Personal Growth 2: The Art of Survival
Claremont Studios artists Sarah Broome, and Caroline Le Breton and two invited artists, Maggie Cullen and Nicky Gilmour, have come together to investigate ways as urban dwellers relate to nature and our environment. With increasing awareness of the impact of climate change, their work looks at both our resilience in the face of personal tragedy and our collective helplessness in the face of looming global catastrophe. Their work explores issues of shelter, self-protection and the reparative capacity of art and nature.
The idea behind the activity
Artists have always had a powerful relationship with nature and share many concerns with ecologists on environmental issues, climate change, and how this will affect people and communities in the near future. This concern is reflected in many national initiatives such as the RSA Arts and Ecology Centre, The Tipping Point Initiative and The Radical Nature Exhibition at the Barbican.
The artists hope to build links with and support local community environmental organisations by occupying an empty shop in Hastings town centre and transforming it into a creative environmental hub. The intention is to provide an opportunity for discussion between artists, environmentalists and local communities through making work that is active, socially engaged and relevant to the lives and concerns of the residents of Hastings and the wider implications of climate change.
The exhibition was showing in Autumn 2009 at
197 Queens Road, Hastings, TN34 1HA
Talk About The Work 2009
Artists’ Talks & Peer Critique
Talk About The Work is a monthly networking and peer critique group for professional artists to meet, exchange ideas and show each other their work. TATW also hosts regular artists talks @ £3 on the door.
Wednesdays, 5.30-8pm
The Reading Room
2009 TATW Dates
25th March
29th April
20th May – Rose Wylie (talk – £3)
24th June
22nd July – John Kindness (talk – £3)
30th September
21st October – Venue: Hastings Museum, Indian Summer (talk – £3)
18th November
For further information contact Annabel Tilley by email:
talkaboutthework@yahoo.co.uk
12 Claremont Hastings East Sussex TN34 1HA
Reparation
Maggie Cullen
Reparation
As one of the artists who exhibited in the Personal Growth Show in the summer of 2008 Maggie Cullen was working in Claremont during a period of bereavement. She wrote then that the exhibition ‘Personal Growth’ had particular resonance. She found that the pain had stripped away stuff that was not important and gave new focus to her research.
She has just spent three months working in the studio that belonged to her friend, the sculptor Sonja Wyndham-West, following a second bereavement. This exhibition is the result of this period of reflection and her personal need to work and to make art as an act of quiet survival.
The sculpture uses furniture that belonged to her brother and her mother and that dates from her childhood. It has been recycled as an act of reparation.
Exhibition opens on the 30.05.09 and runs to 31.05.09 at The Reading Room, 12 Claremont, Hastings TN34 1HA
2 – 6pm
Outline
SON OF TRACE PRESENTS -OUTLINE
Exhibition curated by seaec
Outline refers to the parameter, indicating or enclosing a shape or thing. It defines boundaries and maps contours. It explores features and theories, diagrams and proposals. Outline passes on ideas and travels to the outer edge.
This exhibition shows work by the following artists and designers:
Gareth Hallberg
Andrew Gibbs
Elena Massucco
Chris Hipgrave
Matt Sindall
Adam Sindall
Hannah Sindall
Craig Riley
Peter Davies
Dissimilar
Mike Griggs
Ben Pawson
Ben Sheehan
James Norton
Henry Martin
Jem Turpin
Exhibition opens at 6pm on the 21.11.08 and runs to 30.11.08
For more information please go to http://outline.seaec.co.uk
Personal Growth
Installation sculpture provides a physical experience. The site of and relationship between parts of the work are as important as the materials used. The environment is the common link between the artists; it’s constructed, managed and natural elements. In their work the artists explore how these elements interact.
Underlying art, there has always been the social function of the artist as an interpreter of cultural values. As friends the artists are also connected through a love of gardening, digging and growing vegetables. This exhibition draws on these connections and questions the sustainability of cultural and economic systems. It attempts to offer new understanding of how we relate to the world.
Using the Pine Gallery as a site of open-ended experimentation has allowed the artists to test observations and make interventions into the materials and processes of growth. The ideas being developed have started from: tapping into a moment of transcendence – the nuts and bolts of technologies connecting with the wonder of a starry night; exploring impermanence through the information encoded in the materials of everyday objects; focusing on the miniature world of plants and having attention brought to the detail, delicacy and sheer beauty of communities and relationships; and exploring the rituals, beliefs and language of a cultures’ approach to maintenance.
