Artists:
Joe Devlin,
John Goodwin,
Pam Holmes,
Ines Rae,
Suzanne Smith.
See blog for more info...
Joe Devlin
The present is known as the present only
through evidence of a past that was once
a present.
Joe Devlin’s practice employs the use of
marginalia. Working in libraries over the
years has led Devlin to search for clues
relating to past readers interaction with
books. Devlin reads the library rather
than just the books contained in it. For
the billboard project he will be showing
a blank, yellowed, dog-eared page taken
from a book by the French philosopher,
Jacques Derrida.
John Goodwin
Recently included in East International
06, Goodwin submitted photographs
of his family as they grew up in
Manchester, these intimate images he
sees as moments between moments.
He is interested in the fatigue of the
image and a continued fascination
with other people’s snapshots. Former
international rugby player (toured nz
with England 1985) turned painter. ma
Fine Art Manchester. Currently Fine
Art Tutor at Plymouth College.
Pam Holmes
Creates photographic docudramas.
The work is a critique of cultural
constructions and aims to challenge
context and provoke conversations with
the audience; the images act as mirrors
to allow the viewer to project their own
personal narratives.
Recent projects include Here+Now 2006,
4Elsewhere – Art06, Don’t be afraid – pri 2005.
Inés Rae
Works with photographic media, video,
and text to explore ideas around the
vernacular and everyday. Recent projects
include: Kurl up n Dye, Cube 2006; Settling
In, curated with Jo Lansley, 2006; Mind
Where You Look, Gallery Oldham 2005; Joy,
International 3, Manchester 2004;
A Real Work Of Art, Folly Gallery, Lancaster
2003.
Suzanne Smith
Some things are never appropriate and
they are the best.
Sometimes graffi tti feels like boys taking
back the streets from The Man and
making them more intimidating for
The Ladies.
Some people think everything they think
is worth saying.
Sometimes I get angry and sometimes I
think sit down and shut up my bottom
feels funny but who gives a shit.
Born 1974, Nottingham.
Studied Fine Art at Manchester
Metropolitan University.
Recently exhibited at Kiasma, Helsinki
2006 and The Lowry, Salford 2007.
About me:
Artists:
Joe Devlin
John Goodwin
Pam Holmes
Ines Rae
Suzanne Smith
See blog for more info...
Coinciding with Look ’07, Inbetween Spaces takes place at various billboard sites around Manchester. This exhibition explores the idea of the advertising billboard as a potential conduit for alternative artistic communication.
The project arose out of Ines Rae’s publication ‘Kurl up n Dye’, which explores the vernacular of the British high street. Her series of photographs and typography set out to examine the pockets of creativity and spontaneity in some small businesses, and an element of this sentiment remains in this project, with an image carrying a reference to the word play and visual puns on the backstreets.
The project has been expanded to include artists whose work could have a dialogue with a billboard site and whose work is, in some way, marginal. Some of the artists achieve this through reference to specific issues, while others are more playful regarding what you expect to see on a billboard. Ultimately the images put on the advertising billboards are of things we would not normally expect to see there, dressing down some assumptions about the use of such spaces. The work of five artists is featured; Joe Devlin, John Goodwin, Pam Holmes, Ines Rae and Suzanne Smith.
The sites can be viewed from the road or by pedestrians, making the work accessible to anyone taking a particular route around the city; either to and from work, while shopping, or purposefully following the map which will be available on the opening night and to anyone who requests one by emailing this myspace site.
A bus tour will take place at the private view on Friday 27th April to allow the viewer to experience the work at each location, and the spaces inbetween.
Artists have often used billboards as a device to politically charge a privately owned advertisement space, within a public arena. Billboards provide a rare opportunity for individuals and groups to claim back spaces, which are more often than not, for the sole use of private corporations competing for public attention. In an attempt to infiltrate these spaces, artists have temporarily bought billboard sites, interrupting the supposedly seamless surface of capitalist imagery. However if we take a cursory look at some of the most effective and affective billboard artworks in recent history, we can see that the seams of advertising space are teaming with artists’ interventions.
