Spike Island Autumn 2017
Exhibitions CafĂŠ Events
I Believe My Works Are Still
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Exhibitions
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Kim Yong-Ik I Believe My Works Are Still Valid 30 September to 17 December 2017 Preview: Friday 29 September, 6–9pm
As a student trained by Park Seo-bo, a master of Dansaekhwa (Korean monochrome painting), Kim Yong-Ik quickly became a prominent figure, being celebrated in the late 1970s for a series of airbrush paintings on unstretched canvases that relate to this tradition. By 1980, the military dictatorship in South Korea had become violently repressive; that same year, Kim completed a thesis on the seminal French artist Marcel Duchamp; and so, when invited to exhibit his paintings as part of the ‘Young Artists Biennial’ the following year, he folded his canvases into boxes, labelled them with the titles and dimensions of the works they held, and on arriving at the venue simply exhibited the boxes as a stack. As a refusal, this gesture was both a retort to the political situation and to the possibilities of art under such conditions.
The exhibition at Spike Island begins with these early works from the 1970s and shows the development of the artist’s increasingly experimental and individualised language through the 1980s, as the artistic scene in Korea became ever more polarised between a so called ‘people’s art’ — socialist and populist — and the avantgarde. It traces the ‘polka dot’ paintings of the 1990s and concludes with his ‘Coffin’ series, works that are shown with their wrappings and crates intact. Other works are weathered by the passage of time, or marked by the artist who consistently makes changes and additions to canvases and drawings. A partner exhibition takes place at the Korean Cultural Centre UK (KCCUK) from 26 September to 4 November 2017. The exhibitions are co-curated by Helen Legg, director at Spike Island and Dr Je Yun Moon, curator at KCCUK. They are the artist’s first exhibitions in Europe and are timed to coincide with Korea/UK season 2017-18, a celebration of the relationship between the UK and Korea which sees cultural events, exhibitions and activities taking place in both countries throughout 2017. Join us for a preview at Spike Island on Friday 29 September, 6–9pm.
Kim Yong-Ik Triptych (1970–2015) Photograph by NATHING STUDIO Courtesy the artist, Ilmin Museum of Art, Kukje Gallery, Seoul and DSL Collection, Paris
Kim Yong-Ik Two-pieces (1989) Photograph by NATHING STUDIO Courtesy the artist, Ilmin Museum of Art, and Kukje Gallery, Seoul
Kim Yong-Ik (b.1947, Seoul) has, throughout his 40 year career, been preoccupied with how an avant-garde art might engage with society. Working during a turbulent period of dictatorship and struggle for democracy in South Korea, he developed a self-reflexive and deeply engaged practice that has had a profound impact on younger artists.
Related Events
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In Conversation: Haegue Yang and Kim Yong-Ik Tuesday 3 October, 5pm Korean Cultural Centre UK 1–3 Strand, London WC2N 5BW £5/£3, booking advised Kim Yong-Ik discusses his influence on a younger generation of contemporary Korean artists with Haegue Yang.
Exhibition Tour Dr Je Yun Moon, curator, Korean Cultural Centre UK (KCCUK) Wednesday 1 November, 6pm Free, booking recommended Dr Je Yun Moon, co-curator of Kim YongIk’s exhibitions at KCCUK and Spike Island, leads an informal tour of I Believe My Works Are Still Valid.
Performance: Young In Hong Echoes
Thursday 5 October, 11am–12pm £5, booking essential A special gallery tour designed for parents and carers to explore Kim Yong-Ik’s exhibition at Spike Island. Best suited for parents or carers of under one year olds.
Saturday 9 December, 12.30–5pm (performances every 30 mins past the hour) Free, no need to book In Echoes, a number of musicians and performers respond to a soundtrack created by artist Young In Hong; a compilation of political statements by public figures ranging from Donald Trump to Michael Moore, with sound recordings of political demonstrations taken at various locations around the world. As the musicians improvise live musical responses to the soundtrack through headphones, the work becomes a oneperson protest, raising ideas of equality and difference through individual expression.