Within the constant light levels and the continuous walls and floor of the workspace; the artists have used live materials, bringing issues of preservation, constancy and control to the fore. Sculpture’s requirement to manipulate a material from an understanding of how it behaves has had to incorporate considering less stable elements: levels of enzymes, moisture content and conditions for photosynthesis. Through artists’ discussions of materials and how they function, in this ‘studio’ environment the notion that on one timescale or another everything is impermanent and all will pass has been raised. “Time is the essence of the real design problem.” (Duffy 1990) Rather than a perspective of futility the artists have been engaged in fixing, harvesting, controlling, using grids and systems, moving, grouping, ordering and organizing.
The works in this exhibition are not intended to be fully resolved, final pieces but work that begins to question ‘ways that we relate to nature in an urban setting’ through sculpture based research.
Duffy, F. Measuring Building Performance Facilities, May 1990 p. 17.
Talk About The Work 2008
Talk About The Work is a monthly networking and peer critique group for professional artists and filmmakers to meet, exchange ideas and show each other their work.
If you are interested in contemporary critical debate, talking about your work, and the work of others, please join us, it is an open group. The 2008 Talk About The Work is organised by Annabel Tilley with assistance from Judith Alder and Kim Wan. Group members take it in turns to lead the group.
We meet monthly on Tuesdays between 5.30-8pm in The Reading Room, 12 Claremont, Hastings.
If you require further information contact Annabel Tilley.
2008 TATW Dates
Tuesday 29th Jan
Tuesday 26th Feb
Tuesday 25th March
Tuesday 22nd April
Tuesday 20th May Artists Talk – Gaia Persico
Tuesday 17th June
Tuesday 15th July Artists Talk – Susan Collis
Tuesday 23rd Sept Delaine Le Bas
Tuesday 21st Oct
Tuesday 18th Nov
Staircase
Staircase – New experimental art space
Claremont Studios are, this week, launching Staircase, a new experimental arts space devised by Sharon Haward and Annabel Tilley.
This maverick but perfectly formed space is literally situated on the staircase and landing of the second floor of the 12 Claremont Arts Space which is situated in the ever- popular and newly-burgeoning artists quarter of Hastings, known locally as the Trinity Triangle.
The idea behind this exhibition is to challenge artists to create experimental work that is motivated by the limitations of this unconventional space, as well as being inspired by the dynamic atmosphere of the various creative industries located within the building.
The launch show is entitled: Instruction No. 1 and has asked artists to ‘Make a piece of work about the space, in the space, for the space.’ It features site-specific artwork by Claremont Studios artists: Esther Appleyard, Xaverine Bates, Sarah Broome, Sharon Haward, Sarah Kimber, Caroline Le Breton, Annabel Tilley and Chris Watson. The show will be open over the Bank Holiday weekend, Friday, Saturday, Sunday and Monday, 2-5 May from 2-6pm.
Talk about the work
Talk About The Work 2006/07
Talk About The Work is a monthly networking and peer critque group. The 2006/07 series was devised and organised by Sarah Kimber and Annabel Tilley and funded by the Arts Council and Awards for All. The sessions were led by Sonja Wyndham-West.
Talk About The Space – October 2007
A week-long experimental workshop run by Sarah Kimber in the Claremont basement space with work made by artists Christina Keep, Venetia Amorel, Annabel Tilley, Esther Appleyard & Sarah Kimber.
Drawing Debate – September 2007
An audience discussion and debate on Contemporary Drawing Practice was led by a panel of three Jerwood Drawing Prize Artists, Heather Deedman, Annabel Tilley & Mikey Cuddihy.
Write off
There’s something extraordinarily satisfying and deeply challenging about the physical experience of cutting into something, then separating the fragments of a once-conventional structure exposing the inner layers, layers which remain clearly visible against the outside surfaces. The newly exposed edges talk of the violence and struggle encountered during this seemingly doomed process leaving us with alternative forms of expression.
Kenton Lowe and Jonathan Cole infamous for their anarchic artistic approach to their practices have collaborated their disciplines of sculpture and painting in this most recent project and joined forces with New Directions, a residential home caring for young people suffering from the recent well-publicised Prada Willi Syndrome. Twelve young individuals have joined Kenton and Jonathan and through a combination of enthused aggression and exhilarated expression the space in the Pine Gallery at 12 Claremont in Hastings has been transformed to bring together this exciting new show titled ‘Write Off’.
Here To There
A project to explore the connections between people and places through site specific art work in and around Hastings Town Centre and Ore Valley. Claremont Studios will be running a free taxi service between 12 Claremont Art Space (next to Hastings Central Library), and Ore Valley. The aim is to bring visitors into the valley and to take residents into town to view other art works on show in and around the town centre.
The service will continuously between from 12 Claremont, Cotswold Close, Halton Estate and Farley Bank.
So come along for the ride, meet the artists, see their work, or simply do some shopping and get a free trip home!
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