This week Ania and I met in London for the second installment of our five Socially Engaged Adventures. We visited the Womens Library to see the exhibition: Handmade Tales: Women and Domestic Crafts. The exhibition had some fantastic examples to domestic crafts over the last 200 years or so and was accompanied by amazing personal accounts of the items and of the people who made them by member of the family and friends who had passed the items on. The exhibition was very relevant for a couple of the projects I am working on and was displayed absolutly beautifully.
After that we had lunch at Arts Admin and talked about time management and various other issues. After lunch we visited the Meanwhile Space shop on Whitechapel Road. We met some fantasic participants and staff who were all super engaged with the space and really enthusiastic about what had and could happen there. We saw tables and peace lilies hanging in dusters made by Out of the Ordinary. We talked to a vintage clothing and repurposed jewellry designers who were setting up for a three night show and clothes sale with making workshops alongside. The whole space was buzzing with excitement and potential and you could see that passersby were full of curiousity and intrigue for what the shop was for. Many people wandered in to find out in the 30 minutes we were there.
We then headed to the Tate Modern to view the Weiwei sunflower seeds. We watched the lovely video a couple of times through, telling of the local people who made the seeds and the processes that were involved.
It was a busy, inspiring, talking, sharing, exploring, slightly tiring day. I really enjoyed myself.
Ruthie
I went to FrenchMottershead talk about their latest project commissioned by The Photographers’ Gallery – they are working with residents of Soho to highlight the pleasures and challenges of living in this compact area of Central London.
Rebecca and Andrew shared their strategies for engaging residents of Soho. Strategies used by the artists range from hand written postcards inserted into postal boxes of people living in the area, mobile phone picture sharing, to meeting people on street or by the gate of the local school, attending local resident’s meetings, inserting adverts into local newspapers, drinking teas and eating biscuits with strangers and being given phone numbers for people their should meet by the people who they have just met.
The artists openly shared their working process and ups and downs of the work created with community. They emphasised the importance of live event that is usually present in their work. The social aspect of the live moment, ‘togetherness’ is for the artists a critical element. However the importance of ‘final’ outcome of the project – in this case photographs – and quality of it has also been raised. During this commission FrenchMottershead are going to be working with a professional photographer, to ensure high quality of final photographs.
When asked about the methodology that is closest to their way of working, the artists distanced themselves from the ongoing theoretical debates surrounding shared/ engaged / relational ways of working. And said: ‘we use very practical methodology’ and mentioned Stephen Willats’ work as a reference.
The final work will be available on The Photographers’ Gallery website.
More about the project:
http://www.photonet.org.uk/index.php?pvid=1251
More about the artists:
http://www.frenchmottershead.com/
And if you have a minute visit Stephen Willats show at Chelsea Space before 9th April.
http://www.chelseaspace.org/
Starter Studio Programme for Engaged Practice / Knutton Road Studios in Sheffield is looking for artists. Apply now!
Visit:
http://artspace.org.uk/programmes/starter-studios
and
engaged practice starter studio INFO-2011 (pdf, 1.4Mb)
I have a new haircut. All thanks to arts. Hair was cut whilst dry. And i thought I was going to wear the hat afterwards till early summer – but actually it is a pretty awesome haircut. Have a look yourself. I paid for it in words. I talked at Richard, artist/hairdresser while he was trying to tame my locks.
Time in hairdresser’s chair is an important one for me- it is is not simply ‘make me look better’ time. To me the haircut is as important as conversation that goes with it. I go to have my hair sorted when i am down, when i am in the need of change, gossip, coffee, looking into mirror and pulling faces at myself. I enjoyed myself, i talked a lot.
Haircut is a social interaction built on trust. I arrived earlier to see if artists/hairdressers knew what they were doing or if the haircutting was an experiment involving radicalism in form i was not prepared for. As I was leaving the chair both Richard and I nearly got a round of applause from people watching :) Has this ever happened to you before???
Richard – I will be back!
Interested? Visit:
http://www.artsadmin.co.uk/events/00000002870/
>>>
The hair cut before the party have set up shop at Meanwhile Space Whitechapel for a long weekend of cuts, talk and talk about cuts.
In exchange for a free haircut they’re asking you to use that time to talk to them, sharing your social and political views and ideas about community and belonging in order to build a map of new political and social networks.
http://thehaircutbeforetheparty.net/
Interesting reading! Alison Green’s short review of key texts on public art
http://www.axisweb.org/dlFull.aspx?ESSAYID=56
(Sally, thanks again!)
