Mat Bo is currently showing his film at Thames Delta at Focal Point Gallery. When he was also invited to organise an event to accompany the exhibition, which is inspired by the local art scene, he thought it would be interesting to bring together artists and musicians in an unusual networking mini festival and fair, expecially highlighting the peripheral industries that exist around the music scene.

SAAL-HALLA was held at Kursaal, in close proximity to Tiffins (ex-music club) and the Chinnerys, and the participants included: Level4 art magazine, the Railway Hotel, Culture as a Dare, Southend Punk and Noisy fanzine, and the artist Mark Titchner.

Here they briefly introduce their work:

For more information about Thames Delta, click here.

Participants include Screenary, Culture as a Dare, Level 4, Noisy Fanzine, Maple Studios, Monday Funday, Southend Punk History/Angels in Exile, The Pink Toothbrush, The Railway Hotel, Liberez/NoRecording Studios and others.

There will also be special performances by artists and musicians during the event as well as DJs who will provide a soundtrack to the day’s proceedings themed around Essex’s celebrated and ongoing contribution to popular music.

Schedule of performances:

Q&A with Mat Do and Saim Demircan
1.00pm

The co-organisers of SAAL-HALLA will discuss the ideas behind the event in relation to Southend’s alternative music scene, and artist Mat Do’s personal connection to it.

Liberez
2.00pm

Local musicians Liberez will radically rework three famous Dr Feelgood songs using a live recording of the band at the Kursaal in 1975, creating a unique composition performed especially within the architecture of the famous venue.

‘The restoration of the submerged‘
3.00pm

A reading and sound work by the artist Mark Titchner to launch of ‘ENDS THOU‘, the artist’s new site-specific temporary public artwork produced for the exterior of the railway bridge that spans Southend-on-Sea‘s pedestrianised high street.

For further information: contact Saim Demircan, Focal Point Gallery Curatorial Associate – Offsite Projects: +44 (0)1702 534 109 / saimdemircan@southend.gov.uk

The Kursaal Function Suite, First Floor at The Kursaal, Eastern Esplanade, Southend-on-Sea,Essex SS1 2WW, UK

Exhibited artists:
Ross Birrell, Rick Buckley, Simon Critchley, John Cussans, Jeremy Deller and Nick Abrahams, Mat Do, Jonathan Dronsfield, Lucy Harrison, Scott King, and Haroon Mirza.

Thames Delta ‘reflects the growth, variety and development of popular music by those groups and individuals that have grown up or lived in the Southend-on-Sea, Canvey Island and Basildon area since the late 1940s. The project draws a time-line from the end of World War II and the opening of The Kursaal – Southend’s legendary amusement park, where Howard Baker and his band reigned for twenty-one years – to groups of the early twenty-first century such as These New Puritans and The Horrors.’

‘The project puts forward an audio-visual narrative of changing fashions in music, covering not only different performers, but the local venues that presented them. The town’s cinemas, theatres and hotels hosted the likes of Bo Diddley, The Rolling Stones, Louis Armstrong, Roy Orbison, The Beatles and Gerry and the Pacemakers, while even a ship – sailing from Southend to Calais – became a mobile venue for rock ’n’ roll stars including The Shadows, Tony Sheridan, and Southend’s own Paramounts.’

The exhibition takes place simultaneously at the Focal Point (till 30 June) and Beecroft Art Gallery (till 16 June).

Also at the Focal Point’s Project Space, Giorgio Sadotti’s exhibition, ‘THIS THIS MONSTER THIS THINGS’, ‘an exquisite corpse made from objects produced by fifty-one artist friends and acquaintances’.

Focal Point, Southend Central Library, Victoria Avenue, Southend, website

Marc Camille Chaimowicz Jean Genet… The Courtesy of Objects, Chapter Three, featuring Dan Fox is a new exhibition at Focal Point.

Chaimowicz is famed for his installations and performances that include preparatory photographs, collages and prototypes, as well as found objects and artwork by others. As a Frenchman who works out of London, he has shown in major cities around the world including Paris, Zurich, Berlin, Vienna and New York.

Originally presented as part of a programme of events of the Norfolk and Norwich Festival 2011, part one of this three-part touring project was curated by Norwich University College for the Art’s Professor Lynda Morris. Entitled ‘Jean Genet…The Courtesy of Objects, Chapter One’, it explored themes derived from Genet’s life, from his empathy with Palestinian refugees and the Black Panther movement in the USA to high profile endorsements such as those of Jean-Paul Sartre (in a book entitled Saint Genet) and David Bowie (who wrote Jean Genie in tribute to Genet).

Part Two of the touring project took place at Nottingham Contemporary, and this exhibition also hosted the work of others, including six major sculptures and paintings from the 1950s by the great Modernist sculpture Alberto Giacometti, generously lent by the Fondation Giacometti, Centre Pompidou and Tate.

For more information, see Focal Point’s website.

This talk provides the chance to hear the curator of ‘Kaiki’, Saim Demircan, discuss the exhibition and expand upon the recent chronology of Kai Althoff’s diverse projects.

For exhibition images and video with Saim Demircan, see a November blog post about the project on IDEA13.

This event is free, however booking is required.

For further informationand to book tickets, please contact Lib Fox on +44 (0)1702 534 108 / libfox@southend.gov.uk

Venue: The Pod, South Essex College, Luker Road, Southend-on-Sea, Essex SS1 1ND, UK

Don’t miss tomorrow’s ‘Painting and Performance’, a presentation by Catherine Wood.

It starts at 10.00am at The Pod.

Catherine Wood, Curator of Contemporary Art / Performance at Tate Modern, will discuss the relationship between painting and performance since the 1950s, the collaborative elements of contemporary art practice and artist Kai Althoff’s work.

The Kai Althoff is an artist currently showing at Focal Point Gallery – for photos and video from the exhibition, see our previous post here.

The Pod / South Essex College, Luker Road, Southend-on-Sea, Essex SS1 1ND, UK

Well, the artist, Kai Althoff, does exists, and is alive and well, having premiered his theatre piece at the Palace Theatre two weeks ago. The experimental theatre piece was what the Focal Point originally commissioned the New York-based artist to do as one of their Offsite Projects. But when they asked him to accompany the piece with a solo exhibition at the gallery, he invited them to curate it without any involvement or advice from him, apart from few tips about whereabouts of the previous works.

Saim Demircan, the Focal Point curator, visited Althoff’s father and also a large collection of the artist’s works – over 60 pieces – acquired over the years by a German collector Alexander Schröder, selecting the works mostly from these two souces. Some have only ever been shown privately and range from works Althoff made when he was a teenager, to a limited edition pair of custom-made shoes finished by the artist’s blood and produced by Paragon Press.

The exhibition can be seen as a ‘weird retrospective’, says Demircan. But a retrospective that also introduces the artist to the UK audience that might not be familiar with his work, as Althoff hasn’t shown in the UK since 1997 and this is his first ever UK exhibition in a public gallery.

Saim Demircan showed Idea13 around the exhibition:

Curator’s talk by Saim Demircan will take place on 25 January 2012 at 12pm.

Focal Point Gallery, Southend Central Library, Southend on Sea, Victoria Avenue, SS2 6EX, WEBSITE

@ Dixon Studio, The Palace Theatre, Southend-on-Sea
Thursday 3rd November at 1.30pm
Friday 4th November at 7.30pm
Saturday 5th November at 7.30pm

The play will contain a cast including Yedidya Oelbaum, Yair Oelbaum, Jessica Polaniecki, Kai Althoff and Daniel Cowen who will perform a short run of three events within the theatre’s regular program. There we will be buried is a drama about a woman, who together with her closest friend, sets out on a surreal and character-defining journey to find her lost daughter.

Tickets: £8.00
Concessions: £6.00

For further information and to book tickets, contact Lib Fox on 01702 534 108 or libfox AT southend.gov.uk

‘The Year of the Left Hand’ in the project gallery is a play on the Alastair Crowley’s concept of ‘the left hand path’ as a method for practical magic, whilst ‘Folkal Point’, in the main gallery, consists of a series of back-painted Perspex paintings of face jugs inspired by artefacts found near London Wall, two large metal wells, a video of lava lamps and several wall collage drawings.

More information on Focal Point website.

Aaron Angell:

The Year of the Left Hand’ / ‘Folkal Point’ includes a range of new material from the young artist’s burgeoning practice, such as wall collages, video, sculpture, ceramics and painting – all made especially for Southend.

The title of the first series of work, ‘The Year of the Left Hand’, refers to the artist’s joy at producing a deliberately skewed hand-crafted works, or objects formed through unexpected textural amalgamations, which contain a pleasurably incorrect form of beauty. Additionally, the title links to Alastair Crowley’s idea of following ‘the left hand path’ as a method for practical magic.

The starting point for Angell’s second new series of work, ‘Folkal Point’, connects the artist’s interest in obscure folk music, rural and craft-based activities, ecological concerns and the marginal or radical-regional context of the gallery within which his work is situated. Here, ceramic braids, terracotta coins, back-painted Perspex paintings of face jugs, coins and mushrooms, together with four large wall drawings made with torn paper, two large black metal wells and a video of lava lamps, combine in the gallery to form a rumination on utopian activities from the past and present.

One could say that these two installations and Angell’s current work in general is influenced by a diverse set of cultural reference points from the early 1970s; aside from the aforementioned British folk scene, two popular films from 1974 act as examples. Contes immoraux (Immoral Tales) directed by Walerian Borowczyk starring Paloma Picasso, which in Angell’s view is the ‘ultimate 70s erotic medieval movie,’ andZardoz, the famous science fiction fantasy directed by John Boorman starring Sean Connery and Charlotte Rampling, both form a link to the artist’s current way of thinking.

For more information see Focal Point Gallery’s WEBSITE.

Focal Point, Southend Central Library, Victoria Ave, Southend