London-based artist Katie Surridge spent one month in TAP’s Winch room making new work, and six runner up artists are exhibiting in the rest of the gallery. She has developed an ambitious installation, taking ownership of the Winch Room to create an exciting new exhibition. Surridge focuses on discarded and natural materials caught in the delicately beautiful stage between production and decomposition. Finding an aesthetic in these disposed or unloved items is important to her practice.

Among shortlisted artists is Russian tographer Alena Zhandarova whose pictures are colour and light, mixed with a little fur of drama.

Finnish artist Eeva-Mari Haikala works mainly within video, photography, and installation, drawing from th traditions of the performance. The concept of the painterly has formed the visual frame of her work, wi references to still life painting and theatre.

London-based artist Hanae Utamura contemplates the human condition on the move, in different circumstances such as urban or natural landscapes that exposes a negotiation of life and how it survives in its own system. Mostly action based interventions, Utamura’s work eventually disappears and only a record of the action remains.

Jennifer E. Price from Kent subverts basic and traditional printmaking methods in her “inkblot” series, printing directly from actual (often large in scale) objects. The resulting work spans across the boundarie of printmaking, drawing, sculpture, site based installation and public intervention.

Leigh-on-Sea artist Matthew Chambers has begun to keep records of his studio practice in the format of video.

Southend-based artist Sarah Buckle makes work about the unsaid. She is interested in the sub-text and what lies behind the closed doors of polite society, in what people say/show and what they really mean/are.

Open until 26th of February.
LINK.

Free entry.

7.30-8.30 Films with introduction:

EDWIN ROSTRON: Visions of the Invertebrate is a collaboration between artist Edwin Rostron and musician Supreme Vagabond Craftsman. The film uses a hybrid process of hand-drawn animation, digitally coloured and assembled.



OLIVIA HUMPHREYS: Oneironauts – The Dream Travellers

+ 8.45pm – 9.45pm

International short films including:
- I swam in the Sea Last Week by Lebanese artist Nesrine Khodr
- Deborah Stratman’s (US) The Magicians House
- Coal Father’s (US) litany of concern, Are You Worried? and Family Time
- Tim Webb’s (UK) 15th Feb, a mix of live action and animation to a poem by Peter Reading
- Bill Morrison’s Light is Calling – ‘A scene from The Bells (1926) is optically reprinted and edited to Michael Gordon’s 7 minute composition. A meditation on the fleeting nature of life and love, as seen through the roiling emulsion of an film.’

For full programme, check this website before the event.

Supported by Essex & Suffolk Water and Arts Council of England

Curated by Michaela Freeman.

Future Dates:  24 Feb and 30 March.

Website.

Michelle Turner, Sioni Richards and Helen Tritton decided to work with the space of the gallery, creating site-specific installations in response to it.

‘We are interrupting the space, having intervened and disrupted it, all of our pieces are conceptual and unusual.’

They talked to IDEA13 about their individual projects and also working together:

CoExist Galleries, Old Waterworks Building, North Rd, Southend, SS0 7AB

Website.

Why would you recommend your workshops?
‘For those used to using an automatic digital camera the primary gain from a beginner’s film course is that
a) you learn the differences that aperture sizes, ISO rating & shutter speeds have on your images (as these also have equivalents within a digital camera), and
b) as film costs money, necessarily you have to slow down and consider how you use these elements effectively – and make a more considered composition.

The cyanotype courses are a great intruduction to printmaking using photographic images. I demonstrate how to prepare the light-sensitive solutions and get people coating paper and making prints soon afterwards, the contact printed images are exposed under UV light or in the sun during the summer. Large and medium format film negatives can be used, as can flat objects, fabrics and plants. People can also bring digital negatives on acetate – for the uninitiated I explain how to make these using online free imaging software during the workshops.’

Is any previous experience required?
‘No. Anyone can come along and I am always happy to answer any questions people have beforehald to ensure they get the most out of the day.

‘I’ve had lots of people return to do the workshops more than once. The cyanotype workshops are addictive and it’s a lovely feeling to be working with light in the winter.’

Forthcoming courses:

14 January 10.30am-2.30pm. – Cyanotype Workshops – £20 – Bring plants, fabrics, opaque and transparent materials, black & white film & digital negatives for a fun day of contact printing using the sun. There will also be a demonstration of how to produce your own digital negatives for this and other projects using free online software.  Tea and coffee is available (you may wish to bring a packed lunch).

Book here.

7-8 January & 4-5 February – 10am-4pm – 2-day Weekend Photography Course – £150 – Working in small groups (no larger than 3 per class), this intensive beginner’s course is designed to allow maximum tutor support for each person. The first day is spent onsite at TAP and the surrounding area shooting black & white film, exploring how different aperture settings, exposure lengths and film speed ratings affect image quality and how to improve your picture-taking with simple tweaks. We then move into the darkroom and develop the films using lightsafe tanks.

The second day is spent in the darkroom, producing contact sheets and final prints from your negatives and learning how to correctly make enlargements using test strips. If time allows the session will touch on image manipulation in the darkroom: making corrections, dodging & burning and solarisation.

This course is an introduction designed for those with no previous experience in a darkroom and all developing and printing materials needed are included in the course cost.

You will need to bring with you a roll of HP5 film and a 35mm film SLR camera.

Further information about this course can be obtained by emailing Emma at darkroom AT coexist.org.uk.

Tea and coffee is available (you also may wish to bring a packed lunch).

Starts at 7.30pm.
Free entry.

7.30pm
Films with introduction:

ALICE ANDERSONis currently showing at CoExist Galleries. Her creations span several art forms, from video to photography, to publishing, and drawings. She has been building a kind of novel since 1999 in which each episode is a self-contained personal, poetic and absurd Adventure.

