ARTISTS TALKING

# 53 [25 September 2008]

Bad Paintings-Simon Kennedy

The current exhibition at the AirSpace Gallery gives another twist to the status of the celebrity. A mixture of smiling and disgruntled faces greets you as you enter the gallery space; familiar faces such as Jade Goody and Victoria Beckham are painted with such bright and vivid colours that they take on a garish and cartoon quality. The faces have been removed from their normal context and transformed into merely portraits, no longer the struggling celebrity their faces and features can be considered without the blaring headlines or ridiculous sub stories of a glossy magazine. The headlines are available as the titles of the work, but by being removed from their usual context they become even more ludicrous and gruesome; a fair comment on the trashy magazines that concoct stories out of nothing.

The backgrounds of the paintings have a still life quality, carefully placed items and stripes highlight or clash with the subject offering further insight and references to Vermeer, with emphasis on the earring detail. Other paintings such as ‘I saw Jack on holiday and I thought; Jesus Christ what did I see in you’ show marks where parts of the painting have been re-painted, or perhaps the whole painting has been re-done. Layers of paint and obvious changes to the arrangement references a restoration process but also points to the change in status when one is considered a ‘celebrity’; what we see is a mask hiding the real person and the real life.

With the addition of ‘A short interview with myself by myself’ we gain insight into the art work, but only as much as the artist is willing to give; without interrogation or awkward questions from an external interviewer. The result is an interesting twist on the artist statement, but without the slightly egotistical language often used in such documents.

Another interesting addition to the exhibition is the piece entitled ‘Confession’, the lonely rant of the artist, who appears to be a little more than pissed of with his current situation, the struggle for ‘the big idea’ and the integrity of the people and artists around him.

Review by Katie Shipley

# 52 [16 September 2008]

Conjunction 08

Conjunction 08 is Stoke-on-Trent’s first major Contemporary Art Biennial. Stoke-on-Trent is changing, through the organisations involved in this project we want to ensure this is a change for the better, by ensuring that contemporary art is seen to be at the forefront of redevelopment and regeneration. It is supported by Arts Council England, North Staffordshire Regeneration Partnership, Stoke on Trent City Council, Business Link, Staffordshire University, The Potteries Museum and Art Gallery, AirSpace Gallery, Wren Park and Let Them Create.

The theme of Conjunction 08 is FANTASTIC, FOUND and FAKE, which could apply to much of what is considered relevant in the sphere of contemporary art, from the everyday to the extraordinary.

Conjunction 08 will open on the 8^th November across the city and will run until the 13^th December. 

This years event will include over 40 artists including 25 new commissions by artists of international, national and regional significance.

The Biennial will take place in the city centre, predominately at Potteries Museum and Art Gallery, AirSpace Gallery, Staffordshire University and Bethesda Chapel, there will also be site specific artwork in and around the city centre. To accompany the exhibitions there will be opportunities to attend artist talks, workshops and guided tours of the whole event.

For more information e-mail airspaceinfo@btinternet.com

# 51 [10 September 2008]

 Simon Kennedy

‘Bad Paintings'

Preview 19^th September 7pm - 9pm

20^th - 4^th October

‘Bad Paintings' is the second solo show by the Chester based artist Simon Kennedy. Kennedy returns to show his work at AirSpace Gallery after graduating from Staffordshire University in 2004.

Kennedy delivers work that is blunt yet poetic, he refuses to categorise his use of medium and as such enjoys the freedom of choosing whichever suits his subject. More recently he has been exploring the subject of celebrity, from the nouveau riche to the cursed genius. This, along with an increased desire to further examine the work of traditional painters, has led to ‘Bad Paintings.'

This is AirSpace's first show solely dedicated to painting since opening in 2006. The AirSpace Gallery strives to present viewers with a fair representation of current contemporary art and is excited to be adding painting to its C.V.

# 50 [9 September 2008]

Tales from a Changing City

Danny Hill and Darren Washington

The opening of the current show at the AirSpace Gallery saw many familiar faces; it’s great to see so many people supporting local artists.

