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Welcome to the inaugural Bristol Biennial Community Arts Festival
The Bristol Biennial is the coming together of the vibrant Bristol arts community, one of the foremost creative and cultural cities in the UK, in the first large-scale event of its kind in the South West from the 1st – 16th June, 2012. The theme for this first year is Storytelling and the participants have interpreted this theme through visual arts, film and performance. As both an ancient cultural tradition and relevant post-digital social phenomenon Storytelling does not necessarily subscribe to a single narrative or cultural experience but spirals outward, speaking directly to a global audience. New work from over 50 Bristol based contemporary artists explore the theme of Storytelling in the South Western English landscape, challenging notions of history and identity of place. Non-traditional venues such as St John the Baptist church, empty retail spaces, as well as Bristol Cathedral and Central Library ensure the festival experience is open to all by encouraging direct community participation. The Biennial will also host a full day of free film screenings and events at the Watershed cinema on the 9th of June, numerous artist talks and symposiums, as well as performance and public events from the Biennial Hub in College Green. The Bristol Biennial Community Arts Festival creates an intersection of
international and local artists, its aim is to engage it’s audience within a collaborative model. A dozen Bristol based independent arts institutions will present a diverse line-up of group exhibitions, site-specific installations, open studios and events allowing the public unprecedented access to the practitioners and institutions that form the vanguard of Bristol’s creative scene. International artists and curators have been invited to explore our theme from countries as diverse as Mexico, Australia, USA, Russia, Japan, Norway, Sweden, Germany, Ireland, Spain and Italy. By engendering a dialogue about the nature of identity and communication our festival ensures that the stories told in Bristol will find resonance on an international platform.The Bristol Biennial is organised solely by volunteers, and could not exist without their hard work and the support of our cultural partners and sponsors. We hope you enjoy the inaugural festival!
The Biennial Team
Horror Vacui 31st May – 11th June Bristol Cathedral Artist talk Monday 4th June 1.30pm, Bristol Cathedral Maggie Topliss’s work is based on photographs of her family, selected images that represent a timeline, approx 1946 – 1986. The timeline represents a family history post World War II, in particular the maternal legacy passed from grandmother, mother to daughter. Because of the family’s Jewish lineage, this history is unavoidably tainted by the traumatic legacy of war and displacement. The images follow the artist’s family from Germany, to Tel Aviv, Paris and Melbourne. Each family member has been silhouetted; personal identity has been masked by the traumas of the past.
The Art Boat 1 – 16th June Redcliffe Workshop Launch 4pm Saturday the 16th June, Redcliffe Launch Petter Lofstrand graduated from Sjömansskolan Stockholm 2009 and has been working as a sailor and engine-man since. He is undertaking a traditional boat building course in Stockholm and will participate in Bristol Biennial through building a flat bottomed wooden boat collaborating with artists from Finland, Sweden and Norway. The Boat building will be an ongoing project through the Biennial, inviting the public to see the boat develop and take shape as a collaborative work, culminating in a harbour launch event on the 16th of June at 4pm from Redcliffe Launch.
“The Magnetism of Stuff”
Maggie Topliss on Filling the Void Maggie Topliss is an artist who is attracted to “the magnetism of stuff”. This can be historical and cultural stuff, as in knowledge and memory and stories, or it can literally be objects that she collects like a “magpie”, as she puts it, or it can even be the absence of stuff, the void left when stuff is removed. No matter what the stuff, Topliss uses it to create images and installations that force viewers to engage, and to both take on and take in the stuff that she sets before them.
Some of her work has been inspired by the Holocaust and by her family’s Jewish heritage, despite both these things being quite distant from her own life. She says, “I did not grow up in an observant household, or within a Jewish community, and we also lived far from my grandparents – so my experience of Judaism and the events of WW2 were very fragmented, cloudy and really only half-formed.” And yet, she has been drawn to this subject nonetheless, and has allowed this history to inform some of her art. When asked what she thinks about Theodor Adorno’s infamous maxim about it being barbaric to write poetry after the Holocaust, Topliss says that she strongly feels the opposite. “I agree with Primo Levi, in that to bear witness to such a cataclysm is the most important thing to be done. We ‘do not go silently into our graves’.” She adds, “I feel that not only is it possible to write after such an event, but that it is our duty.” For Topliss, this sense of duty has impelled her to create the Horror Vacui series. In this series, she has taken family photographs and erased the people in them, so that a black shadow is left in their place. The viewer sees the outline and can get a sense of the age and gender of each person, but beyond that, individuality is missing, which means that the viewer can quite literally fill in the blanks. The vacuum seems to be displacing, erasing, and creating all at once. Topliss explains, “The portraits in my work have been silhouetted for a number of reasons: a. because this renders anonymity; b. because they become universal images touched by the same experience; c. the blackness fills a vacuum, a vacuum that has replaced normal life. These people have also been touched by a destructive angel. The images require interpretation, they require people’s impulse to fill them, maybe with their own histories. d. I am aware that the Holocaust is by no means the only instance of ethnic cleansing.” Again, then, this series touches on Topliss’s fascination with filling and collecting; she creates a vacuum, removing personal details, but then urges the viewers to fill the space with their own stuff, their own ideas and histories. She says, “The void is evocative. The creation of this series involved me confronting and processing my family’s past; it was a very new experience for me. Although I realise now this void had haunted me throughout my life, I hadn’t yet acquired the knowledge and consciousness to be able to name it, discuss it, give it form.” She may be giving it a form here, but she is also deliberately keeping it somewhat formless, which allows, indeed requires, the participation of the audience. Maggie Topliss also keeps a blog, appropriately entitled with the multiply-layered name “Acquisitive Eye” (http://acquisitiveeye.blogspot.co.uk/). She agrees that acquiring and being an acquisitive eye/I is something of an obsession for her. “I have always been a magpie and a hoarder, searching out something special that has lost all provenance.” Throughout her work, Topliss imbues many types of stuff with the provenance it has lost and with new provenances. Her art demands multiple acquirings, multiple viewings, multiple readings. And it is magnetic for the audience, just as the stuff within it is magnetic for her. B.J. Epstein is a lecturer in literature and translation at the University of East Anglia, and one of her specialities is Holocaust literature.
Crumbling into Dust
Johannes Høie & Filippa Barkman
1 – 16th June Thurs – Sat 11am – 6pm Sun 11 – 5 The Edwardian Toilets
1st – 16th June, 10am – 5pm St John the Baptist Nordic artists Johannes Høie & Filippa Barkman share a technical rigor that is a cause for celebration in these days of digital creative output. Høie’s etching-style hyper-detailed wall drawings and Barkman’s delicate but disturbing photorealistic illustrations marry themes of mythology, the monstrous and ultimately the sublime. The pair explore these themes through not only illustration but also performance and material based sculpture.
