In November artists Joss Burke, Graham Chorlton, Peter Grego, Myfanwy Johns and Tom Ranahan will exhibit new work in Bordeaux. Invited to take part in the Art Chartrons Festival in the French city by Francis Viguera (President of Art Chartrons Association). It builds on previous invitations by Birmingham based artists to Bordeaux. The title of the show is Dialogue and has recieved funding from ACE and Art Chartrons Association.
In March Dialogue went to Oxford Brookes University. It was a different type of space than the Halle -and in fact it was on two foyer spaces of the Fine Art Building. We all had take into account the challenges offered by this space. For example my banners at 10ft by 2ft were too high to br hung in the space so I produced A0 size panels that went on the wall. Graham had to modify the hanging piece he exhibited. Joss had two wall based digital prints, Peter had to cut down one of his installation panels and Myfany had to position her floor piece at an angle to comply eith health and safety issues. The show had a different feel but was still a coherent and strong show. The reaction of the art students at Brookes was interesting which ranged from indifference to being intrigued by the artwork that was inhabiting the foyer spaces they walk through to get to their studios. We did get a positive review in the Oxford Times newspaper.
In April we have invited 4 artists from Bordeaux to show at BIAD Birmingham City Uni and will give more details in next post. These are: Nicolas Julliard, Valere Chanceaulme
Veronique Lamare and Francis Vigera. The exhibition will open on 13th April. For more information on these artists follow their links.
Nicolas – http://nicolasjulliard.com
Valere –
http://occidentalsunaccidentalson.over-blog.com/
Veronique- http://v.lamare2.free.fr
http:mybook.pro/veronique_lamare/
Francis- http://viguerafrancis.e-monsite.com/accueil.htlm
Hi all. I just wanted to update people on the Dialogue group I am involved with. On 4th -7th November Dialogue exhibited at the Halle de Chartrons in Bordeaux as part of the Art Chartrons happening in the French city. It was a huge success in terms of exposure for our groups work.
Over the four days we had over 1400 people see the show. Our show was filmed for French TV3 channel to promote our contribution to the Arts Chartrons festival and there was a number of radio interviews which featured our exhibition at the Halle as the centre piece of Novembers 6th edition of Art Chartons. The British Counsul attended the preview and along with various representatives from the mayors office in Bordeaux and local dignatories opened the exhibition. Over 600 turned up for the opening and the wine and food was sponsored by a local wine company.
We received a lot of positive feedback from the ordinary Bordeaux public as well as from artists based in Bordeaux. The work produced included Graham Chorltons large paintings on paper of Bordeaux industriall architecture, Myfanwy Johns parquet floor – a triangular section based on the floor of Musee Beaux Arts, Peter Grego’s slide projection of Bordeaux housing scheme inspired by Le Corbusier. Joss Burkes construction using sache window frame from England with digital photographic images on the window panes relating to her response to Bordeaux. I created 4 double sides pvc banners using photographic images of people and places I visited in September with red,white and blue blocks of colour reminiscent of the French flag.
Dialogue lastest news! Charlie Levine has accepted our invitation to review our exhibition in Bordeaux. Charlie curates TROVE among other projects and we are delighted to be working with her. That’s it for now.
Dialogue update! We met last Thursday at Peters Grego’s house for some lovely pasta followed by hours of logistical planning. We decided on how our catalogue for the exhibition will look – considering the font style, text size, colour for cover. Favouring a postcard format each of us will have our own postcard with image on one side and text in both English and French on the other.
As Joss is in Bordeaux we use Skype to involve her in our meetings. It has proved a very useful tool to include Joss on all the decisions we make on organising the exhibition. It is also fun -especially with a glass of wine to liven up proceedings. Joss was able to update how things are procedding in Bordeaux, and it looks as if the British Consulate will be at our opening on the 4th November.
We are currently trying to get a curator/writer to come over to write about our show and try to get it in the art press. It is important to us to raise our profile as a group and as individual artists. We hope to have someone shortly.
My own work is progressing nicely and have got the design of the banners worked out. Hopefully these will be ready for printing next Monday. I have also decided on a photo -book to present a personal diary of my visit to Bordeaux in September. That’s all for now -will be in touch again shortly. Tom
Just to let you know that the Dialogue exhibition is featured on the art chartons website. This can be accessed on www.arts-chartons.info. The information is in French. This is the 6th edition of the Art Chartrons Festival in Bordeaux. We have a meeting on Thursday night -so have a lot of logistical issues to sort out. Will update you on how we are progressing. Cheers Tom
Tom Ranahan is an artist who lives and works in Birmingham.
