This blog forms part of “Test taking: every, never, none” –a new project and one-day show where I investigate some aspects of being continuously assessed and the fascination of question-testing ourselves. Mainly, I will be looking at questions, responses and instructions associated with tests. Injecting a layer of humour my considerations and work will manoeuvre between the straightforward and counterproductive, the insignificant and relevant.
The set up for this show starts with VERB – a series of independent site-responsive art projects led by artist Kathryn Miller. Like her project series 12HRS : MEET, CREATE & DISCUSS where I met Kathryn last year, UP ON THE 5TH FLOOR launched at the beginning of 2014 and provides artists a pop-up event space to develop and showcase work. The events are situated within a former office space on the 5th floor of the Co-Operative’s Federation House in central Manchester – the recently launched flagship of Castlefield Gallery’s New Art Spaces scheme.
My first site visit back in May was a packed day of being shown around and familiarising myself with the space to show and navigating up and down floors. In the afternoon I had the chance to pop in to the C-Pages artist crits up at TOAST (6th floor) – an CG Associate and Extra Special People artists exchange between Manchester and Birmingham that explored dialogue and connections through creative activity on site. I also met Mark from Mark Devereux Projects for a stimulating conversation. He runs an artist production-development organisation established to help increase profiles of national and international early-career visual artists concentrated on critical engagement and promotion.
Back UP ON THE 5TH FLOOR. Discussing my interests, initial ideas and plans with Kathryn led towards this new project and show. Over the next weeks this blog will document my line of enquiry.