Private View Thursday 31st June, 6pm ‘…any dumb but pregnant comment on life, any criticism of the world’s arrangement, if expressed by only one gesture, and that of sufficient contortion, becomes eccentricity.’ Edith Sitwell, English Eccentrics Consisting of new and existing works, the artwork by Martyn Cross in Crumbling Into Dust uses the long forgotten ‘English Eccentrics’, a 1933 publication by the avant-garde poet Edith Sitwell, as catalyst. Subtitled ‘A gallery of weird and wonderful men and women’, Sitwell’s gloriously eccentric narrative examines precisely what it is to be an outsider. Her investigation into the curious world of hermits, quacks, ancients and other ‘pliant beings’ asks the perpetual question: what is normal? Once regarded a popular interest in Victorian and Edwardian literature, the eccentric has remained to this day, an oddly quaint yet feared possibility in a world obsessed by perfection and the cult of celebrity. We love the audition stages of The X Factor precisely for the curiosities thrown up, but we would never buy their record; the fine line between unique individuality and social outcast is very thin indeed. To encounter the unusual is sometimes thought provoking, sometimes terrifying, and with Crumbling Into Dust it is this experience of the atypical that hopes to form discussion, discourse and understanding between those isolated from social norms and our own individual ideas of utopia. In the exhibition, Cross visually reinterprets Sitwell’s text within his customary vandalised knitting patterns and other, newer hand crafted objects. Happy hermits reside with burnt-out fires and misfit maidens lounge with disembodied hands. Visions of perfection are rendered uncanny and ideal worlds are lost to darkly dumb modifications. Within the unconventional surroundings, toilet humour abounds. Obsessed by the darker fringes of existence, Cross, like Sitwell, in effect documents our eventual disappearance into dust.
filippabarkman.com johanneshoie.com
We are each other
Blame
Limbo Jimbo
Quintessence
The Waiting
Across meadows
Primordial Soup
Igneus
The Scandanavian Show
Patrick Nilsson
1 – 16th June, 10am – 5pm The Biennial Hub
Patrick Nilsson’s works are primarily dominated by the medium of b&w drawings. In addition he do also has a history of text based works and a sample of painted bronze figurines.
Artist talk Saturday 2nd of June Biennial Hub
While the figurines more often deal with humour and the slapstick like constellations of animals and cultural artefacts, or funny portrayals of encounters between animals and humans, the drawings which he is most renowned for deal with more sinister aspects of life.
NKD proudly presents three Nordic artists from our alumni for the 2012 Bristol Biennial. Patrick Nilsson (Sweden), Maja Nilsen (Norway) and Anders Kjellesvik (Norway) are excellent representatives of the Scandinavian storytelling tradition within the visual arts. Their stories unfold within different stratas such as nature, culture and social life, across a variety of mediums. Figurative narration has always had a prominent position in the Nordic art tradition. These three artists are no exception. Their individual narratives certainly have a Nordic resonance, but their individual use of form originates from the semantics of the common figurative form. Recognisable figuration seems to be the surest way to ascertain that the message reaches the recipient intact. The figurative enables us to go beyond the obvious modes of understanding. The transparency of figurative form seems to be a relevant method for conveying and discussing meaning. Without a common understanding of communicative parameters of meaning, the possibilities of misunderstanding and misinterpretation are endless. Ours is a time of vast riches of information, a continuous variation through social and broadcast media. The prism may serve as a relevant metaphor of our globalized times. As a counterweight to this cacophony, it becomes important to find independent voices; opinion providers and narrators that stand out to formulate and convey important statements about our times. These are voices of personal experience, but not of insular privacy. A meaningful conversation where a common understanding of signals, gestures, words and statements exists in our shared community. Meaningful dialogue depends on mutual references. The three artists presented by NKD at BB12 actively participate in this discourse. Their narratives do not disappear into the vagueness of private landscapes. They address the world within the scope of our shared cultural references. The work of this exhibition deals with inter-human relationships. However, the boundaries of our understanding are not necessarily those of quiet acceptance, but also of conflict and dissension.
The almost cartoonlike bronzes have a spontaneous and friendly appearance. A feeling of an almost naïve presence, brutally contrasted by Nilsson’s drawings. The drawings usually deal with dark and violent aspects of everyday life, often depicting various scenes of a seemingly banal nature, but always with something threatening just beneath the surface. These works deal with the breaking of taboos, the creeping banality of violence, our heightened fear of moral degradation, but also our desensitization to it. Loaded with black humour, it lays bare the everyday thoughts that we do not speak for fear of breaking with social convention, or worse, thoughts we dare not verbalise out of fear of conflict. Nilsson’s drawings have a delicacy of line and an attention to detail that through his choice of subject matter his works are rendered disturbing and compelling. In some of these works, Nilsson has given his main characters a geographical and dramatic context - Urban terraced houses and gathering storms in the distance add a new dimension to Nilsson’s detailed human dramas.
Maja Nilsen Maja Nilsen works within several techniques: sculpture, installations and drawing but collage in particular has become the central part of her artistic activity. Nilsen’s work is frequently inspired by other artists, writers and thinkers. The interlocutors will sometimes be found in cultural eras of the past. She engages herself with the baroque, both the period’s expression of form as well as its emotional universe. Indirectly, the exaggeration and pathos in her art leads us to a point where logic disintegrates. Despite her preoccupation with bygone times and the feeling of nostalgia that may follow, Maja is not stuck in the past. She is able to draw inspiration from the past into the present and although undeniably creating in a dialogue with the past, she is able to present new and independent works of art.This dualism can be found in her treatment of form. Nilsens works are usually characterized by a highly developed aestethic, beauty is invariably a central element however there is alway a subliminal, indeterminable feeling of something sinister, something threatening.
Anders Kjellesvik The artistic work of Anders Kjellevik can be separated into two main activities. The first is his action-based collaboration with Andreas Siqueland and the art group Aipotu. The other is traditional art production in the studio which are then exhibited at galleries and museums. Considering his work in AiPotu, travel and movement are essential elements. Social Sculpture may be a fitting collective term for AiPotu`s activities; staging and relational interaction is the backbone of what the group does. Travel as an artistic technique and travel documentation together with concrete objects and social acts are how the projects manifest themselves. Kjellevik’s studio work concentrates on sculpture, works on paper and canvas, where painting in particular has a dominating position.