Part of Bristol Family Arts Festival 2017 (see p.10).
Echoes was commissioned by Venice Agendas 2017
Bring Your Baby Tour led by Jane Porter
Kim Yong-Ik Untitled (Dedicated to the Exhibition ‘Young Artists’ in 1981) (2011, second version, after lost original of 1981) Photograph by NATHING STUDIO Courtesy the artist, Ilmin Museum of Art, and Kukje Gallery, Seoul
Young In Hong Echoes (2017) Turner Contemporary, Margate Photograph by Chelsey Browne, courtesy Venice Agendas 2017
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Events
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The Jarman Award Film Screening Including a Q&A with Oreet Ashery
Harriet Foster Untitled (2017) Photograph by Holly Watson
Night of the Fellows Wednesday 4 October, 6–7.30pm Free, booking advised Each year Spike Island offers fellowships to promising graduates. We look forward to welcoming new Graduate Fellows for 2017–2018: joining us for a year are Tom Sturgess and Harriet Foster from UWE and Chelsea Toms from Bath Spa University, while Robert Ive from Falmouth University undertakes a three month residency. This event sees them introduce themselves alongside outgoing fellows Jamie Daniels, Robert Davis, Amy Gough, Benjamin Jones and Alfie Kungu who recall their experiences and discuss plans for the future.
Artist Talk: Aikaterini Gegisian Thursday 26 October, 6.30pm £5/£3 (free for Associates), booking advised Aikaterini Gegisian introduces her practice, exploring questions of identity, nationhood and collective memory. Her videos, collage and sculpture bring together visual forms from different eras, people and civilisations, often reflecting on her Greek-Armenian heritage.
Part of Digital Bristol Week 2017 Wednesday 18 October, 6pm £5/£3 (free for Associates), booking advised Exploring subjects from death in the digital age to gender stereotypes and sexuality, this year’s Jarman Award shortlisted artists are an eclectic group who resist being placed in a singular, defining box, and whose practices are as diverse as the field of moving image itself. This screening includes works by Lawrence Abu Hamdan, Oreet Ashery, Adham Faramawy, Melanie Manchot, Charlotte Prodger and Marianna Simnett.
How Do Artists and Arts Institutions Really Work? Part of Digital Bristol Week 2017 Thursday 19 October, 10am–5pm Free, booking essential This all-day event focussed on artists’ film and moving image and aimed at early career artists is a chance to meet and learn from experienced artists and arts professionals as they share their ideas and experience of commissioning, producing and presenting artists’ film. Produced in association with Calling the Shots – a leading production studio based in Bristol responsible for the award winning Random Acts short film series in the South West of England. Digital Bristol Week runs from 16 to 20 October 2017 alongside the Festival of the Future City and Venturefest.
Discussion: Art and Its Materials Led by Marina Vishmidt, Lecturer in Culture Industry at Goldsmiths, University of London Thursday 16 November, 6–7.30pm £5/£3 (free for Associates), booking advised
The final of four events exploring the relationship between art, aesthetics and contemporary materialism. Organised in partnership with the Philosophy Programme and Social Sciences in the City, University of the West of England (UWE).
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Literature
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Novel Writers £5/£3 concessions 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. In partnership with Bristol Festival of Ideas
Joanna Walsh Photograph by Lauren Elkin
Reading: Han Kang The White Book Tuesday 14 November, 6.30pm £5/£3 (free for Associates), booking advised From the winner of the Man Booker International Prize for The Vegetarian, South Korean author Han Kang’s The White Book is a meditation on a colour, on the tenacity and fragility of the human spirit, and our attempts to graft new life from the ashes of destruction. Written while on a writer’s residency in Warsaw, a city palpably scarred by the violence of the past, the narrator finds herself haunted by the story of her older sister, who died a mere two hours after birth.
