Art Licks Weekend, the annual festival that showcases the work of pioneering young artists, curators, and project spaces in London returns with a programme featuring over 60 artist-led and non-profit project spaces across the city.
Taking place 17-20 October, this year the festival takes ‘Interdependence’ as its theme and considers how participating projects work within a network of friendship, exchange and shared dialogue.
Here, we preview some of the events and exhibitions taking place including projects from across the country that will be hosted by London spaces as Art Licks Weekend looks to recognise the development of arts communities across the country and the importance in establishing a more balanced structure of activity.
The future of artists and architecture, Thamesmead Texas @ TACO!
Peripatetic artist-led platform Thamesmead Texas presents a selection of films on social housing, gentrification and regeneration from the 1970s to the present day. The evening includes artist films by Katharine Meynell, Zoe Redman, Jocelyn Pook and John Smith. Selected by artist Vanessa Scully, the event will take place within a new installation entitled Heavy View by Laura Yuile that developed out of the artist’s consideration of technological and architectural obsolescence. Thamesmead Texas hosts TACO!, working with partners RTM, will also be broadcasting the Art Licks Weekend radio station over the weekend with a daily schedule of specially commissioned content.
19 October, 7-10pm, TACO!, 30 Poplar Place, London SE28 8BA. artlicksweekend.com/2019/event/the-future-of-artists-and-architecture/
Against Doom Too, Five Years @ Unit 2B1
Created as an extension of USA-based Macon Reed’s and UK-based Mia Taylor’s friendship and shared dialogue on the interrelated histories and present-day political and ecological shifts between their two countries, ‘Against Doom Too’ is the culmination of a series of call-and-response style propositions between the two artists. Each has proposed objects and scenarios from potential future human civilisations that are both utopic and dystopic in nature. Incorporating painting, text, sculpture, and photography, the exhibition seeks to connect and expand upon what change may be available to us when activated through collective imagination.
17 October 6-9pm, 18-20 October 1-6pm, Five Years, Unit 2B1 Boothby Road, London N19 4AJ. artlicksweekend.com/2019/event/against-doom-too/
These are the days my friends, Kupfer
Loosely focusing around themes of history of location, archaeology and craft, ‘These are the days my friends’ brings together a diverse group of artists living and working outside London. Responding to the theme of ‘interdependence’ Kupfer has invited Margate-based artist Hannah Lees to guest curate an exhibition that expands the space’s roster of exhibited artists, encompassing her own artistic and intellectual network. Artists in the show include Lydia Brockless, Andrew Gillespie, Clementine Keith-Roach, Jack Lavender, Hannah Lees, Kristofer Lock, Flora Parrott, Phil Root, Oliver Sutherland, Billie M Vigne.
17 October 6-9pm, 18-20 October 12–6pm, Kupfer, Ponsford Street, London E9 6JU. artlicksweekend.com/2019/event/these-are-the-days-my-friends/
Uncertain ruins, Swiss Cottage Library
‘Uncertain Ruins’ is a site-responsive collaboration between artist Julie F Hill and Gauld Architecture, the architectural practice which also hosts site-specific research project and exhibition series Passen-gers. The work draws on the social, material and historical context of Swiss Cottage Library, a modernist architectural landmark in Camden designed by Sir Basil Spence in the early 1960s, and includes monumental sculptures, video and photographic works made using artificial intelligence algorithms trained on astronomical data-sets and related holdings from the library.
17 October 6-8pm, 18-19 October 10am – 5pm, Swiss Cottage Library, 88 Avenue Road, London NW3 3HA. artlicksweekend.com/2019/event/uncertain-ruins/
LUVA Symposium (how to run a gallery that doesn’t piss off your neighbours), LUVA
Rescheduled to enable participants to attend the People’s Vote march taking place in London on the same day, pop-up gallery LUVA is hosting a small informal symposium discussing the intricacies of artist-led and DIY gallery spaces, especially those which have a strong community presence. The gallery is also hosting a small retrospective of the work it has shown in its first year of activity.