Maja Nilsen-Zoo Letters not about Love
(Still images from a film never made, letters to a person who never existed, words about feelings never felt)
His work are thin-layered, runny painting portraying human figures in various poses and constellations. The faceless bodies are presented rather as silhouettes than spatial forms. The relation to painting as we know it from abstract art is obvious. Pop culture, expressions from advertising, illustrations and poster aestethics also play an important part in Anders visual vocabulary. Individuals or groups of human figures establish situations where their postures and the relationship between the various figures creates a psycho-social field of tension. Figures are often juxtaposed against a defined landscape. The thin layers of paint through which the viewers look is mediated by several modes of understanding. Kjellevik has said about his own pictures: ”the work conveys something incomplete and unredeemed - in content and in execution”. Continuity and arrested continuity are in the nature of the collage, but also a meaningful metaphor for Maja Nilsen`s artistic activity. Her personal iconography is combined with an aesthetic clarity in surprising configurations and constellations. However, the poetic and delicate elements seem to be victims of an undertow of psychic unease.
NKD Nordic Artist´s Center Dale (NKD) is a publicly supported but privately owned foundation and residence center located in the Dalsfjorden, along the westcoast of Norway. The center was established in 1996. The site is designed and built for the purpose of inviting visual artists, architects and designers and to give them the best possible living and working conditions within a timeframe of a two to three months. We offer a fully equipped separate house to each invited artist. In the vast studio building each artist has their own individual studio and access to a spacious common workshop, wood working machines, welding equipment, wet darkroom and graphic press. The program is to a large part based on an annual worldwide open call. All in all there will normally be 20-25 artists staying at the institution during a year. We do have a special obligation vis a vis artists from the nordic regions, but usually NKD hosts artists from all continents during a residence season. One of our prime ambitions is to contribute to innovative art production. Our primary goal is to create the best possible conditions for individual work. nkdale.no Ander Kjellesvik
Matthew Stanton Girl
The Pulse of Duration
PePoMo’s Radio in a Box
1 – 16th June, 10am – 5pm The Looking Glass
1 – 16th June Biennial Hub College Green
Private View Friday 1st June, 6pm Artist talk Saturday 2nd June, 5pm
Tokyo based PePoMo examine current political systems and seek strategies of meaningful social positioning, they aim to help individuals and organisations to examine the systems governing their lives and to engage in the creation of innovative strategies for positive improvement, through social anthropological research, film, performance, publications, and workshops.
In his treatise on cinema ‘Sculpting in Time’ Andrei Tarkovsky introduces his notion of ‘time pressure’ as a property that he perceived to be intrinsic to the cinematic medium. Be it embodied within a singular take, or flowing within a sequence, time pressure resists the subjugation of the experience of cinematic time to the demands of movement as traditionally codified in cinema through techniques of montage. Unlike the linear tendencies of motion based imagery Tarkovsky saw in cinematic time the potential to point to that which lay beyond the events in the frame offering the audience a potential Proustian portal through which time, be it “lost, or spent, or not yet had” could be reclaimed. This conception of cinematic duration and its rich potential for virtual mnemosis are critical touchstones between the film and video works of Artists, Polly Stanton, Darn Thorn and Matthew Stanton. Whilst acknowledging Tarkovsky’s conception of “time pressure’ to be bound in part to a subjectivity borne of postwar European modernism, each artist knowingly embraces the principle as an opportunity of inquiry into the relationship between topologies of space and duration along with the processes of imprinting, transmission and translation of the ‘time image’ as a proxy for shared and individual memory.
Matthew Stanton Sea
Their Radio in a Box at the Biennial Hub in College Green will provide a forum for public discussion between the artists in Tokyo and the festival visitors, as well as broadcasting interviews and Q&A sessions with contemporary Japanese artists.
Filmed in an abandoned frontier town, Polly Stanton’s Imagined Spaces is a contemplation of time, landscape, and the creation of image events. It also considers how the perception of space is rendered via the use of cinematic tropes, ratio size and sound placement to affect and charge a location with spectacle and meaning. Fundamentally this work examines the representation of landscape in cinema, offering a contemplative autonomy that is free of narrative subservience. Set in a student flat before the phenomena of the internet, Darn Thorn’s Histrionica in A♭ looks at how cult films were re-distributed by dubbing from the original via VHS cassette. Removed from their original cinematic context, this work examines how the influence of these films could exist even when encountered in such an abject manner. Consisting of ‘excerpts’, this original film made by the artist is a homage to the influence rather than the narrative of the cult film. Shown on a small television inside a partial re-creation of the lounge room of a student flat, it considers the Sublime subsisting within the humdrum. The long semi-static shots of the film are re-contextualised within an installation that references a recent historical period. In this capacity the work considers the durational perception of time in a manner that is amplified by positing the viewer as a protagonist in the work whose presence activates/deactivates this installation itself.
Darn Thorn
Matthew Stanton’s 16mm film and sound installation contemplates the nature of the portrait image in relationship to conceptions of surface, space and duration. Referencing the 6 minute exposure times characteristic of 19th century photographic portraits, ‘Conversation Piece’ constitutes dual projections, a time portrait of a woman and a seascape, each mirrored in scale and static frame. The shifting play of light and motion between sea and sky draws forth the sitters gaze whilst echoing and reflecting minute contingencies of her physical presence. Aural resonances seep and pulse between lucent screens as a mute dialogue emerges between convergent dualities of the static and the animate, surface and depth, the actual and the virtual. Darn Thorn is an Irish artist based in Bristol who utilizes photography, film and installation in his work. He is currently completing a Masters in Fine Art Photomedia via Monash University, Melbourne. He has lectured, taught, instructed and cajoled in Photomedia and Art in numerous institutions in Dublin, Melbourne and Bristol. He is currently based at Spike Island, a center for contemporary art and design in Bristol.
Polly Stanton
Matthew Stanton’s practice uses the recording based mediums of photography, film and sound. Based in Melbourne, he has a Bachelor of Fine Art (Photography) From the Victorian College of the Arts (2003) and works as a photographic director and consultant for many prominent Australian artists. Stanton has lectured in photography both at the Victorian College of the Arts and currently at Monash University where he delivers an undergraduate program in theory and studio technique. Polly Stanton’s practice utilizes the temporal mediums of video and sound to investigate cinemas power to shape and reflect human experiences of place and environment. Stanton’s work employs duration, cinematic codes and landscape to consider the intersection between the spaces of film and the spaces of geography. In addition to her art practice she has worked professionally in the film and television industries in post-production sound and screenwriting. Based in Melbourne, she has recently completed a Masters in Fine Art at RMIT University and currently lectures in cinema studies.