New York City has been the location for two important, personal transformations of the billboard site. The increasing amount of electronic advertisement hoardings has been an invasive and strangely exciting development in even the most peripheral cities. In Spring 2000 Swiss artist Pipilotti Rist was commissioned by the Public Art Fund to make an artwork to occupy the Panasonic Screen in Time Square. Rist dreamt up Open My Glade, an individual invasion of this iconic public space, and painful dislocation of individuals, through technology, evident in a visceral way. Passers by and tourists in Time Square, would have been shocked to be confronted by a woman mixing saliva, red lipstick and bright green eye shadow by squashing her face vigorously against the transparent screen. Witnessing Rist, desperately trapped and attempting to break out of the screen, the viewers would be helpless, unable to assist in her plight, and assaulted by these painful screen images.
In the early nineties Felix Gonzalez-Torres produced his billboard projects, such as the black and white photograph of an unmade bed, Untitled, at 31-33 Second Avenue at Second East Street, again in New York, and again installed at the bequest of a mega-art institution, The Museum of Modern Art. Like Rist he spoke of a wish to infiltrate the urban space in a similar way to a virus. And yet again in the United States, between 2004-2005, the Walker Art Centre Billboard project commissioned five artists to make work, whilst the main building was closed, on a 14-by-48-foot billboard located northeast of the Walker and the Minneapolis Sculpture Garden in downtown Minneapolis. Takashi Murakami, Yoko Ono and Matthew Barney were amongst the artists approached.
Like advertisements, these artists attempt to draw the viewer into their work engaging with them on a personal level, in an attempt, not to sell to the public, but rather to provoke a shock, that there is no commercial intention behind it. Of course this is to ignore the fact that artists have a commercial stake in the world, especially when backed by a mega bucks institution. It is interesting to note that more and more advertisers are adopting campaigns, which keep the consumer guessing, alluding to a product in increasingly esoteric ways, baffling this consumer at least. It seems that these advertisers are aping the strategies of artists, so that intention is the only differentiating factor.
Bringing this short text back to the North West, there have been many instances of artists ready, willing and able to explore this heavily chartered territory of the billboard, Inbetween Spaces being the latest in the line. What is anticipated through the bus and walking tours of the various sites around Manchester and Salford and Beswick, is that the journey will be an important element in the project. The billboards will provide both sentences and punctuation in an essay of the marginal in an around the urban sprawl.
I edited my profile with Thomas' Myspace Editor V4.4
THE NANO_CORPORATION IS AN INTENDT TO CRITIQUE, MIMIC OR OTHERWISE EXPLORE THE LOGIC OF SOCIAL NETWORKING SITES AND OTHER WEB 2.0 PHENOMENA THROUGH ART.
// nano_COLLAGE [ view collage ] _________________________________________ The images above are fragments of the nano_COLLAGE, an online project that consists on an assemblage of images uploaded by the nano_CORP's members. You're asked to add any image you want, with any dimension, at any place on the nano_COLLAGE's canvas. _________________________________________ VIEW PROJECT >>
THE NANO_CORPORATION IS AN INTENDT TO CRITIQUE, MIMIC OR OTHERWISE EXPLORE THE LOGIC OF SOCIAL NETWORKING SITES AND OTHER WEB 2.0 PHENOMENA THROUGH ART.
Hi. I hope you had a great weekend. I just wanted to let you know that I'll be reading from my book Death of a Salaryman this Friday 13th July at 1 pm in Manchester Central Library. If you're free come by -- it would be great to see you! Catherine O'Flynn will also be reading from her book What Was Lost which was long listed for the Orange Prize and featured as a book of the month on Simon Mayo's book club.
YOU my MYspace friends are some of the most talented people I've ever met. For realz. This weekend I had an idea, instead of promoting "me" I'd promote all of YOU. Yeah, an art exhibit featuring YOU, why not? So, Post your art, drawings, album cover, grafitti - JUST ART though okay. I'll be updating my page and sending out some emails inviting people to stop by and check out all of YOU. So, to quote the great hip hop philosopher, Russell Simmons, DO YOU!
YOU are cordially invited to get "all up in MySpace". - TMNK
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