Founded in 2009 by artist Ami Clarke, Banner Repeater (BR) is a not-for-profit reading room and project space sited on Platform 1 of Hackney Downs railway station in East London. This Friday 22 March the group are launching a new Membership Programme with an Art Lottery Bonanza – an evening of performance, video screenings and a lottery draw with limited edition prints, T-shirts and specially donated artworks to be won.
The event is part of a wider bid by the organisation to secure programme funding as they work to sustain their project in a difficult financial climate. “It’s important that we survive this,” explains Clarke. “The cuts in arts funding have already done an awful lot of damage and will ultimately influence the way we access art and the kind of art that is exhibited. We hope the fundraiser will help put us in a stronger position to develop further opportunities over the coming year.”
2012 Turner Prize winner Elizabeth Price is one of the artists donating to the lottery, and will be drawing the winning tickets on Friday evening. Clarke recognises how important this kind of solidarity is at a time when access to art and education is being threatened.
“Artists are in a first-hand position of knowing exactly how difficult it is to survive,” she says. “The current government is wreaking devastation upon important aspects of life in the UK. There is a great risk of returning to a time of privilege, whereby only those able to afford high tuition fees will be in a position to study disciplines such as art. What that means for art is utterly grim, in my opinion.”
Committed to sharing art and ideas
With an inclusive, open-door policy – on weekdays their library of artists’ publications opens at 8am in time for rush hour, and the group begin their morning distributing free print materials to commuters – BR is committed to sharing art and ideas with as broad an audience as possible. Up to 4,000 passengers pass through the station each day, and Clarke relishes the possibility of the chance encounters that the project’s location affords.
“I think it’s important to have both challenging and more accessible work on display in a highly visible public space,” she says. “Everyone sticks their head around the door at some point – a really broad demographic as well as the usual suspects. People are already in the space before they’ve had a chance to think: ‘This is not for me’.”
Clarke describes BR’s new Associate Members’ Peer Programme as “a formalisation of an already existing network with a warm invitation for others to join.” Aimed at artists, writers, thinkers and enthusiasts, benefits include free submission to the BR annual Open Exhibition, discounts on prints and publications in the BR bookshop and invitations to regular peer-to-peer critiques.
“I’m invested in the kind of thinking that art makes possible,” she says. “I hope we can create a network of like-minded people who may benefit from the opportunity to connect with one another as peers.”
Banner Repeater Membership Launch & Fundraiser, Friday 22 March, 6-10pm. Lottery at 9.30pm. Art Lottery tickets £5 each, or 7 free tickets with every £25 membership purchased. See website for further details.
More on a-n.co.uk:
Elizabeth Price and the Turner Prize spotlight
Artists’ strategies – the practice-driven activities of artists operating individually or collaboratively not only provide the artists themselves with profile and development but also offer insights for art world professionals into new directions in contemporary visual arts practice.
Collaborative relationships: Movement – artists Yoke and Zoom and Susan Miles of the Association of Community Rail Partnerships on setting up an art gallery in a railway station’s disused gents’ toilet.
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