Two artists are showing their work together for the first time at CoExist Galleries.

What connects Phyllida Barlow & Fiona MacDonald is a painterly approach to sculpture.

Phyllida Barlow has responded to the gallery space with several site-specific installations. Firstly, a blue wall splits one of the rooms in two. It prevents access to the other side but this act of restriction access is contradicted by the height of the barrier – it’s short enough to peek over and there are also few deliberate holes.

‘I wanted to use the lenght of the space and brake it up with an intervention – that’s how the wall emerged. Fiona’s work is more interior, mine is more of an outside object brought inside’, says Phyllida. She used the space ‘as a material’.

If the ‘wall’ was horizontal, her other installation is decidedly vertical: two long black poles hold a large sheet against the ceiling of  the Winch room. In response to the room retaining much of its industrial features, the poles appear to be integrated into the space which also contains an easily overlooked, almost hidden piece above the door. In the small gallery, two black round objects made from strips of different fabric are suspended from the ceiling, they are light and fluffy but fill the room with an uncanny presence.

Fiona MacDonald’s works are interpretations of famous paintings but they are not faithful copies! She doesn’t work from reproduction images, but  relies instead on her memory and sketches.  ‘The point is not to copy the painting but allow it to translate itself though the process of thinking,’ she says.

Her gravity-defying compositions are made from clay and covered with colouring and silicone which gives them a fragile, porcelain-like quality.

Phyllida Barlow & Fiona MacDonald and the curator Jon Kipps talked to IDEA13 about the exhibition:

OPEN Until 5 November – Wed-Sat 10-4, Sun 12-5pm

COEXIST WEBSITE – click HERE

Now It Feels As It Should Be at CoExist Galleries is open until next Friday, 23 July. See the video from the opening here.

Now It Feels As It Should Be is curated by Jonathan Kipps and Amy Mckenny, it presents large scale drawings of people falling by Alannah Barker, tactile sound sound cube by Damian Robinson and Stuart Bowditch, moving light sculptures by Mark Davey, paintings by Edward Morris and glowing works by Eva Rudlinger.

See the IDEA13 video from the opening of the exhibition with the curators and artists talking about the work:

Open until Friday 23 July, Thu & Fri 10-2pm and Sat & Sun 10-4pm.

CoExist Galleries, Old Water Works Building, North Rd, SS1 2YA
WEBSITE

The Interruptions of the Ordinary exhibition opened last week and a pocket torch was handy as all its three parts were plunged in darkness.

Main Gallery: Installation:  ‘POST’ curated by Charlie Levine in association with Hayley Lock

The Winch Room: Video projection:  ‘Unnamed’ (2007) – Joe Moran, Florence Peake, Kirsty Richardson

The Small Gallery: Grandma’s House, John Adams

See the IDEA13 video from the opening, with Hayley Lock and John Adams talking about their part of the show:

Open till 22 April (Thu-Fri 10-2pm & Sat-Sun 12-4pm)

CoExist gallery @ TAP, North Rd, Southend on Sea, SS0 7AB
CoExist WEBSITE.

Curator Charlie Levine and artist Hayley Lock invited friends and acquaintances from the social network facebook to take part in a Christmas card/collage exchange at TROVE, Birmingham in January of this year. Their show POST is traveling to The Coexist Gallery @ TAP in April and you can take part too… Charlie Levine and Hayley Lock hope to accumulate new artists and new collage works responding to the idea of POST as the show moves around the country. POST includes works by national and international contemporary artists which were created and then posted through the physical, and therefore traditional route of the postal service in the UK.

Artists include:
Darren Banks, Liz Bradshaw, Martyn Cross, Vicky Cull, Tracey Eastham, Rebecca Foster, Anna Francis, Anneka French, Helen Grundy, Lulu Horsfield, David Kefford, Hayley Lock, Renauld Loda, MAMA, David Miller, Malcolm Moseley, Justine Moss, John Rixon, Sarah Sparkes, Emily Speed, Ana Benlloch and Stuart Tait, Cathy Wade, Edward Wakefield, Lucy Wilson, Jennifer Zoellner

If you are interested – and for more information – please check out the links below and send your  submissions by POST to: CoExist @ TAP, (The Old Water Works) North Rd, SS0 7AB

Link to FACEBOOK PAGE.