EDWINA ASHTON makes videos, drawings, sculptures and costumes.

8.30-8.45pm – break

8.45-9.45pm – an hour of international short films including a cult experimental film, JOHNNY YESNO – a 1982 (but 1960’s retro) cult film by PETER CARE based in Sheffield with a soundtrack by Cabaret Voltaire.
+JULIA POTT (UK): Belly
KIM PIMMEL (US): Compressed 02
LIA ANNA HENNIG (G/UK): Water Ballet
FRED L’EPEE (CH/GR): The Passengers
MANDY MEISSNER (DE): Death with the Robots Vadders
SWOON (BE): De droom van de trappen (Staircase Dream)

Curated by Michaela Freeman.

@TAP, North Rd, Southend, SS0 7AB

Supported by Suffolk and Essex Water, Arts Council of England and MUTE.

http://www.lastfridayshorts.co.uk/

Alice Anderson

Called Years After Years, the main installation consists of 365 metal rods running for floor to ceiling with red dolls’ hair wrapped around them. They each symbolise a day in the year during her childhood the artist spent in Algeria, her mother’s homeland.

Alice Anderson showed IDEA13 around:

The wrapping of hair is a ritual for Alice, reminiscent of something she did as a child, and adds to the feeling of fragility of these otherwise sturdy metal rods. The audience’s movement is restricted, inevitably initiating individual body dance or performance, another aspect that the artist is interested in.

Alice Anderson will show and introduce her short films at Last Friday Shorts at TAP on 25 November 2011 at 7.30pm.

The exhibition is open until 11 December

More information on CoExist website.

Following her recent exhibition, Alice Andersonʼs Childhood Rituals at the Freud Museum, Anderson has marked a rupture with the figurative and engaged with geometry, which opens new directions in her work.

In this exhibition, Anderson gives shape to an autobiographical timescale, counting days, recalling body changes and organising a series of protective elements. 365 DAYS, is a sculpture consisting of 365 vertical bars of copper and dolls hair. Stretching from floor to ceiling, the bars divide the whole of the gallery’s space, whilst still allowing the visitor to navigate the area inside. Each bar marks a day of the year Anderson spent in Algeria at the age of eleven. The series of bars suggest a calendar and show a given time and space becoming a ritual space by reactivating physical and psychological states.

TOISE is a sculpture made of 11 plates of copper. Every rectangle corresponds to a year of Anderson’s life, and recalls how her grandparents used to measure her physical growth, marking the wall year after year. Questioning time, and particularly the passage of time and its ineluctability, Anderson’s dolls hair retains her memories and refers to the rituals completed with her own hair and threads during her childhood.

In this exhibition Anderson has pushed the material of dolls hair to new boundaries with the series of works skin sculptures by repeating an action of dividing and separating the material itself. This
“untraditional” material forms a skin-like surface consisting of many layers. In the Winch Room, these sculptures upon the wall are representing WINDOWS, an escape as well as protection.
Alice Anderson uses her life as a starting point of her work to explore time and memory. For her, the
act of remembering is a creative process in which memory is constantly reinventing itself. She creates performances recalling gestures of rituals that she was doing as a child. Taking cues from the postminimalist movement (heritage of Joseph Beuys), Anderson’s new sculptures, open new grounds where neurosciences and Art are confronted.

Born in London, Anderson grew up in Algeria and France. Alice Anderson studied with Christian
Boltanski at L’École des Beaux-Arts in Paris and completed an MA fine Art at Goldsmiths, University of
London, in 2004.

More information on CoExist WEBSITE.

7.30-8.30 Films with introductions:

ALEX PEARL – Pearlville was a film factory which ran for two weeks producing 18 films using and reusing the same props, settings and actors. The films were made and filmed by a number of gimcrack automata and edited by Pearl late at night.

EDWINA ASHTON makes videos, drawings, sculptures and costumes. Mr Panz at Lake Leman, notes on m, (notes on mammals and habitats) is her first animation.

8.30-8.45 – break

8.45-9.45pm – 1 hour of experimental films and videos including The Origin of Creatures – 2010 – A futuristic vision of a world after a catastrophic disaster. In this dark parable mutated limbs are looking for cooperation, but due to miscommunication this mission is doomed to fail.

Full programme will be announced early next week.

Free entry.

Curated by Michaela Freeman.

http://www.lastfridayshorts.co.uk

Last Friday Shorts is supported by Suffolk and Essex Water, Arts Council of England and Netherlands Institute for Animation Film (NIAf)

An evening about books, poems and plays, Literature at TAP offers a platform to discuss issues in creative writing. The evening also aims to encourage the act of reading and writing, whilst looking at how literature nurtures the production of artistic work.

The evening will include talks from poet and novelist, Lavinia Greenlaw and recent Theatre postgraduate, Elisa Adams. Greenlaw will focus her talk around her current soundwork Audio Obscura currently on display at King’s Cross St Pancras. Using the premise of a camera obscura Greenlaw seeks to study the act of ‘dark listening’ and the way in which individuals project narratives onto seemingly abstract images.

Elisa Adams will be discussing the creative process she undertook in the production of her latest play DA‐AH‐UHN‐SAUR. She will focus upon the struggle that each writer faces in finding the correct aesthetic in which to place their work. Whilst also looking at how the physical body might be represented within the text.

The final part of the evening will see both speakers joining event organiser Lee Sullivan in discussing the books that have been personally inspirational to them.

For more information, see CoExist website.

For more information about the artist, see IDEA13’s previous post.

Video from the performance by Cool Diabang:

Photos from the opening Between Dog & Wolf: