Funding for international travel and exchange

Today, the work arrived from America – which is quite amazing as Debra only asked for the best address to send it to, a couple of days ago. ( I opted for my work one as sadly I’m there more than I am at home!) Her work isn’t what I expected, but then we are all ( hopefully) doing something that makes us feel slightly uncomfortable and unexpected. I like it though.

Uncomfortable is a bit of an understatement in describing the preparations. When discussing invigilation of the space today, we realised we are going to be short for two days. We are just going to see if anyone else can help out.

Apparently we also need risk assessments for the two venues before the students are allowed to step inside. Although I’ve done several risk assessments for exhibitions, I don’t think I’ve ever had to arrange one for a space before going in.

I rang Jacqui today and asked if we could meet up at the weekend and discuss some last minute things for the exhibition, to which she replied ‘But aren’t we installing at the weekend?‘ Oh my God – how can it be Thursday already???

Debra’s blog:

http://dryadart.wordpress.com/tag/liverpool-independent-biennial/

The strange thing about so many events and exhibitions going on at any one time- as in the Liverpool Biennial, sometimes has the knock on effect of ‘arting’ people out. I’m a little concerned that the exhibition that is presently taking place in the venue we will be installing in at the weekend, has had so few visitors. I don’t why that is, as it appears to have had a lot of publicity.

Now I’m worried that the press releases I have sent out will go unpublished on someone’s desk – or worse still, end up in the bin.

Why is it that the Biennial and Independents Biennial are getting so little attention from the media after the initial burst at the opening weekend?

That is something else to worry about as we start working on an invigilation rota. We have managed to get some students from Leeds to come over to do a few hours invigilation each, if we provide accommodation and let them look round the Biennial. Seems good to me, though it has taken time to sort out where they can stay.

The other thing to stress about is that we have invited artists from ArtMobile : http://www.artmobile.se/ to join us for the exhibition. They were in the next booth to us at Supermarket. Really lovely people – but had a really annoying sound installation of someone whistling ‘Raindrops keep falling on my head’, which was on a loop and we wanted to scream after listening to it constantly for three days! But still – we somehow want to work with them again!

I’m now waiting for their work to arrive…plus the work of Debra Eck from just outside New York.

I am not even going to think about the second half of the exhibition which will be held in one of the shop units at Albert Dock. I will sign the license on Monday, pick up the keys and hand them over to the artists.

This is turning out to be such a complicated affair – I really hope people come to see our work.

One week before the exhibitions kick off and only now, am I thinking about publicity. It has taken an enormous amount of work to set up these two exhibitions and I feel absolutely drained. So apologies for going down the easy route – but here is our press release to kick start my blogging again:

Inhospitable. A Two part exhibition by Merseyside, Leeds and international artists

Bringing back to the UK, a Stockholm experience. SCIBase are a collaborative project between Merseyside based SCI and BasementArtsProject, Leeds.

The first exhibition at The Bridewell studios and Gallery, Liverpool, features the work of Kimbal Bumstead ( UK) David Cotton (UK), Andrew Crighton (Sweden) Kelly Cumberland (UK) Sarah Dale (UK) Bruce Davies (UK) Julie Dodd (UK) Debra Eck (USA) Phill Hopkins (UK) Jacqueline Kerr (UK) Jean McEwan (UK) Matthew Merrick (UK) Carol Ramsey (UK) Alfie Strong (UK) WalkerHill (UK) Stephen White (India) and Wendy Williams (UK) All of the artists were involved in SUPERMARKET the Stockholm art fair earlier this year and were funded by Arts Council England.

The group have invited members of the Swedish Arts group ARTMOBILE – fellow exhibitors at SUPERMARKET to join them at The Bridewell.

The full list of SUPERMARKET artists, groups and venues can be found at : http://www.supermarketartfair.com/

Private View: Tuesday, 2 October 2012, 1830 – 2030 Closing Event Sunday 14 October 15.30 – 18.30.

Bridewell Studios and Gallery
101 Prescot Street
Liverpool
L7 8UL

This exhibition will work in conjunction with SCIBase & DWF present INHOSPITABLE: the collaborations ( unit 8, The Colonnades, Albert Dock Liverpool 2 Oct – 14 October )

‘INHOSPITABLE – The Collaborations’ draws into the SCIBase fold a new selection of artists associated with both Liverpool and Leeds, and for whom collaboration is an important aspect of their practice. The exhibition will feature new work by Matthew Merrick & Alfie Strong, Alan Dunn & Martyn Rainford, WalkerHill, Kaye & West and Lydia Catterall.

Alan Dunn was shortlisted for the 2012 Liverpool Art Prize, Alfie Strong was shortlisted for the 2012 Woolgather Art Prize, Sean Kaye and Jenny West were nominated for the 2013 Northern Art Prize.

ENDS

For more information, contact Wendy Williams at [email protected].

I think it really pays to know someone in the legal profession.

I’ve been negotiating over a second venue for the SCIBAse exhibition, for the last month and from the very start, I made it very clear that we were a non profit organisation and did not have the funds to pay rental costs.

I felt like I’d made a breakthrough when the acting vendor offered a much less salubrious location within the building ‘at no cost’. Now, when I think of ‘no cost’, I assume that it means that I didn’t have to pay anything. Obviously, that has a different meaning to anyone in the trade. It was at no cost other than, a licence fee of £750 per month, up to £750 solicitors fees to draw up a contract AND utility bills at a business rate.

I’d had experience of a licence before – when using empty shops as a venue, so I wasn’t alarmed by that. ( For those not aware of what a licence is…and in layman’s terms, a document is issued with all the do’s and don’ts while using their building. The premises must be returned to the state it was given, or you pay a fee)

So… in my ignorance, I assumed that the £750 licence fee was only payable if there was some damage to the building.

Hmmm…it appears not and this is where my legal friend has stepped in – well before I became rash enough to sign anything!

I have now sent an email requesting that all fees are wavered.

Anyone else would probably walk away from this one, but with legal backing, I just want to see if its possible to make headway.

Writing a statement is hard enough at the best of times, but having spent so long searching for words or pseudo intellectual phrases to pad one out to give it enough bulk, we now found ourselves in the awkward situation of having to reduce it all back down again to a mere sentence or two.

For the Independents profile page in the brochure , we needed to cut down our former statements to what I thought was 500 words, but was in fact 500 characters….and then worse – less than 500 characters including spaces!

I’m nervous now that what it has been cut down to doesn’t actually say anything at all about us.

Today, on top of everything else I need to do on my day off, I will yet again chase up a unit that was at one time promised to us, but now they are hankering on about charging ‘the going rate’.

Same with empty shops – a prime location one was whisked from my hands ‘in case it is snapped up by a paying tenant’. What paying tenant? There are so many empty shops now in the City Centre – why on earth won’t they put them to some use?