We met with our next artist speaker, Debby Besford, to discuss ideas for her participation with the Project Space. After coffee and some shortbread biscuits from the Aylsham Women’s Institute Market, we had finalised an exhibition of Debby’s burlesque photographic portraits from her book and a photography workshop in June.
Debby’s work can be seen at: www.debbybesford.com where you can also obtain information about her book.
Debby’s talk is on :Wednesday 16th May at 7pm.
New Programming Meeting
The three of us met to discuss strategies (not many), wish-lists of events (very many) and who to invite to give a talk over the next few months. We hope that one of our speakers will discuss aspects of contemporary artmaking and rural cultures – pertinent and timely. Hopefully, we can tie this into our open-call residency during the local Aylsham Festival. Another provisionally booked speaker is active within performance and time-based, transient-work practice. there is also a plan for a video event in the Autumn, when nights are fair drawing in once more. We went off clutching a list of tasks each as per usual. I have to research and price projectors.
I have to say the refreshments during the meeting were below the usual standard, even for our studios. I resorted to an original flavour pot-noodle after the meeting. Standards are definitely slipping.
Dominique Rey
Krzysztof Fijalkowski is due to give a talk in the Project Space this evening. Variously active as an artist, curator and translator, his recent activity has included catalogue publications for the V&A and Tate Liverpool and a forthcoming book on Czech Surrealist Photography. Here’s some information about the talk:
This talk will focus on his contributions to two past exhibition projects around the themes of space, psychoanalysis and surrealism: Kathleen Fox’s installation The Spaces of the Unconscious at the Freud Museum London, and Surreal House at the Barbican Gallery, both in the summer / autumn of 2010. Kathleen Fox’s work focuses on issues of memory, dream and the object, and was installed in a space that was once Sigmund Freud’s bedroom, drawing on his collection to create an environment for a dialogue between conscious and unconscious space.
The process of securing, developing and funding the project is a second set of narratives to add to the theoretical ideas underpinning the work. Surreal House, on the other hand, was a major international exhibition exploring the intersections between surrealism and architecture, an area that relates closely to Krzysztof’s own research and practice interests, and resulted in this case in a chapter for the exhibition catalogue.
In Process Residency
A glorious morning, sun streaming in, taking video and polaroids in the last incarnation of the work in the Project Space.
Dominique Rey
In Process Residency – Day Four
Ended today with the feeling that I am just getting started.
Polly Cruse from Satellite Artists spent the most part of today arranging work in the space in a new way and with a particular scultpural aesthetic. More moving things around. Polly was keen to play with the layers of viewing through glass and patterning with interesting results. i think it is hard coming into a space that has already been curated (three times in three days), but after some initial hesitancy Polly was able to launch into shaping things more to her own interest, but through dialogue with me.
The space was open to visitors later in the day, so this was the only stage in the transformation that has been seen in public. There was some interesting discussopn about the curatorial and artistic process.
Tomorrow morning I hope to have more time in the installation to reflect on the work and process of working. Maybe do some ink drawings, before I start shifting things around again.
Here are just a few of the images from todays changes.
Dominique Rey
