Tweespoor opens tomorrow

Photo: Frederik Beyens

Here is a photo of some lights being changed in The Ranonkel, it's been a busy week...riding around Turnhout by bicycle the panniers filled with bulbs - 800 have been installed. Roll on tomorrow.

'800 Lights' (2012) being installed

The bulbs arrived yesterday and we have started to install the '800 Lights' in Turnhout, the Tweespoor exhibition at De warande opens on Saturday 17 March - 20 May 2012.

Turnhout 2012: 800 Lights

Sketch for 800 Lights, Laura Wilson (2012)

An invitation to change a light.

A new commission by artist Laura Wilson as part of Tweespoor for Turnhout 2012, Wilson will change 800 Lights in the city to a different colour, the work celebrates the anniversary of Turnhout since it became a free city in 1212. From the streetlights in the market place, to spotlights in restaurants, to desk lamps in homes, spread throughout the city, each lamp will represent one year for each of Turnhout's birthdays.

The residents of Turnhout are invited to be involved in the work through hosting a changing of a light. To register your interest please follow this link http://www.warande.be/activiteit/laura-wilson

Join the facebook page -----> http://www.facebook.com/events/107439906048085/

The exhibition opens on 17th March 2012.

Images from Brick Project @W139 in Amsterdam

(Left to right) Tobias Collier, Ali MacGilp, Adrian Lee, Adam James, Andrew Graham, Mark Wayman, Laura Wilson, Rhiannon Armstrong, Photo: Sanne Van Renesse

Photo: Sanne Van Renesse

Brick Project, Laura Wilson 2012

Photo: Sanne Van Renesse

Brick Project, Laura Wilson 2012

Photo: Emma Peascod

Brick Project, Laura Wilson 2012

Photo: Emma Peascod

Brick Project, Laura Wilson 2012

Photo: Emma Peascod

Brick Project, Laura Wilson 2012

Photo: Sanne Van Renesse

The evening, Climb Like a cucumber, fall like an aubergine was reviewed in Metropolis M, please follow this link: http://metropolism.com/reviews/climb-like-a-cucumber-fall-like/

Climb like a cucumber, fall like an aubergine at W139

Photo: Adrian Lee, performance 'Ban this filth'

Climb Like A Cucumber, Fall Like An Aubergine

AN EVENING OF PERFORMANCE FROM LONDON

Rhiannon Armstrong/ Tobias Collier/ Adam James performing with Andrew Graham/

Adrian Lee/ Mark Wayman/ Laura Wilson

Curated by Ali MacGilp

Saturday 21 January 2012

Doors 20h00 Start 20h30

Tickets at the door: Euro 6,-

Language: English

NB Mark Wayman will present his piece twice that day, once for free at 17h00 [meet outside W139] and once during the evening’s events.

Climb like a cucumber, fall like an aubergine – Syrian proverb

For Climb like a cucumber, fall like an aubergine, artists from London have created performances in response to the context of W139; its historical buildings, prostitute windows, brown cafes and hordes of tourists. These site-specific works will emerge from the long-term, open-ended investigations of their practices. These artists all share a research methodology. They invite us to share the fruits of their observation and reexamine what we overlook. Their subject matter is belief and knowledge systems; physics, spirituality, capitalism, history, communication, town planning.

Two complimentary sensibilities shine through in these artists’ works. Adrian Lee, Adam James and Rhiannon Armstrong explore the taboos and unspoken laws of social interaction with humour and are by turns cynical, provocative and optimistic. They share a fascination with the commercial culture we are embedded in, its marketing and self-help strategies and those on the margins of society. Tobias Collier, Laura Wilson and Mark Wayman look poetically at the material or philosophical structures that underpin our society. With intense sensitivity they examine our physical surroundings, from architecture to the universe.

From London, it feels like the world is becoming a more tumultuous place. Wars in Iraq and Afghanistan continue, ten years on from the events of September the 11th. Osama Bin Laden has been assassinated, there have been financial and natural disasters for much of the globe. The Arab Spring is a year old. In London people are concerned about the unelected, right-wing government, the recession and fierce cuts to public spending, which have impacted upon the arts, student fees and benefits. Protests, riots and looting, media phone hacking scandals, the tightening of immigration laws, royal weddings and the impending Olympics have also been at the forefront of people’s minds. Relations between the younger and older generations and confidence in politicians are at an all-time low. The domination of social media, such as twitter and facebook, alongside scripted reality shows produce anxiety that we are becoming dislocated from real human interaction.



Rhiannon Armstrong’s practice is an ongoing series of performances entitled Instructions for Empathetic Living. For W139 Armstrong is creating a new interactive performance drawn from her Archive of Things Left Unsaid. The audience will be given access to the deepest darkest secrets of anonymous Londoners, collected over the last five years. This performance also launches a new international chapter for the Archive, with the opportunity for Amsterdamers to contribute their own testimonies to the collection.

Tobias Collier examines our subliminal relationship to space using the flotsam and jetsam of daily existence, yoking together the materially contingent with the intellectually imponderable. For W139 Collier will present the next installment of Anthropos his live tattooing of his body. He will first select a text to read then burn it to create the pigment which is inserted into the surface of his skin, adding to the ever growing constellation across his body. 



By deconstructing and re-staging encounters with fringe characters Adam James’s work raises questions about the artist and audience’s role as voyeurs. He is attracted to the relentless drama of the street, the odd gestures, peculiar voices, laughs and awkward encounters. Working with Andrew Graham, James will spend a week studying local marginal figures in the area surrounding W139. In a series of small interventions in the street, they will appropriate the physical appearance, costumes and gestures of these chosen characters, inverting the role of the spectator. The work will culminate in the gallery on Saturday night. 



Adrian Lee unpicks and reworks the trappings of a commercial culture, which form the background noise to our daily lives. Lee’s performance for W139 takes the maxim ‘there’s no such things as bad publicity’ to its logical conclusion. Publishers, filmmakers and artists frequently court controversy, willing censors, religious groups and the self-appointed guardians of moral decency to ban or protest at their works. A lone figure will stand outside W139 his placard bearing the familiar message ‘Ban this Filth’. Is he really protesting at the work inside or is he a stooge, trying to provoke interest amongst the passing tourists seeking sex shops, window prostitutes and brown cafés? 



Mark Wayman takes as his starting point the fabric, function and significance of a chosen location. Through an intense verbal description of it he spins an elaborate alternative version. For W139, Wayman has created a new site specific performance. Occupy Amsterdam now has a much reduced territory on the Beursplein. For one night only, Mark Wayman will reclaim the rest of the square for Occupy and put back all the little tents, exactly as they were.


Laura Wilson is interested in the history and future of locations and their architecture and how we interact with them. Wilson will present a talk about Brick Project at W139, with a particular focus on the Amsterdam School, Michael de Klerk and the Brick Expressionism movement. Through her Winston Churchill Memorial Trust 2010/11 Fellowship, she has researched indigenous masonry construction methods, bricklaying and brick manufacturing and architectural history in China, Peru and Holland.


Gnomon, 2011

Gnomon, 2011

A momentary obstruction is created – twice a day, at midday and at another point before sunset. An actor closes the window blinds one by one, from left to right. Then the actor walks to the other end of the room and opens the blinds one by one, from left to right.

‘Gnomon’ takes place between two spaces. The duration of ‘Gnomon’ is dependant on the space it takes place in and how many window blinds there are. It can take place with just one window blind. ‘Gnomon’ can take place more than twice a day, but it must take place on the hour during the hours of daylight beginning at midday.

Presented at 'Portrait of Space', Clonlea Studios, Dublin - 9th-11th September 2011

Portrait of Space, Dublin

Portrait of Space

9th - 11th September 2011

Portrait of Space is both an exhibition and a seminar. It brought together a group of artists, curators and theorists to participate in a ‘living’ project concerned with the politics of space. A concern that includes the frameworks through which art is made, displayed and disseminated.

Over three days, Portrait of Space inhabited the indoor and outdoor spaces of Clonlea Studios, a suburban idyll south of Dublin City. The aim was to produce a dynamic space where audiences, participants and works could meet in a communally constructive manner. Participants added to and changed the environment through installation, performance, intervention and presentation, but also through the interweaving of group discussion. The context of the venue, content of the work and modes of presentation that all fed into the debate, promoting a swing between active participation and critical engagement. The project was an open process, inviting the public to come and go, to take part in discussions, timetabled events and view the works displayed.

Portrait of Space asked how we understand and describe space; how we navigate, interrupt, produce and reproduce its multiple forms. It was an investigation into possible ways of re-negotiating the gap between object and subject, making and speaking; between artist, art work and audience. How can we evade the hierarchy of one or the other and engage in the relationship between them? How can we give space for their differences while acknowledging similarities and interdependence? Portrait of Space sought to emphasise the extent to which politics of space are implicated throughout the art making and presenting process, and the importance in re-imagining those politics for contemporary practice.

Participants will be invited to share, discuss and debate, as well as eat and relax together for the duration of the project. Each participant will bring a work; whether a static work of art, talk, paper, performance, video or some other contribution. Each will act as a catalyst for group discussion to tackle common and conflicting concerns that emerge. Some works will be installed ahead of time and will remain in situ for the duration of the weekend while others will be part of a scheduled series of events.

Participants: Loukia Alavanou, Ruth Barker, Rebecca Birch, boyleANDshaw, Sally-Ginger Brockbank, Clodagh Emoe, Paul Goodwin, Francis Halsall, Saoirse Higgins, Jefford Horrigan, Jesse Jones, Thomas Kratz, Fiona Marron, Niamh McCann, Padraic E Moore, Garrett Phelan, Andrea Philips, Stephen Rennicks, Martina Schmuecker, Jan Verwoert, Laura Wilson, Mick Wilson

Curators: Teresa Gillespie and Rose Lejeune

Contact: portraitofspace@gmail.com

website: http://portraitofspace.wordpress.com

Where: Clonlea Studios, 28b Sydney Ave, Blackrock, Co. Dublin