POST, a collective of female artists based in Liverpool have been awarded a go and see bursary from a-n. Follow POST as they develop international links, starting with the European Capital of Culture 2009 – Linz, Austria.
Platform have been working hard since I last posted about us. We now have a website, membership structure, exhibition plans and hopefully studio premises.
Our new website is
http://www.platformartsthelens.co.uk/
Where you can find out about becoming a member, our exhibition plans and progress on our studios.
Wednesday 15 March
Zoe Riess
http://www.myspace.com/zoefotografie
Zoe is a photographer and works at Kapu http://www.kapu.or.at/ a music and arts venue in Linz. Zoe works mainly with other creative people, photographing bands, actors and artists. She tries to get inside the persona of the people, and to capture that in her photographs. One series of photographs we viewed documented the daily life of an established Linz Artist, whilst others used surrealism, multiple exposures and portraiture.
Wednesday 15 April
Gerlinde Misenboeck
http://www.gerlinde-miesenboeck.com/
Gerlinde is a photographer living in Linz. She has studied in Linz, Manchester, and Finland and recently produced a series of photographs based on her experiences in the Scandinavian country.
Gerlinde told us how her photographs were limited by the cold temperatures experienced in Rovaniemi, and how they were a response to the thickly forested landscape. The density of trees prevented vision into the distance, removing traditional concepts of landscape perspective from her images.
Linz EXPOrt funding allowed Gerlinde to travel to Finland, she also told us about new funding called Linz imPORT, which allows artists from outside of Linz to come and work in the city. Gerlinde is documenting events surrounding the Kranke Hase (sick rabbit), which is being organised by Kunstraum Goethestrasse xtd, which I’ll tell you about later.
Tuesday 14 March
The House of Stories
http://www.linz09.at/en/projekt-2205346/haus_der_geschichten.html
Georgina took us to visit this Linz 09 project space on Pfarr Platz, just behind the main square in Linz. It is a project organised by Linz 09, and invites artists to respond to the rooms of this house, which has not been lived in for many years.
A knitted string winds up the central staircase leading you to rooms that have been inhabited by artists and their works. Each installation is site specific and tells a story. Whether autobiographical (as in the work by Paul Kranzler and Maggie Cardelus which uses photographs of families in two different ways), or fictional (in the room where book seller Alex Stelzer has provided space for you to read ‘House of Leaves' a novel by Mark Z. Danielewski, available in multiple languages)
On arriving at the second floor the knitted string brings you into a room of woolly walls. Here the freundinnen der kunst have set up a project where every Friday afternoon, visitors and artists resident in the house are invited to knit -until the walls of the flat are completely covered in knitting. On our arrival, one room was cosily shrouded with complete walls of knitting, with extra knitted feelers escaping through the windows and down the frontage of the building.
On returning to the ground floor we were met by Claudia Czimek, an artist who is in residence at the House of stories, and it is imperative that I tell you "Es ist noch nicht fertig!" (it isn't finished yet!). This ground floor space was previously used as a travel agents – hence the garish posters on the walls with psychedelic tulips and acidic green grass. Claudia, who also goes by the pseuodonym Madame Bricolage, is transforming this former travel agency into a terminal and miniature 40 square metre world made up of travel destinations. She is creating fantastical landscapes, creatures and places to explore in this small room, so that you can feel as though you have been on holiday, without ever having left the room.
Claudia is accepting souvenirs from across the world to incorporate into her installation. Cecilia Kinnear created an installation for the Liverpool International Artists exhibition using 2008 special edition cans of Scouse Stew (see http://www.independentsbiennial.org/2008artists/464-100scouse). As a gift to Claudia, Cecilia has left one of these cans at the House of stories, so you too can visit a little bit of Liverpool when you travel to Linz.
Go and See Linz, Capital of Culture 2009
Two members of post arrived in Linz on Monday 13 April with appointments to meet five artists and arts professionals during the week. Let me introduce you to the people we met, the work they produce and the people they introduced us to…
Tuesday 14 March
Georgina Krausz
http://www.ginakrausz.at/HOME/Kr-home.swf
Georgina is an artist with very pertinent links to our project. Georgina tells us;
“I was born in Eastbourne, Sussex as the daughter of an Austrian mother from Linz and a father from Liverpool. I took my GCE’s in English and Art preparing for entrance exams to Art University. However, life took me on a different journey and I left England in 1985 to marry my Austrian boyfriend and live in my mother’s home town, Linz.”
Who would have expected that we would find someone who has already made the exchange in her life that we are making through art. Georgina paints, and more examples of her work can be seen on her website. The work shown here, A transient Life Form, is in aquarelle and feather and ink on paper – she describes as “capturing a moment of beauty in something we would normally look away from, because it’s life has past.”
Georgina was a welcoming host and introduced us to some interesting spaces in Linz, including the Art University Gallery, The House of Stories and artist’s exhibition spaces at the Ursulinenhof. She was also able to direct us to a rather lovely beer garden, where a warm sunny evening was enjoyed with a Radler (shandy)