Performance Reading: Seed with Joanna Walsh and women readers from across Bristol Tuesday 5 December, 6.30–8pm £5/£3 (free for Associates), booking advised Award winning writer Joanna Walsh presents a performance adapted from her digital book Seed (which can be read for free online at seed-story.com.) Seed is the story of a 1980s Ophelia coming of age in the isolated countryside outside a raw new town. ‘Drenched in colour, sound and scent’ – The Times Literary Supplement.
Megan Hunter The End We Start From Thursday 23 November, 6.30pm In the midst of a mysterious environmental crisis, as London is submerged below flood waters, a woman gives birth to her first child, Z. This is a story of new motherhood in a terrifying setting: a familiar world made dangerous and unstable, its people forced to become refugees. Startlingly beautiful, The End We Start From is a gripping novel that paints an imagined future as realistic as it is frightening. And yet, though the country is falling apart around them, this family’s world – of new life and new hope – sings with love.
Samanta Schweblin Fever Dream Thursday 19 October, 6.30pm Fever Dream is a nightmare come to life, a ghost story for the real world, a love story and a cautionary tale. One of the freshest new voices to come out of the Spanish language and translated into English for the first time, Samanta Schweblin creates an aura of strange psychological menace and otherworldly reality in this absorbing, unsettling, taut novel. Shortlisted for The Man Booker International Prize 2017.
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Activities
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Kelly M. O’Brien Object (Im)permanence (2016) paper and thread
Baby Art Hour
I Am Making Art
Mending / Tending
Friday 20 October , 10–11am* Friday 17 November, 10–11am Friday 15 December, 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. The gallery opens early at 11am so you can view the current exhibitions after the session.
Free, booking advised Materials provided, donations welcome These monthly activity sessions are led by artists and take place in Spike Island Café. Visitors of all ages and abilities can try out new techniques and approaches to making art, from drawing and painting to collage, sculpture and animation, and are invited to drop in any time during the session.
Saturday 7 October, 2–6pm* Make art from found paper, family photos, maps, thread and other ephemera with artist Kelly O’Brien. Discover the delight and poignancy of blending images and materials to tell your own story, or as a starting point for further exploration.
Collage with Simon
Shapes, Patterns and Print
Saturday 4 November, 2–6pm Join artist Simon Olley to create your own collages using print materials and found images, taking inspiration from elements of repetition and fragmentation in Kim YongIk’s current exhibition.
Saturday 16 December, 2–6pm Join artists and printmakers Demi Insall and Olivia Jones to design, collage and stencil unique patterns for cards, tags and wrapping paper using a range of basic printmaking techniques.
* Part of Bristol Family Arts Festival 2017
Bristol Family Arts Festival 2017 Bristol Family Arts Festival returns this October for a month long citywide celebration of creativity. The programme is packed full with creative activities for all ages. At Spike Island, book for Bring Your Baby Tour (5 October), I Am Making Art: Mending / Tending (7 October) and Baby Art Hour (20 October). www.bristolfamilyarts.org.uk (see p.5, 10 and 11 for events at Spike Island.)
* Part of Bristol Family Arts Festival 2017
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Studios
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.
Solveig Settemsdal
Iman Issa
Saturday 14 October, 2pm Norwegian born artist Solveig Settemsdal uses materials that are easily affected by their surroundings to create sculptures with a certain liquidity. She won the Jerwood Drawing Prize for her video work Singularity (2016).
24 February to 15 April 2018 Preview: Friday 23 February, 6–9pm The work of Iman Issa explores the relationship between history, memory, language and objects. Working across sculpture, text, video, photography and sound, Issa questions the possibility of addressing the collective through individual experience. She is interested in how forms can carry personal and political significance, often making reference
Hannah Murgatroyd Saturday 18 November, 2pm Hannah Murgatroyd is a painter and draughtsman whose works are ‘island spaces of the imagination’: a painted and drawn world inhabited by a cast of protagonists.
Coming Soon
to places, figures or events that have a personal resonance. For her exhibition at Spike Island, Issa presents Material (2010–12) a series of ‘displays’ that question the function of public sculpture and monuments. The series makes reference to existing public monuments which she strips back to their essential elements and reimagines into other forms, triggering a chain of associations that go beyond the original object and its meanings.