1,095: One Year's Worth of Other People's Plates 2nd June 11am College Green A combination of sculptural installation and “swap meet” 1,095 will unfold at the intersection of site-specific installation and community participation. Plates donated by varied and culturally diverse members of the Bristol public become the raw materials for a contemplative sculpture. The ordinariness of everyday meals transfigure into stupa-like stacks in the manner of a Mandela. The plates are a collection of ordinary and kitsch, telling the stories of Bristol’s residents, each affixed on the back with a commemorative sticker. As with Buddhist sand Mandalas, which are swept aside, so is 1,095 dismantled by the community who donate the original materials. Plates collected from the Bristol community will be redistributed back to donors in the amount of their original donation on the 2nd of June at College Green, Bristol. Ziperstein’s sculpture-in-flux provides a point of convergence where ordinary objects are temporarily transformed before returning to their everyday status. Though a fleeting sculpture, the project lives on in the homes of those who participated. Bari has engaged this project previously to critical acclaim in Los Angeles in 2010. There she engaged with the local residents who donated their plates and participated in an exhibition at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.
1095: One Year's Worth of Other People's Plates Bari Ziperstein
PLANE Networked assemblages of cuboid modules frame curious growths of abstracted, architectural forms. A variety of permutations seem to writhe in dynamic stasis; neon tunnels are intersected by a sprawling web of scaffold; invasive angles and chaotic geometries vie for some form of supremacy (folding back upon themselves in relative obscurity); patterned pylons breach shattered polygons, threatening even further excess from such contained duress. Carefully smeared in the detritus of two years of exhibition construction, PLANE has been a process of reflective transformation [a creative meditation]. Silently (it does not speak), its constituent parts heed a rich history of creative endeavors; of a chimeric flux; an ever-fluctuating forward thrust; a collaborative fuss in a disfigured husk –an artistic lineage with which PLANE now lovingly adorns itself.
MadeScapes
Project Elektra
Browser
1 – 16th June, 10am – 5pm The Crypt, St John The Baptist Church
1st-10th June, 10am - 5pm Biennial Hub
Server 14th - 18th June Z-Shed Private View Thursday 14th of June, 6pm MadeScapes ^ is a gallery initiative promoting emerging contemporary artists from around the UK. Fragmentation and appropriation are the determining factors of twenty-first century narratives; as the first generation of digital natives comes of age, it constructs its own story, around and through its interactions with the screens and surfaces of mass culture. These exhibitions bring together six artists that have grown up within the development of digital culture, from the early days of text-only chat rooms, to the point where our immersion in the digital realm affects our reading of ontological reality, and vice versa, so that we are caught in a feedback loop, where each platform and narrative is influenced by the other, and on and on; always on. Jack Addis, Alex Cotterell, Tom Johnson, Will Kendrick, Trevor Smith, Lewk Wilmshurst
The four works in Project Elektra, produced by artists in different parts of the world, represent points on a timeline of any woman’s life, points when biology and society collude and prompt her to transform. California based artist Julie Orser presents us with the ‘budding adolescent’ nuzzled in her bedroom. All dressed up with nowhere to go, we observe the video diary she records for a future self as it comes to life in semipsychadelic forms on her walls. On the other side of the world, Veronika Rudyeva-Ryazantseva shows us the dramatic reality of another girl’s bedroom. “Tanya,” is captured in the process of transformation: as RudyevaRyazantseva explains, “By the year 2000, “children of Perestroika” had grown up, and a new reality willingly opened its door to them – the strip club.” Tanya excitedly whirls around her room like a child exploring a dressup box, but she is showing us the costumes and routines of her new job as a sex-worker. On the opposite shore from girlhood, two works in the show focus on the social and psychological conditions presented to new mothers. In the monumental Three Mothers and a Chorus, St Petersburg artists Gluklya and Tsaplya dramatically create images of three contemporary women, each employing different strategies toward childrearing. Nowhere is the right path revealed and each woman is condemned to harsh judgment by a singing jury made up of clashing voices in the community, at the end of which, the figure of the child reassures (or taunts) the mother in a sickly-sweet falsetto. Emily Newman’s work Mama-Wolf dramatizes an expatriate mother’s relationship with her bilingual son in the context of the Grimm brothers’ fairy tale. The American mother and her Russian-born son play a game, manipulating puppets of themselves inside a model of their country shack or dacha. The mother tries to learn how her child negotiates the divide between his Russian and English-speaking personae in order to follow him into the linguistic territory usually denied her. Through the narrative frame of the fairy tale, motherhood is revealed to be an uncanny condition, at once resisting invasion and bemoaning exclusion. Project Electra brings these works together in an attempt to show how four artists enact a cathartic projection of the issues that concern them. Although responsibilities to others change as we cycle through roles in life, and the psychological effects of bodily transformation never cease to surprise, these works indicate that through the act of self-representation and defamiliarization, aspects of the self that are constant can be revealed.
Emily Newman MamaWolf
MadeScapes
Three Mothers and a Chorus
MadeScapes
Throw a Stone and Run
Lemexraum
1 – 16th June, 10am – 5pm The Crypt, St John the Baptist
9th of June, 11am Watershed Cinema 1 – 16th June, 10am – 5pm The Crypt, St John the Baptist
Balam Bartolomé
Balam Bartolomé, Iván Edeza, Luis Carlos Hurtado, Jota Izquierdo, Mauricio Limón, Natalia Millán, Liliana Ramales, Jorge Sosa, Laura Valencia.
Every place in the world has its own characteristics: cultural circumstances that provide them with a particular identity. Nevertheless, they all share more or less the same phenomena, recodified within daily life. My work also contemplates this circumstance: appropriation and resignification of symbols that are created within our mutant environment, a land of tectonic layers moving continuously.
The term Lebensraum or “living space” is an expression coined by the German geographer Friedrich Ratzel (1844 – 1904). It sets out the basics of geopolitics; is the correspondence between space and population, claiming that the existence of a state is guaranteed when it has enough space to meet the needs of its community.
Adaptability, which is innate to humans, is a conduit to mixture, exchange, camouflage and conciliation. Mexico is a country that has constructed its culture through racial and cultural blending. This use of mixed media creates delirious combinations, sometimes lucky and others frankly spoiled. This metamorphosis is a virtue because art, in its hermaphroditic nature, is capable of including everything. Therefore experiment is allowed even though results may fail. The possibility of failure and success also applies to my artistic activity, where an unproven hypothesis dos not mean the failure of a theory. In my work I try to evoke this, the acknowledgement of the social and physical landscapes of interpretation. This is what identity is: a concurrence of symbols, objects, situations and collective behaviors. It is not just a unique distinctiveness, our name or image; it is a shared reality in a common space. What is important is the connection between objects and space. I like to think of my work as a fragile link in between, a way to locate myself psychically within the world, my works operate as satellites of my own nature. The results spread out as sculptures, video, drawings and installations where my won experiences are shown as a reflection of my transience in a specific place.
Jorge Sosa
The artistic language and its discursive boundaries is where Lemexraum develops, in an attempt to evoke the fragility of national identity, its clichés, facts, interpretations and how these platforms of information may also affect the perception the world has of Mexico.
Throw a Stone and Run is an installation formed by three works that dialogue ironically about permanence, spirit, experience, artists and their practice as an obsessed method to transcend their time and space. Balam Bartolomé lives and works in Mexico City. His practice ranges from sculpture, painting, installation, video and drawing. Scrutinizing the law of conservation of energy that states that energy cannot be created nor destroyed, but only transformed, Bartolomé´s work aims at understanding the relation between energy and its consequence –the process amid action and reaction – and how can ideas transform an object’s shape or meaning to create a whole different thing or situation. His work has been exhibited individually and collectively in art spaces, galleries and museums in Colombia, Canada, U.S, Uruguay, Paraguay, Argentina, Norway, France, Portugal, Spain, Germany, Czech Republic, Netherlands, Norway, Japan and Mexico.
The reality of life in Mexico today makes us wonder why and since when this critical and revolutionary condition existed. This condition makes the national geography, with the need to Express multiply voices, problematic. One of these values is the artistic language that, like the increasingly sophisticated organized crime in Mexico, uses the Internet (in websites like Youtube) to state their voice in the form of withdrawal, contemplation, metaphor or memory.
Liliana Ramales
The Weapons Project 1 – 16th June, 10am – 5pm The Looking Glass Artist in residence daily from 10 – 1pm Private View Friday 1st June, 6pm
Particaptory events within the space and throught Bristol: TBA – Be sure to come by The Looking Glass for details for participatory events. The Weapons Project is an international collaborative performance/exhibition by UK artist Rodney Harris and US artists Amber Ginsburg and Joseph Madrigal. Amber Ginsburg and Joseph Madrigal will be importing weapons/seed-shakers produced for FLO(we){u}R, a re-enactment of a WWI Terracotta Dummy Test Bomb factory. Rodney Harris is exporting weapons of mass contradiction within the space and throughout Bristol. The Looking Glass will be turned into a site of production and participation, evolving over the two week exhibition, as production blooms. At various times throughout the performance, the audience will be invited to make, disperse and transform the outcome of these objects. The Weapons Project. A wild native Ash tree growing out of a planted clay tank shell, crated and ready for export. Image by Rodney Harris Replica WWI Mark V terra cotta dummy test bombs converted to seedshakers. Image by Amber Ginsburg
Bread & Roses Private View Friday 1st June, 6pm Preview 6pm – 9pm Saturday 2nd – Sunday 3rd June 12 – 6pm Motorcade/FlashParade Alex Hardy Rebecca Harris Paul Jones James Murray Alex Pearl Kate Pickering Tumim & Prendergast Hanae Utamura Rich White
Abbi Torrance Formation
Curated by Julie McCalden
Alex Pearl Trips Southend
Bread & Roses looks at the potentiality of a work to produce subtle changes in subjectivity, however unquantifiable this may be. Comprising selected existing works, new works produced by invited artists and both on and off-site projects, Bread & Roses underlies the desire to see the world differently in order to change it. The show takes its name from a poem penned in 1911 by James Oppenheim, but commonly attributed to a Massachusetts textile strike in 1912 where it was used as a slogan by the women strikers – we want bread, but we want roses too!
Kate Pickering We Shall
Corking Laboratory No.9 9th June 5pm Biennial Hub, College Green “If we imagined that there was a big blue mountain in Aoyama, both the concept of my work and my work itself would be the way to get the mountain. It is the intangible, which exists in the space between usualness and unusualness.” Katsunobu Yaguchi presents a new productive performance work for the Bristol Biennial. Creating and screen printing a unique image onto t-shirts with an improvised live music soundtrack, this work explores the nature of mass production, creativity and industry.
Rebecca Harris
Cryptoverse 1 – 16th June Bristol Central Library Foyer Artist talk Saturday 2nd June, 2pm Bristol Central Library This Project ‘Cryptoverse’ by artists Sherry McLane Alejos and Annika Koops is the result of a mutual research interest into encryption and cognitive topographies. It was initiated as a platform to experiment with research and studio practice boundaries and the potentialities of collaboration within a site-specific context. The work explores the wider implications of ‘code’ – from metaphor, to computer language, and the physical manifestations of objects in the gallery space.
Katsunobu Yaguchi I project my corking
‘Cryptoverse’ presents a macrocosm in which code is the principal method by which we may encounter the totality of known or supposed objects and phenomena throughout space. The enigmatic and visually compelling exhibition includes digital modelling, photography, sculpture, graphics and a encrypted map. All of the works employ coding devices in order to interpret entities so vast and complex in scope that they may only be mapped or modelled. Koops’ works explores social relations and digital space – and the power structures underpinning it. Her work explores how faces, bodies and the most human of relations have become a locus of algorithmic and normative computation – the personal is analysed, ciphered and reconstructed for output into the public realm of networking culture. Through allegorical strategies, the work reflects upon contemporary identity as complex and fluid; moving among physical, psychological, and virtual realms. McLane Alejos’ practice follows from a fascination with espionage and scientific data recording, connected with philosophical and metaphysical disciplines that are stimulated by language encryption and quasi-mathematical equations. The work corpus begins with notes, theorems and diagrams, Which exposes the mapping of the process of uncertainty upon scrutiny. The final outcome is an ensemble that swings between validity and hoax of psychic transference while playing with design, electronics and sculptures.
Cryptoverse
Crypto/verse offers the audience the opportunity to observe the seemingly dislocated body of work as an entirely encrypted experience by providing encoding tools of engagement in situ and online. In doing so, McLane Alejos and Koops engage with the poetics of code by elucidating the organizing principals within the realm of chaos.
Cryptoverse
Book Hook 1st – 16th June Various Venues The OK Collective is the collaborative practice Oliver Cloke and Kathy Heyward. The ongoing project produces site-relative works that are an amalgamation of their skills and interests; Oliver’s love for social spaces and Kathy’s passion for hapticity/architecture. The Collective produces sculptural works, drawings and publications that respond to sites and society. Humour and playfulness are the focus of most works, reflecting and mimicking processes that we all partake of. Book Hook is an illustrated children’s storybook scattered around Bristol’s streets on large posters. Wander, discover and put the story together or appreciate each page as an artwork in itself.
Dowsing for Water Book Hook
1st – 16th June Private View 1st June 6 – 9pm Wed – Sat 11am – 6pm, Sun 11am – 4pm, Mon – Tue Open by appointment 5 Waring House Dowsing for Water
Dowsing is a process where one searches for water as a starting point to excavate. There is no mechanical method but a combination of human intuition and theory. For this exhibition, Alice Vandeleur-Boorer, Azusa Chareteau and Laurie Lax will be examining water using rhythmic cycles, sensory experiences and digital extractions. These three Bristol based artists will be using immersion as a means to evoke the human relationship to water. facebook.com/DowsingForWater
Why Can’t I be Myself Any More? 1st – 16th June The Looking Glass Why Can’t I be Myself Any More? is an installation developed from on-going project ‘Toilet Philosophies’. The scrawled, incoherent and often sentimental musings and casual philosophies captured in the conveniences of late night haunts contemplate the ephemeral (im)permanence of thought and action in an unusual setting. The installation additionally offers the visitor a chance to pen their own thoughts which will be documented and added to my archive.
