Tsunami

Blowing your own Trumpet

One Step

Recent residencies I have undertaken tend to use collaboration as a modus operandi, and include a Creative Lab at CCA Glasgow, 2012: a Collaborative Residency for Counterflows Music Festival 2013, with Berlin based sound artist, Annette Krebs, at CCA Creative Lab; a Rough Mix cross platform collaborative residency for Magnetic North Theatre Co, at Tramway March 2013; a Protest and Propaganda Lab at Metal Liverpool; and a Team Effort residency at South Side Studios, Govanhill, Glasgow.

Recent exhibitions include Sluice Art Fair, London; Turin & Marseille Artists’ Exchange for WASPS’s Studios; ‘Rough Edit’ at InterviewRoom11, Edinburgh Art Festival 2014, ‘East End Transmissions’ at the Pipe Factory: ‘New Wave’ at the “Old Hairdressers”, ‘Seven Inch’ and ‘Record Store’ at Monorail Records, Glasgow and Avalanche Records, Edinburgh; ‘Fools Gold’ at the Briggait Project Spaces.

Wealth

I am currently President of Scottish Artists Union, (the main representative voice for visual and applied artists living and working in Scotland, campaigning for better working conditions for the artistic community); I am also a Freelance Representative for Engage, the National organisation for gallery education; and a Regional Advocate for the Paying Artists Campaign.  These involvements doubtless have an indirect influence on my practice through an ongoing preoccupation with the politics of creativity and cultural engagement.

At the moment I’m up on Lewis, about to start a project for ‘Mapping The Arteries’ through An Lanntair, using the bus routes of the islands as a starting point to develop artworks that will be sited in the iconic bus shelters of the islands. This commission will be an interesting way to develop new works that further consolidate different aspects of my practice.

More: Website | Twitter

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Grab your calendar and take notes as we bring you our Top 5 Central Station during GI2012:

Everything Flows
Patricial Fleming Projects
Patricia Fleming Projects presents ‘Everything Flows‘ Glasgow Artists/Musicians. Their Art and Recordings 1990 – 2010. This limited edition EP will comprise a selection of the outstanding ‘experimental art into music and performance’ scene growing from the Glasgow visual art sector over the last twenty years. The EP will present artists, their music and musical influences together for the first time.
20 Apr – 5 May | Tue – Sun, 2.30 – 6.30pm | Queens Park Railway Club

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The Mutual Charter
A campaign-style build up of events and online content as marked the progress of 14 simultaneous international projects created by members of The Mutual: an artists’ co-operative comprised of more than 150 early career creative practitioners. These projects will surface throughout the festival at various public and private venues and will be united in a publication launched at the end of the festival.
20 Apr – 7 May | see site for details

Keep an eye out for Packing And Mourning, a project by Penny Anderson, Eija Hirvonen, Shelton Walker and Youngjoo Yoo, previously featured on the site. You can see it at St Judes Hotel. Here’s the listing.

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RECORD STORE
For World Record Store Day 2012 (21st April) and to coincide with GI (Glasgow International Festival of Visual Arts), Monorail Records will be hosting an exhibition curated by visual artists Chris Biddlecombe and Janie Nicoll. This installation is the result of a collaborative project involving the creation of approximately twenty record cover artworks created by a wide range of Scottish artists, each of whom have a strong interest in or connection to music making; artists who have been in bands, who DJ, or who use music as a theme in their art making practice.
20 Apr -  May | Monorail Records
[Preview: 19 April | 6 - 8pm | Monorail Records]

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Field Office
An exhibition by first year Masters students from Valand School of Fine Arts, Gothenburg, Sweden. Field Office combines a space for showing work and a place for doing work. With an understanding of a field office functioning as an outpost for a series of explorations, conducted as fieldwork within the city, it serves as platform for a series of individual and collaborative art works and events, surveying, passing through and engaging with Glasgow. Coinciding with the Glasgow International Festival, the project connects with this event while also extending into Glasgow’s local art scene.
26th Apr – 7 May | see site for times | Repositioned
[Opening night 25 April - DJ set from Belle and Sebastian]

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Nothing About Us Without Us Is For Us
A public art event using obsolete technology to hurl language across Glasgow’s river Clyde. Led by Matt Baker & t s Beall, as part of Glasgow International Festival Visual Art 2012. It’s described as a sort of action / happening / community celebration / anti-festival. It is preceded by lots of workshops and tours that involve different groups of folk and institutions in and around Govan. There are around 20 workshops and events in total – some of which are organised for specific groups, and others which are open to the public. See the individual event listings here.
20 Apr – 1 May | See site for specific events | Around Govan

Tell us about any shows, exhibitions, gigs, things of interest that you have on during GI 2012. It doesn’t have to be on the “official” GI2012 programme to grab our attention.

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See more Top 5′s selected from the network here.

Alex Hetherington is a performance-based visual artist and writer, dividing his time between Scotland and Northern California.

This particular piece is an extract by Alex from, The Consequence, an installation work with Glasgow artist Janie Nicoll at the Centre of Contemporary Art in 2008. We suggest you take 5 minutes to immerse yourself in the work, then click through to see more of Alex’s work.

Find out more about the work here.
See more film work by Alex here.
Visit Alex’s site here.
See more work on Alex’s flickr here.
Follow Alex on Twitter here.

 http://tinyurl.com/ya67g5w

headdressSM by Janie Nicoll. See more work here.

Last week a cross-section of creative life in Glasgow met to pin down ways of progressing the project. This was a follow up to the first Vacant Lot session earlier in the year – an open-house brainstorming evening that saw thirty artists, film-makers and designers throw ideas around about making work in unused and derelict spaces.

