Chris Lang’s artwork spans painting, sculpture, installation, photography, film and poetry. This exhibition brings together much of his life’s work and provides an emotional insight into the life of a largely unknown, yet prolific painter.

The exhibition gives particular focus to Lang’s paintings which dominated so much of his adult life and heavily informed his sculptural multi media works. Semi-abstract pieces, often auto biographical in subject matter, combine portraiture and self portraiture with a language of marks, colours, layers and moods. Chris Lang developed a very raw, painterly form of expression which manages to convey feelings, head spaces and atmospheres, almost impossible to articulate with words.

Open until 20 May.

CoExist Galleries, TAP, North Rd, Southend, SS0 7AB – website

Awarded by the University of Essex, the BA (Hons) Fine Art degree programme at South Essex College’s Southend Campus offers students the opportunity to develop their Fine Art practice. Exploring specialist disciplines, students engage with a range of practical, theoretical and critical studies.

This exhibition is the culmination of three years intensive study and marks an important transition from Fine Art student to professional practitioner.

CoExist Galleries at TAP (Temporary Arts Project), The Old Water Works, Southend. SS0 7AB.

Private View: Thursday 3rd May, 7 – 9 pm. Then Friday 4th and Saturday 5th May, 10 am – 4 pm.

Their exhibition called STRUCTURE is open until 22 April.

IDEA13 talked to three of the artists – Alison Hand, John Wallbank, Lyndsey Searle - about their work in Structure:

For more information, see Coexist website.

7.30pm – FILMS with ARTSTS’ introductions:
ALISTAIR OLDHAM’s film about YOHA* (Graham Harwood and Matsuko Yokokoji) with YOHA’s introduction.

JAMES LOWNE - Our relationships will become radiant – 3D animation

TIM SKINNER - Giverny’s Deep Dark Recesses – 4mins 11secs / Illuminated – 3mins 23secs

8.45-9.45pm – an hour of short films and animations by international artists, including:

KEIICHI MATSUDA – DOMESTIC ROBOCOP: about the social and architectural consequences of new media and augmented reality.

*Further info:
Invisible Airs – Documentary by Alistair Oldham ‘The computerized database is fundamentally changing society. From communication, to government, transport, shopping, friendship, health, education, narrative and even the way we watch film, the database is radically transforming our lives. And yet we are only barely aware of its existence, we don’t really know what a database is : like electricity, it’s pervasive and all around us , but we cannot actually see it.
Digital media artists YOHA set about making the database visible.’

Entry: Free

Curated by Michaela Freeman.

LAST FRIDAY SHORTS is a monthly series at TAP with three of the artists attending to introduce and discuss their work.

LAST FRIDAY SHORTS is supported by CoExist Arts, Arts Council England and Essex and Suffolk Water.

Through the use of construction, layering, intuition, and pattern, Alison Hand, John
Wallbank, Lyndsey Searle & Ross Walker comment on how environments are shaped and
adapted by humans. They strengthen our awareness of the spaces we occupy and how
we can engage with them in a less rigid, and utilitarian way.

As two painters and two sculptors showing work together, strong dialogues have
emerged between pictorial spaces and 3D objects; spaces that are interactive and theo-
retical. The way that architecture defines the areas we inhabit, and the structural tenden-
cies in functional design are both referenced by the artists as they employ their own
structural aesthetics.

For John Wallbank the act of making is almost more important than what ends up being
made. In the same way that drawing can be seen as a way of representing something in
the real world, he uses basic or crude materials for their immediacy, collating shapes in
a form of sculptural note making.

Alison Hand’s practice draws parallels between how landscapes have been depicted his-
torically in painting and current architectural modes of visualising, planning and changing
a landscape.

Lyndsey Searle’s objects are designed to amplify the way human beings feel, engage and
respond to their spaces. Her practice is concerned with the way humans mark and define
their territory through the use of architecture and graffiti.

Although Ross Walker’s paintings less openly reference objects in the real world, sculp-
tural forms clearly emerge through his use of coloured planes of paint. Compositionally,
Walker uses the mechanisms of abstract painting to articulate a theoretical space.

CoExist Galleries / TAP, Old Waterworks Building, Southend, SS0 7AB – WEBSITE

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/