Why can't I be myself anymore?
No One In Dallas Really Cares About Me
No One In Dallas Really Cares About Me
Emma Caton, Harry Simmonds, J Patrick Boyle, Marcus Lanyon, Olivia Croce Private View Thur 14th June, 7 – 9.30pm Saturday 16th & Sunday 17th June, 12 – 6pm NEON Studios Brand spanking new, NEON is a group of like-minded artists, sharing a passion and a commitment, a belief in excellence, ambition and hard work. NEON is also a studio, a place to work, to play, to experiment and to take risks. No One In Dallas Really Cares About Me is the result of this beginning, of our embryonic interactions and our belief that by sharing a space (physical & mental) we can push our work to a new level. We’re throwing open our doors as an invitation to challenge ourselves, to play together and respond to each other & our new space.
Post Darling 1st – 16th June Biennial Hub, College Green Post Darling’s inspiration is a collection of saved dialogue in the form of old postcards, old letters and a hoard of handwritten notes, scraps of paper and saved memorabilia. The public is invited to send postcards exploring the theme of Storytelling, and participate in an exhibition of the collected artifacts, to:
Post Darling
Sophia Moseley DegreeArt.com Gallery 12a Vyner Street Bethnal Green London E2 9DG
Face you stories 1st - 16th June, 10 – 5pm Biennial Hub Through massage we experience intimacy and trust, and whilst being given care and being relaxed our stories pour out of our bodies. This video installation by Marina Moreno is a collaboration with other artists, actors, writers, singers and dancers who tell their stories in exchange for a professional massage. The work explores the deconstruction of social coding through gesture, sound and silence to embrace universal feeling and explores our deepest emotions. the unusual and uneasy images create a feeling of uniformity that reveal sounds from stories and voices of humanity. Marina Moreno is a British Italian/Hispanic artist, film-maker, performer, choreographer and curator originally from Venice whose work considers the real and imaginary, both spatially and culturally. She examines identity through the de-construction of gesture, movement and architectural spaces of the body and places, revealing visual silence and broken narrative.
In Order to Hold On, You Have To Let Go Todd Anderson – Kunert
7pm, Saturday 9th of June Biennial Hub, College Green Artist talk Saturday 2nd June 1pm at St John the Baptist This live audio-visual event utilizes sounds constructed via sampling, field recordings, audio processing and circuit bent electronic instruments. The audio textures reference music concrete, noise, doom, and ambient genres to further investigate the role of the soundtrack in constructing the psychological and emotional dialogue of the image. This performance is influenced by how we can perceive the visual world differently in an emotive sense, depending on the audio textures that are present within that environment. A large part of my research utilizes the idea of the soundtrack in cinema to change our reaction to the image itself. This performance continues along this dialogue, but questions how this sound may alter the image both emotionally, psychologically and physically, and the implications of this upon the viewer.
She is interested in integrating different art forms and merging them into a new artistic language often experimenting with new ways of collaboration and direct contact with the audience. In her recent work she has examined the relationship between performance and the camera by way of multiscreen video sculptural installations. Her work has often being described as powerful visual poetry. She is the newly appointed Director of Galleria Perelà Venice Italy. “Face Your Stories” is a project that started in 2009 and was shown as a work in progress at Trinity Arts Centre in May of 2010. Marina has the intention of furthering this installation, creating and choreographing elements of this work into a dance theatre piece.
There’s Not Much Left Todd Anderson – Kunert
1 – 16th June, 10am – 5pm Daily St John The Baptist
Collaborators Michael Meldru Medjivepjis Sound Artist and Editor Dr. Edson Burton Writer Poet and Performer Catherine Bourne Artist Performer Katie Grant Writer Poet and Performer Rosalind Martin Writer Poet and Performer Jaqueline Pucher Artist Poet and Performer Simon Leake Poet and Writer Terry King Performer Theresa King Performer Mike Bird Performer With thanks to Rachel and Carol, both artists and performers for their contributions.
This artwork is influenced by ideas regarding the psychological space of the domestic environment, it is interested in the melancholy associated with traces left by other people, and how these traces continue to leave a mark long after the other has left the physical location. Specifically, this work is inspired by how we try to hold on to people emotionally through a variety of physical actions, and how the domestic environment functions as both a stage for these actions, while the location itself can work as an emotional sponge for events past.
Todd Anderson – Kunert There's not much left
DAMP Sunday 10th June College Green
Caroline
DAMP’s performances, actions and installations explore the potential of working collaboratively. Frequently irreverent and occasionally anarchic, DAMP’s projects are always imbued with a sense of fun. Many invite audience participation and this often involves either temporary inclusion within the collective or its diffusion into the audience, deliberately confusing the two. DAMP does not have a particular identity beyond being simply a group, and is consequently open to change and external influence. The collective’s work remains cohesive, however, and continues to manifest playful engagement with the complex relationships between contemporary art and its audience.
Photo Matthew Stanton
An ongoing aspect of Anderson-Kunert’s work is how sound can heighten emotional content, be it in imagery, or the phsyical location its played within. The bleakness of this soundscape juxtaposes the images and seeks to intensify the environment through the use of anempathetic sound.
DAMP Collaborative Pencil
DAMP Fate Worse Than Death
Rachel
DAMP Piniata
Secret Whispers
Seila Fernandez Arconada 14 – 15th June The Island This project is a call for artists to explore creation from misunderstandings and misinformation. The lack of certainty in this “public event” is essential to create a narrative. In these days communication involved two important issues to be considered, language and technology mediation. The project translates this process of communication into a game, taking the game Chinese whispers as a metaphor. The game is based in misunderstandings and how a message could be distorted through a thread of people. This project is a call for artists all over the world to participate creating a “common message”, a “common story”. Simon Ledson
Lara Zibret
Alina Paringer
Tania Argandoña
Mawa Tres
Elizabeth Dismorr
Ricardo Rossi
Drawn in Bristol
Coexist
Stories from Bridewell
10-16th June Biennial Hub
1st –16th June Hamilton House, Stokes Croft
Discover a bygone world populated by mythical creatures, noble heroes and legendary relics. Recanting ancient tales from far flung dynasties, mystical artifacts and fantastical folklore prepare yourself to encounter Drawn in Bristol’s Myths & Legends. As part of Bristol Biennial festival the collective will be hosting an exhibition of specially created new work exploring the theme of Myths & Legends. Join Drawn in Bristol for tea, cake and a few tall stories on Sunday afternoon (2pm – 5pm) and be the first to discover their new show.