Sat round the table this time were Bill Millett (artist / film-maker / photographer) and Tom Warren (architect & part of Govanhill Baths ART) who between them kick-started this project way back when. Also Leah & Ruth Black who are two thirds of The Gin Palace (design exhibited in unused spaces), Neil McGuire (designer & VisComm tutor at GSA), Kate Bowen (independent producer), Angie Bual (producer at the National Theatre of Scotland), Lex Lamb (small-media-large, a design agency) and yours truly (also a producer.) We were also joined by artist Janie Nicoll.

The idea of the session was to focus the myriad thoughts discussed at the first Vacant Lot open-house. Our main aim – to come up some practical next steps to take forward the impetus to make work in disused, derelict and vacant spaces on a strategic and potentially national (Scottish) level.

The following suggestions emerged, with the table in agreement that a few of key pieces of work need if we’re to move towards dovetailing the two key parties involved in Vacant Lot: namely i) the creatives in need of space and ii) the owners of unused spaces who might benefit from short term inhabitants.

1. Let’s build a portfolio of successful case studies of Vacant Lot projects. These don’t have to be Scottish examples. They don’t have to be British – why not look internationally at how people are doing this sort of thing? They do need to show what added value the project brought to the space and possibly to the area surrounding it. Ideally we’ll contact people involved in these case studies and involve them in Project Vacant Lot as ambassadors.

2. We need to quantify what developers / owners of unused space gain from hosting creative work. Why – ideally in financial terms – is it better to have creative work in an empty space than nothing at all? This information is probably the key that will persuade property owners to loan out their spaces.

3. We’ll list the funding bodies and trusts already supporting these kinds of project around the world would be useful. Alongside this we should create a list of potential organisations who might be interested in funding something Scotland-based.

4. We need to gather together a portfolio of key partners who at some point in the not so distant future might need to sit round a table to discuss a Project Vacant Lot strategy. Including city and borough council representatives, developers, politicians, representatives from Creative Scotland and so on.

Finally…and this is the fun bit…let’s work towards an actual Project Vacant Lot. What’s the point in strategy if you don’t get to practice what you’re preaching??

So then, here at Central Station we’re wondering whether our first birthday might be a good moment in time for a big old Vacant Lot shindig. Anyone fancy it? A creative festival that exists on here and in found spaces, some time in September / October. Sounds good, no?

And that’s just about it. Those of you who were at the meeting, please do expand on things I’ve undoubtedly missed. Those of you weren’t, add your thoughts below. And everyone, watch out for a short questionnaire we’ll be circulating shortly – probably via the medium of blog. We’d really like you to answer a few short questions to help us move this forward.

If you’re interested in finding out more about Vacant Lot, please see the rest of the blogs here.

Over and Out.

So then, a quick update for all of you out there about what’s going on re Vacant Lot.

About a month ago 30 or so members of Central Station gathered here at our offices in Glasgow to discuss Bill Millett and Tom Warren’s combined blog about the use of derelict and unused spaces. After a couple of hours of talking, a few very tangible ideas began to emerge around strategy and production of projects in unused spaces in Glasgow, Scotland and across the UK.

Since then a few of you have been posting links to other projects that are already happening and researching what’s already going on out there.

On Wednesday 24th a smaller group of creatives and producers with experience of making work in unused spaces will be meeting to try and thrash out the specifics and logistics of a plan that allows forward movement – the possibility of starting to talk to funding bodies, property developers, city councils and so on. We’ll be sharing the results of the session on here so everyone can peruse and comment.

Hopefully in the not so distant future we’ll hold a case-study orientated get together that everyone can come to, where people share their experiences of working in this sort of realm. A conference of sorts, somewhere to get the creative juices flowing.

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Image courtesy of Janie Nicoll

Highlights of the day for me were hooking up with old friends and acquaintances, and of course meeting new people, putting names to faces and faces to names. I really enjoyed the studio visit hosted by Matthew Dalziel, it was great to hear about their current projects and I think it always helps to illuminate an artist’s practice when you hear it straight from the horse’s mouth. Makes it all the more real, and clearer as to the reasoning behind the work etc. Next up, a visit to Generator Projects and a slide talk with the current committee, who have recently been upgrading the building. Its good to see how they have been building and expanding on the reputation already achieved, punching above their weight as ever!

Managed to miss the preview tour of the McManus but caught the end of the Realtime Worlds Studio Tour, – interesting to see the set up but ultimately ‘not my bag’. Then on to the Visual Research Centre at DCA for a tour of the Centre for Artists’ Books and the Rewind Micro Cinema, the cutest cinema I ever did see, with seats that looked damn comfy after all the legwork of the previous few hours. On to “No Reflections” in the gallery, with Martin Boyce in conversation with Tricia Fleming. I didn’t make it to Venice so it was a good opportunity to see the work albeit in a very different context.

Finally to the Hannah McClure Centre for exhibition talks by Yann Seznec and Jon Gill of Superfly, talking about their work/projects and then “This Is..” with guest speakers from Yuck & Yum, Gen Ryan & Jo Swingler; Lyall Bruce & Johanna Basford; Arika; Colliderscope and Georgina Follett from the V& A Project. All in all giving an interesting and varied overview of things happening or about to happen in Dundee.

Its encouraging to see Dundee burgeoning with projects, opportunities and possibilities for the future, and that the arts and the creative industries are at the forefront of this change.

After all that a glass of vino and a chance to chat, was a well earned finale to a busy and thought provoking day.

Thanks to all the CenSta team for inviting me along, I really enjoyed seeing Dundee from this perspective.

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To find out what Dundee Popup was all about or to read more reviews & blogs  from the day, click here.