The curators will choose the work they wish to include in the exhibition when ‘hanging’ the show…

On Thursday, Odd Volumes exhibition opened at the Coexist Gallery @ TAP. Group of artists deconstruct books, exploring the relationship between words and visual art.

In 1878 a group of English bibliophiles founded The Sette of Odd Volumes. In 1887 The Club of Odd Volumes was formed to promote, among other things, the exhibition of books. Set Of Odd Volumes is an exhibition of artists who are putting books, maps, music and love letters through extreme processes. Some of the artists are exclusively exploring books in their practice while others have happened upon a book that inspired a new piece of work.

Strips of pages spring out of books or they are made into an illegible object. The reading is transformed into a different type of ‘looking’. In the video below, Amy Mckenny who has curated the show talks about her idea behind the project and her work, whilst Madelaine Murphy and Alice Mahoney discuss each other’s work.

Exhibited artists: Karen Apps, Julie Dodd, Samantha Y. Huang, Laura Keeble, Alice Mahoney, Amy Mckenny, Madelaine Murphy, Carol Ramsay, and Thurle Wright

Open until 25 February, Thu-Fri 10-2pm, Sat-Sun 10-4pm.

Coexist Gallery @ TAP / North Road, Old Water Works building, North Road, Southend, SS0 7AB

Coexist WEBSITE.

SET OF ODD VOLUMES opens at Coexist gallery @ TAP next Thursday 4 February, 7-9pm.

In 1887, The Club of Odd Volumes was formed by a group of English bibliophiles to promote, among other things, the exhibition of books. Set Of Odd Volumes is an exhibition of artists who are putting books, maps, music and love letters through extreme processes. Some of the artists are exclusively exploring books in their practice while others have happened upon a book that inspired a new piece of work.

EXHIBITED ARTISTS: Karen Apps, Julie Dodd, Samantha Y. Huang, Laura Keeble, Alice Mahoney,
Amy Mckenny, Madelaine Murphy, Carol Ramsay, and Thurle Wright

Coexist Gallery @TAP / Old Water Works, North Road, SS0 7AB

www.coexist.org.uk

PRIVATE VIEW Thursday 7 January, 7-9pm

Exhibiting artists: Stuart Blackmore, Nicholas Brown, Beatrice Deleplanque, Seth Guy, Joseph Kopiel, Cheryl Lane, Alice Mahoney, Amy Mckenny

A Reunion – An Exhibition – A Collaboration – Work by eight 2002 UEL graduates, including drawing, painting, printmaking, sculpture and installation.

Coexist Gallery @ TAP

For one day only TAP plays host to CoExist’s Open Studios and Winter Art Fair, an eclectic marketplace featuring locally-based Artists and Craftspeople offering gifts you most definitely won’t find on the High Street.

Email coexist AT hotmail.co.uk for more information on being part of the event!

Stop by at TAP this Thursday between 7-9pm for the opening of all three new shows there.

Main Gallery:
GOSSAMER, SEEC Foundation A&D Live Project

Winch Room: DUNCAN CROSSLEY

(c) Duncan Crossley

Duncan Crossley is Drunk on Freedom. His first solo show is set to confront the public with the breadth and intensity of his vision. No subject is immune to Crossley’s amazed gaze, from national variations in jailhouse weapons to canine haute couture. In a series of extraordinary objects – engineered to an insane level of precision – Crossley presents a world where Formica flowers, industrial weaponry and baseball collide in a celebratory manifesto for the joyous weirdness of contemporary existence.

The Small Gallery: STUART BOWDITCH – WINDOWS MEDIA PRAYER V4.0

Windows Media Prayer is an ever expanding collection of photographs taken of and through windows. They explore the different shapes and settings in which windows can be found, as well as the different environments that they simultaneously join and separate. Windows Media Prayer demonstrates the disparities that can lie just a few millimetres apart, separated by something barely visible. The glass serves as a barrier between the viewer and what can be seen, thus inviting you and denying you in the same instance.

Open 10-2 Thu- Fri & 10-4 Sat & Sun 
or by appointment: coexist@hotmail.co.uk

Coexist at TAP – for more info CLICK HERE