Coexist will be holding an exhibition on the theme of storytelling with work created by tenants. Come and see all the diverse creativity that Hamilton House has to offer from fine artists, illustrators and animators to theater shows and upholstery.
The Island, 1 – 7th June Private view: Saturday 2nd June 7pm Entrance Nelson Street to guide you to the Cells exhibition space!
GrowRoom 4th - 16th June The Control Room Coexist building
Growroom is a collaboration between Ruth Essex and The College Kitchen Garden. Ruth likes to make use of empty spaces to do creative things, the College Kitchen Gardeners like to grow food wherever they can. Growroom is inspired by Agnes Denes- Wheatfield- a confrontation, Havana’s Organiponicos and urban agriculture from around the world. When the harvest is plentiful we will host an outdoor feast in Queens Square in honour of the mighty tomato with special guest Dame Bloody Mary- time TBC. Sponsored by and thanks to GreensHorticulture.co.uk artspacecollege.com/the-gardens
Other Maps 16th June, 5pm Cabot Circus Pop-Up Gallery Philadelphia Street Cabot Circus
Hoof Made
Other Maps is the second collaboration between Tom Newell, VJ and projection artist and Pete Newell, sculptor and painter. Through using a built relief as a surface upon which to project mapped films, photographs and drawings Other Maps explores narratives and possible histories signified by the architecture and street furniture of our towns and cities. All this is done through a sculpted theatre set of plastic card and the alchemy of mapping, with a touch of creative play.
What Giants? Tour 1st - 15th June Workshop 16th June Cube Microplex Bristol
What Giants?
Spoke’n’Chain present a peripatetic project that incorporates a traditional Kamishibai story telling bicycle. Functioning as a travelling theatre throughout the festival “What Giants?” will present spontaneous performances created from artwork submitted by artists in the form of a ‘comic-strip’/ storyboard made up of five A3 frames. If you would like to submit artwork contact bikebeard@gmail.com for more information. On June 16th Spoke’n’Chain with Nanoplex will run a children’s storytelling workshop using the Kamishibai bicycle. Children will get a chance to create and perform their own stories.
Hoof Made: Horse Paintings 9th June Bristol’s Biggest Market Stockholm born, Bristol based artist Lina Löfstrand creates characters and imaginary worlds as a reflection on everyday life. She is interested in woodwork, automata and old fashioned mechanical toys. In collaboration with the charity Horseworld Bristol, Lina will be curating a collection of drawings and paintings created by horses, many who are ‘rescued’. This project explores the themes of animal psychology, and the function of creation as a means of catharsis.
College Projects 1st – 16th June College Projects The College is an Artspace Lifespace initiative dedicated to the community and creative arts. Occupying a six-acre campus comprising of vast internal spaces and integrated communal gardens that host an exceptional array of creative talent. We will be kicking off the Bristol Biennial on the evening of the 1st June with an explosive multi-media event showcasing an array of visual art by the college creatives, including a sculpture trial and exhibition at Art-el Gallery by Erms, live entertainment and refreshments throughout the evening. This work will then be on show throughout the 16 days of the Biennial.
Gary O’Connor Archive Project 1st – 16th June Geneva Stop Gary O’Connor’s installations incorporate sound and projection. This new installation work responds to Geneva Stop’s film archive – films from the 1940’s 50’s and 60’s many of which are travelogues.
Le Gun and Heretic Printmakers 7th – 30th June Here Gallery Here Gallery presents work from Le Gun magazine and Heretic printmakers. Le Gun’s bold monochrome text and images sit side by side with Herectic’s colourful, innovative graphic creations.
Jamaica Street Artists Open Studio Event 9th – 10th June Jamaica Street Studios Jamaica Street Artists studio is one of the largest artist led studios outside of London, and represents a diverse collection of cutting edge fine artists, illustrators and filmmakers. Aiming to showcase mainly graduate artists, the gallery is keen to encourage emerging talent from across the region. It is based in a grade ii listed former carriage works, one of the most iconic landmarks in Bristol, and hosts various events and exhibitions throughout the city. The building will host its annual open studio event to coincide with the Biennial.
Maze Studios Open Studio & Print Workshop 2nd, 3rd June Maze Studios Maze Studios is an artist lead space with a specialisation in ceramics, creating studio spaces for a growing diversity of artists. Maze studios will be holding their open studios and running free workshops in print and ceramics on Sat and Sunday 2nd and 3rd of June based around the theme of storytelling. Workshops will run from 11am – 1pm & 2 – 4pm each day.
Centrally located within the walls of the Old Police Station reside the occupants of The Island – an eclectic group of artists, writers, dancers, performers and makers. Through the Bristol Biennial, The Island presents Stories from Bridewell – drawing inspiration from the station’s eerie spaces and the stories that they hold to produce a multifaceted mash-up of artistic endeavors.
The Raconteurs Arena 3rd May – 28th June View Gallery The Raconteurs Arena is an exhibition that celebrates the story-telling of Bristol, from real-life drama to myths and fables. We have selected stories that we find intriguing, humorous, and bizarre. The history of the city and surrounding areas is steeped in magical stories that capture the imagination of some of our most creative artists. All the work for this exhibition is commissioned by View and we’ve challenged 10 artists to express themselves, inspired by one or more of the amazing tales. We are delighted to discover that these most creative of artists have responded magnificently in their own unique way.
Jubilee Festival 2nd – 3rd June Zion Community Art Space Zion celebrates the 2012 Silver Jubilee and their 1st Birthday with a weekend long festival. A variety of events and activities will take place over the Saturday and Sunday, all based around the year 1952. Events include; blacksmith workshops, ‘End of tea rationing’ tea party, Jubilee photo booth, cookery demonstration, vintage car rally, ballroom and swing dance evening and more.
Smithson Gallery 26th May – 17th June George White St, Cabot Circus Smithson Gallery is an on-line gallery representing majoritively South West artists. The gallery exhibits in Art Fairs Nationwide and pop-up shows across Bristol. The artwork represented is contemporary and has wide appeal, offering screen prints through to large mixed media canvases. Artists represented are established, with high-quality skills yet illustrate a fresh approach to their work. The gallery is an approachable one, with the motto: ‘Art is for Everyone’.