19 October 11.30am-12.45pm, LUVA, James Campbell House, Old Ford Road, London E2 9QE. artlicksweekend.com/2019/event/luva-symposium/
Post-capitalist Ecologies Panel Discussion
Ami Clarke draws together friends, colleagues and associates Arun Saldanha and Diann Bauer who each in their own way seek to address the current power relations of catastrophic capitalism, and the structural injustices that come of this via gendered, racialised and sexualized oppressions. The event runs alongside Ami Clarke’s solo exhibition ‘The Underlying’.
19 October, 2-4pm, Java House, arebyte gallery, Botanic Square, London E14 0LG. artlicksweekend.com/2019/event/underlying/
Re-Reading the Library, Women Artists of the North East Library @ Freelands Foundation
Women Artists of the North East Library is an artist-led project that brings together donated material, including research, books, audio and images to form a usable resource that contributes to the history of women artists (including women-identifying, non-gender binary and trans women) working in north east England. Initiated in 2017, the project includes a rolling programme of events centring on the archive and artists that make up the library. For Art Licks Weekend 2019, the library will be in residence at the Freelands Foundation reading room, with visitors invited to browse, photocopy and record their own readings of the literature, with these new recordings added to a bank of audio recordings on a Women Artists of the North East Library SoundCloud account. Works by artists Katy Bentham, Tess Denman-Cleaver, Emily Hesse, Fiona Larkin, Nellie Saunby and Holly Argent will also be exhibited as part of an ongoing project exploring how various narratives may be constructed from the Women Artists of the North East Library material and what this might sound like.
18 October 6.30-8.30pm, 19-20 October 12-6pm, Freelands Foundation, 113 Regent’s Park Road, London NW1 8UR. artlicksweekend.com/2019/event/re-reading-the-library/
ERRATA (Extreme Remote Rural Artist Travel Agency), Gaada @ Creekside Artists
‘ERRATA’ is a new body of collective works by Shetland artist-led initiative Gaada which critically explores the barriers and benefits of contemporary art practice in extreme, remote, rural contexts. The exhibition focuses on what an art ecology looks like without buyers, galleries, studios, making facilities and public transport links. In-house travel agents will be available to help visitors plan their new life whilst also dispelling myths and misconceptions about artists working in rural locations.
17 October, 6-9pm, 18-20 October 12-6pm, Creekside Artists, 8-12 Creekside, London SE8 3DX. artlicksweekend.com/2019/event/errata/
The Wagon, Caraboo @ Standpoint
Caraboo Projects is a cooperative of artists formed in a disused print works in Bedminster, Bristol. The group strives to build an inclusive and collaborative platform, with artists, curators and local members of the community working to develop cross-disciplinary arts in Bristol. Setting off from Bristol on Thursday 10 October, the group has embarked on a 150 mile journey between Bristol and London on foot to test its interdependence, hand pulling a collectively built wagon along the way (see Caraboo Projects Instagram for images and video of the journey). A record of encounters, exchanges and observations made on the journey will be presented at Standpoint Gallery.
17 October, 6–9pm, 18-20 October, 12-6pm Standpoint, 45 Coronet Street, London N1 6HD. artlicksweekend.com/2019/event/wagon/
Art Licks Weekend 2019: Interdependence, 17-20 October 2019, various venues across London. Free. artlicksweekend.com/
Images:
1. John Smith, Blight, 1994-96. Video, showing as part of The future of artists and architecture, Thamesmead Texas @ TACO
2. Kris Lock, Rainbowing (For TAZ Pirates), 2019. Showing as part of ‘These are the days my friends’, Kupfer.
3. Women Artists of the North East Library.
4. Gaada, Returning from South Havra, 2019.
5. Caraboo Projects, The Wagon, 2019.
More on a-n.co.uk:
a-n Artist Bursaries 2020: open for applications from a-n members
a-n Assembly 2019: Thamesmead and Stoke-on-Trent events announced
