Trading Station

Day 4

Calmed down a little from yesterday’s fabulous news. Today I’ve been working on some of my own ideas along with being the eyes and ears of the POST artists back in Liverpool. It’s been a really interesting process and is making me think about the practice of the other artists I work with in more depth.

As I’m walking around I’m naturally looking for things that interest and inspire me, but also am thinking, ‘what would Sue/Mandy/Robyn/Cecilia photograph/look/at/be interested in? I’m not sure if this is influencing the work that I’m doing for myself, but hopefully it is.

Today Nancy Atakan and I went to the balcony of the Istanbul Modern overlooking the Bosphorus to send a kiss to it from Cecilia Kinnear. Cecilia has plans to work with bubbles in her Trading Station work, and as she couldn’t come to Istanbul on this trip she asked me to blow a kiss to the river for her. So I’ve sent the kiss in a bubble and traded the video back to her.

Blowing a kiss to the Bosphorus

Day 3

I think I’m too giddy to write – just skyped into a meeting in Liverpool from Istanbul. Various artists studios, collectives and organisations were meeting to talk about Liverpool Art Month, which we’ll be part of in May, so I thought that as we are researching virtual and physical exchanges that I should be there virtually – then Cecilia Kinnear announces to the meeting that she received a big fat letter in the post from the Arts Council. So I’m proud to announce that:

TRADING STATION is is supported using public funding by the National Lottery through Arts Council England.

I’ll post some photographs and further info about how things are going in Istanbul when I come down from the ceiling.

TRADING STATION: Day 2

Today I met Nancy Atakan for the first time. She has been a great host today, sharing breakfast with me, showing me around Istanbul and taking me to 5533, the art centre that she runs with Volkan Aslan. Nancy has been re-filming a work that she made 20 years ago – it’s a version of this work: http://www.nancyatakan.com/works/92/calisma-work

Nancy has also been collecting photographs of plastic chairs – you know, the patio ones that were must-have in about 1989, but that you can find everywhere around the world. We think that there could be an exchange potential for TRADING STATION in this – people in Liverpool sending Nancy images of lonely plastic patio chairs, just longing to be sat in…

I’ve been getting a sense of the city and how it is laid out, and thinking a lot about what I can do in this short period of time. I’m feeling drawn to squares and busy streets, such as Taksim and Istiklal, and have already collected a couple of 1 minute videos that I will try and work with later. I’ve also been looking at the pavements a lot – a hangover from when I was in Portugal last year – the pavements were works of art in Portugal, but I think that there is potential for pieces of work that are linked to pavements – maybe a drawing onto the paving stones of a square or street are in the offing.

First things first, some context.

I’m part of a collective called POST who are based in Liverpool and since 2008 we have been developing international artist’s exchange oppotunities as a group. We began with an ambitious project called riPOSTe, which saw our 7 female members exchange with 7 female artists from the city of Linz, Austria (http://www.postliverpool.com/projects.html). Our plan from the start was to capitalise on Liverpool’s Capital of Culture year in 2008, so our next city on the list was Istanbul, Capital of Culture in 2010.

We’ve spent a while working out how best to work together again for this project, and have spent some time developing relationships with some artists in Istanbul who we have met through an artist we met while we were in Linz. We are conscious that group working, especially in an international context can take a lot of time, effort and heart, so we are exploring new ways for us to work together both in the UK and across the 2000 miles between Liverpool and Istanbul.

So we are embarking on a project called TRADING STATION, which will see us explore the use of virtual, technological methods combined with the physical exchange of art, objects and people as we research a sustainable way for POST to continue with our group practice in future.

POST currently consists of 5 female members, Cecilia Kinnear, Amanda Oliphant, Susan Myerhoff Sharples and Claire Weetman and Robyn Woolston. Founder member Katriona Beales can be found elsewhere in Artists Talking at the moment documenting her Tokyo adventures, and Jennie Cunningham has taken a break from the collective. We plan to work with four artists in Istanbul: Gulcin Aksoy, Gozde Ilkin & Yasemin Nur Toksoy who also form arts collective Atılkunst (http://atilkunst.blogspot.com/), and Nancy Atakan (http://www.nancyatakan.com/)

And that brings us to today – I’ve just arrived in Istanbul for a week and am looking forward to meeting the four artists that we plan to work with. I found keeping a time-sensitive blog useful when I was in Schiedam in Aug/Sept last year (www.a-n.co.uk/p/1492804/) so I’ve decided to do the same here.

For info, my trip here is funded by a UK Trade and Industry gap grant– a useful pot of money which is covering my flights and transport, with the aim of developing my ‘export’ potential and income from foreign sources, so fingers crossed that that happens over the next few months.