.org.uk, call 0117 929 2266 or visit reception.
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Volunteer Join our dynamic team of volunteers and make a significant contribution to the work we do, while gaining valuable work experience within the arts. Apply online at www.spikeisland.org.uk/opportunities
Spike Island is a registered charity (no. 1003505). Spike Island gratefully acknowledges support from Arts Council England and Bristol City Council.
Donate Spike Island is a registered charity (no.1003505) working to nurture artistic talent and bring artists and audiences together. Your gift, via our website or at one of our donations boxes, supports free entry to exhibitions, educational activities, subsidised studios and artists’ development.
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Alex Cecchetti’s Singing Chandelier is produced with the generous support of Nicoletta Fiorucci, Founder of the Fiorucci Art Trust. Zoë Paul’s exhibition is supported by the Henry Moore Foundation and Arts Council England. Herbs for the tea are supplied in-kind by Daphnis and Chloé. Novel Writers and Book Launch: Alice Rawsthorn are organised in partnership with Bristol Festival of Ideas. Mutter Physics is supported by Book Works and University of the West of England (UWE) AUDINT Unsound: Undead and related events are organised by Al Cameron in collaboration with Qu Junktions. Part of Bristol New Music 2018. Supported by Arts Council England Grants for the Arts.
Also available in large print. Ask at reception, email admin@spikeisland.org.uk or call 0117 929 2266.
Spike Island
Visitor Information
Spike Island is an international centre for the development of contemporary art and design. A vibrant hub for production, presentation and debate, it invites audiences to engage directly with creative practices through participation and discussion.
Gallery open Tuesday to Sunday, 12–5pm (during exhibitions only). Admission to the gallery is free. Prices for events vary, please see individual listings for details. Café open Monday to Friday, 8.30am–5pm, Saturday and Sunday, 10am–5pm. @spike_cafe
133 Cumberland Road, Bristol BS1 6UX Tel. 0117 929 2266 www.spikeisland.org.uk admin@spikeisland.org.uk
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