Centrespace 2nd – 6th of June 11 am – 5pm Daily Centrespace is a co-operative and has been offering artists, designers and craft makers studio space at affordable rates for over 20 years in the heart of Bristol. The Centrespace Gallery is an independent not for profit exhibition space situated along the historic city walls, close to the Watershed Media Centre, The Arnolfini Gallery and Bristol City Centre. As part of Bristol Biennial festival Centrespace Gallery exhibits 'The Random Map Project' by Angela Groombridge. The work explores tracks and traces; noticing pathways and shortcuts not marked on maps. At times these traces are ephemeral, barely there at all. This exhibition tells an alternative story of routes travelled. Come and explore and share your routes. For further information centrespacegallery.com
Polyteknicheskaya Show 1 – 16th June, 10am – 5pm Cabot Circus Pop Up Gallery Artist Talk Saturday 2nd June 3pm, Cabot Circus Pop Up Gallery In the 1960s, a new neighborhood sprang up on the outskirts of St. Petersburg. Named after the local polytechnical institute, the area would be called “Polyteknicheskaya”. One of the first Sovietplanned suburbs, it embodied the optimistic spirit of the “thaw”, and those who were given private apartments in its modern blocks were considered a fortunate elite. Fifty years later, residents live on beyond the vision of the original planners, while the area’s institutes operate in facilities that look abandoned to outsiders and cherry trees planted by pre-revolutionary aristocrats grow at the feet of high rises. In the shadow of yet another oncoming scheme to redevelop, the landscape and the ideology it represents, is rapidly eroding.
Bristol Contemporary Art 28th May to 18th June The Glass Walk, Cabot Circus Bristol Contemporary Art presents a group exhibition exploring the theme of Storytelling. Featuring Abigail McDougall, Leah-Ellen Heming, Rachel Milne, Marjorie Dumortier, Bridgid Heming, Natasha Evans, Tom Frost, Bjorn Lie, Rebecca Howard, Kate Evans, Emily Ketteringham, Emma Dibben, Philip Munoz and Susanne Baekby Olesen.
Polyteknicheskaya Show comprises two portraits of the area by two artists – one of whom was born and raised there, and one of whom was drawn there and compelled to stay. Zhenya Golant meditates on the everyday landscape of Polyteknicheskaya’s highstreet and residential facades in her detailed paintings – both naive and elegant. Polyteknicheskaya (Don’t Love Here), a three-channel video installation by Emily Newman, elegizes the neighborhood through the consideration of two local histories and one plan for the future.
bristolcontemporaryart.com
Zhenia Golant My Dear Father
Abigail McDougall
Emily Newman
Emily Newman
Watershed Screening Constructions Saturday 9th of June Free Screening One
The Art Boat
The Harbour & The Community 10 – 11am On June 16, 2012, traditional Swedish boat-builder Petter Lofstrand will launch an purpose built art boat into Bristol Harbour. In tandem with this project we present two documentary films about boat building and the effect of the waterways on the community, K.Y.S. Boat Project (2011, Norway) Trond Perry and Erik Pirolt & A Bridge Delivered (2011, USA) by Stephen Mallon. The screening will finish with a short talk by Petter Lofstrand about his work. trondperry.com/projects/kys-boat-project/ vimeo.com/19020956
Art Boat
Screening Two
Lemexraum
The Re-construction Of Mexican National Identity. 1 – 2pm 9 Mexican video artists explore artistic language and its discursive boundaries. This project called Lemexraum develops in an attempt to evince the fragility of national identity, its clichés, facts, interpretations and how platforms of information may also affect the world perception of Mexico. This is followed by a short talk by the curator Balam Bartolomé. balambartolome.com/index.php?/2010/lemexraum/ Screening Three
The War
The Reconstruction of Trauma 3 – 4pm This screening focuses on artists who represent the social and psychic implications of war and trauma. A Short Film About War (2010, UK), by Jon Thompson & Alison Craighead uses footage found on the Internet to create a fictional war narrative. Spike (2002, Australia) by Christopher Koller enacts the real-life case of a retired German army officer who was treated for skin infections caused by leaving World War II medals pinned to his naked chest. Histrionica in A Major (2012, UK), Darn Thorn follows the escapist fantasies of a mind afflicted by trauma.
Lemexraum Jorge Sosa
ucl.ac.uk/slade/slide/docs/warfilm.html vimeo.com/20971245
RWA Talks Fictional Tourism 8th June 2pm Adam Smith (PePoMo), Julie McCalden Tokyo based Adam Smith of PePoMo and Julie McCalden, artist and Director of Bristol's Motorcade/FlashParade discuss their socially engaging practices. Each artist considers the sociopolitical structures in which we live and responds by producing work that calls the viewer-participant to re-evaluate their presumptions. Playful and inventive, these artists engage with fictional narratives as a means for us to question the world in which we exist.
Damaged Landscapes 14th June 2pm Darn Thorn, Rodney Harris, Amber Ginsburg and Joseph Madrigal. The motif of the landscape in art has long had a problematic history. Used as a symbol for Nationalism in the Romanticist art of post-enlightenment period, it has continued to function as an ideological battleground where the clash between cultural and societal values finds form. Working across the mediums of photo-media and sculpture, each artist will discuss how the landscape disrupted by warfare or environmental damage functions in relation to their recent practice.
Christopher Koller, Spike from the series Aberrant (2002), courtesy of Fehily Contemporary Melbourne
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Festival Directors
Catherine Bourne & Lina Lofstrand Technical Manager Darn Thorn Website, Programme & Logo Design Garry Cook garryedisoncookdesign.co.uk
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Offical Sponsors Arts Council England artscouncil.org.uk Bristol City Council bristol.gov.uk
AV Sponsorship
Website Programming & Maintainance Will Kendrick willkendrick.co.uk
Art-E-Motion
Catalogue Design Holly Catford catford.com
Bristol Festival of Nature www.bnhc.org.uk/home/festival
Media Coordinators Susannah Adler Katie Weston Technical & Volunteer Coordinator Hannah Clark Administrative Assistants Megan Rose Beales-Cox Rebecca Winter Launch Coordinator Marina Moreno
Biennial Partners
Bristols Big Green Week biggreenweek.com Upfest upfest.co.uk
Project Supporters Mexican National Council for Culture and Arts conaculta.gob.mx/?page_id=15354
Konstn채rsn채mnden - Swedish Arts Grants Committee konstnarsnamnden.se/default.aspx?id=11309 The Japan Foundation - London jpf.org.uk Bloomsbury & Co. - Bath eckhoBristol eckhobristol.com
Julie McCalden Penny Jones Ruth Essex Claire Teasdale Jess Wright Picture This The Motorcycle Showroom Katie & Kim's Kitchen Watershed Picture This David Alder Lucy Cox Rachel Wild Leigh Quinn Alexander McConnell Ben Comley Nicola Kane Maggie Topliss Jack Gibbon Zion Community Art Space Katie and Kim's Kitchen The Southville Centre RWA Cafe Dina Ntziora Arild H. Eriksen Petter Lofstrand Sue Topalian Adam Cutler Asif Khan Melissa Mean Clara Palmer Olivia James and a huge thank you to our wonderful volunteer team. Printing by Printing.com and Newspaper Club.
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