Solveig Settemsdal Singularity (2016) Video still, courtesy the artist
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.
Stollen (All I want for Christmas) 30 September to 15 October 2017 Preview: Friday 29 September, 6–9pm In the post-appropriation world, this exhibition pieces together an homage to the made, the found, the acquired and the stolen.
African Queen 21 to 27 October 2017 Preview: Friday 20 October, 6–8pm African Queen is an exhibition that explores the history of both real and legendary queens of Africa or of African origin.
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Iman Issa Material for a sculpture recalling the destruction of a prominent public monument in the name of national resistance (2010) Installation detail Photograph by Serkan Taycan Courtesy the artist and Rodeo
Calendar
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Equipment Hire
September Friday 29 6 –9pm Exhibition Previews: Kim Yong-Ik I Believe My Works Are Still Valid Test Space: Stollen (All I Want For Christmas)
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October Tuesday 3 5pm In Conversation: Haegue Yang and Kim Yong-Ik This event takes place at Korean Cultural Centre UK, London 6–7.30pm Night of the Fellows Wednesday 4 11am–12pm Bring Your Baby Tour Thursday 5 2–6pm I Am Making Art Saturday 7 2pm Behind the Scenes Studio Visits Saturday 14 Wednesday 18 6pm The Jarman Award Film Screening and Q&A 10am –5pm How Do Artists and Arts Institutions Thursday 19 Really Work? 6.30pm Novel Writers: Samanta Schweblin Friday 20 10–11am Baby Art Hour 6–8pm Exhibition Preview: Test Space: African Queen Thursday 26 6.30pm Artist Talk: Aikaterini Gegisian
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p.6 p.5 p.11 p.12 p.7 p.7 p.9 p.10 p.12 p.6
November Wednesday 1 Saturday 4 Tuesday 14 Thursday 16 Friday 17 Saturday 18 Thursday 23
6pm 2 –6pm 6.30pm 6–7.30pm 10 –11am 2pm 6.30pm
Exhibition Tour: Dr Je Yun Moon I Am Making Art Reading: Han Kang Discussion: Art and Its Materials Baby Art Hour Behind the Scenes Studio Visits Novel Writers: Megan Hunter
p.5 p.11 p.8 p.7 p.10 p.12 p.9
6.30–8pm 12.30–5pm 10–11am 2–6pm
Performance Reading: Joanna Walsh Performance: Young In Hong Baby Art Hour I Am Making Art
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December Tuesday 5 Saturday 9 Friday 15 Saturday 16
Book for events online at www.spikeisland.org.uk, call 0117 929 2266 or visit reception.
We have a comprehensive range of production and presentation equipment available to hire including HD projectors, video cameras and lenses, and exhibition audio. Our edit suite is also available for dry hire or with an experienced editor to suit your project. Find out more at www.spikeisland.org.uk/equipment-hire
Workspace Available Spike Design, our affordable co-working space, provides incubation and collaborative opportunities for creative businesses with a focus on design and related disciplines, including film and TV production, new media, architecture and marketing. Apply at www.spikeisland.org.uk/spike-design
Thank you Spike Island is a registered charity (no. 1003505). Spike Island gratefully acknowledges support from Arts Council England and Bristol City Council. We wish to thank Kukje Gallery, Tina Kim Gallery, DSL Collection and Henry Moore Foundation for their support of Kim Yong-Ik’s exhibition. Thank you to Korean Cultural Centre UK for their partnership on the Kim Yong-Ik exhibitions. Cover image: Kim Yong-Ik Untitled (1990) Photograph by NATHING STUDIO Courtesy the artist, Ilmin Museum of Art, and Kukje Gallery, Seoul
Also available in large print. Ask at reception, email admin@spikeisland.org.uk or call 0117 929 2266.
Support us
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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.
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
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
Spike Island aims to be a fully accessible building. There are three Blue Badge parking spaces outside the main entrance. Booking Information Book for events online at www.spikeisland.org.uk, call 0117 929 2266 or visit Reception.
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