The artwork is a collection of photographs showing the all too familiar scenes of derelict buildings and building sites across the city. Many of the photographs on show are accompanied by a passage of text, highlighting parts of the city and giving a taster of the people within it. The passages vary from discussions of next door neighbours to local barbers, colourful and fun, yet with a harsh reality emphasised by the use of the familiar Stoke on Trent dialect. For me the dialect is hard to take in, I find that reading it out loud helps to confirm a few sentences.

The images themselves have an eerie quality, bulldozers lurking down small back passages and empty shops; one series is taken at different angles giving you the feeling that the photographer has taken the images as he flees from something else.

The images have enhanced shadows and highlights, clarifying the image, almost making them a window into a fantasy world; as if you could reach your hand in a pick up the brick in the image.

# 49 [1 September 2008]

Johanna Hällsten

INTERCOM

10^th October - 1^st November

Private view 10^th October 7-9pm

We are pleased to present the latest solo exhibition by Swedish artist Johanna Hällsten.

INTERCOM continues Hällsten’s interests in translation, mediation and duration. Through two installations, different aspects of interaction occurring within dialogues will be explored.

The first installation situated within the window will be exploring notions of translation and mediation within the structure of a dialogue, together with the impossible task of inter-species communication.

A sparrow is talking to a badger and a woman. The characters involved are not visible, yet the dialogue itself can be heard through the use of vibration speakers attached to the windowpane. It is reminiscent of a science experiment, where the absurd situation somehow seems plausible because their conversation is mundane.

In the second installation, inside the gallery, the audience will come into contact with PA announcements. The announcements are drawing parallels to their function within the working environment, such as factories, offices and supermarkets. Hällsten is interested in distorting and altering the way in which the audience interacts with the impersonal instructions and messages. The instructions/messages are announced at intervals and fill the gallery space, changing its atmosphere. It creates an intriguing relationship between the lack of visual presence and emphasis on the normally overlooked sounds that the audience themselves produce.

During the private view the installation in the gallery will be interactive and the one-sided aspects of the PA system will be questioned and altered, becoming a direct dialogue between it and the audience.

Artist’s contact details:

07890570775

j.hallsten@lboro.ac.uk

# 48 [21 August 2008]

Tales From A Changing City

September 5th - 12th, Preview 5th 7-9pm

Darren Washington and Danny Hill

"Th' bulldozers came last wayk; thee didna waste any tarme...

Now, ow ah can see from mar back yard is a sea of debris,

red, black 'n' grey; and th' tide stretches back as far as thayse tired owd eyes of marne can see fer.

Pretty soon, ah suppose, ah'll bay the eownly one arahind 'ere that's left..." 

Tales from a changing city is the first of a series of exhibitions from the community based company of the same name. The company was formed by Local Photographer Darren Washington And local Writer Danny Hill. The aims of there company is to highlight all aspects of change from a city undergoing vast regeneration. Starting with a selection real life images from the changing city with a collection of fictional stories in the first of series of exhibitions with many different styles and collaborations of work to come.

# 47 [15 August 2008]

Defamiliarization: an exploration of responses through text

The finale of the Dialogue Box series is currently on show and we are excited about the reactions we will receive. The artist Diana Ali has given us some words on the work:

'The Dialogue Box exhibition displays a stage of the ‘Defamiliarization’ project. The words exhibited are passed onto an artist in a different country. This artist then alters or re- interprets the words and substitutes it’s textual format into a visual one.  They then take a digital picture of its revised form.  The photograph must be a representation or be characteristic of the city or country it is in. All photographs are then returned to the original artist who came up with the words so they are re-introduced to the ‘defamiliarized’ version of their words.

The work started from local contributors and has now expanded around the globe. It questions the interpretation of someone’s creative thoughts into another’s and the visual interpretation of the written word. Who has the authorship to do this? But at the same time the project is allowing artists from around the globe to share their joys and anxieties of their heritage, language and countries to each other.

Artists around the world can see who have translated their words and in which country they were transformed by viewing this blog:

http://www.dianaalidefamiliarization.blogspot.com/ ' 

As Dialogue Box comes to a close this year we are hurridly planing the next series and will be updating the blog with news on it's progress. We are really pleased with the work that has been shown, we have had some great responses and have enjoyed working and making connections with all the artists involved.

# 46 [15 August 2008]

Who Are We? Who Am I?

This years degree show at the AirSpace Gallery came with a twist, by choosing to exhibit students from both Staffordshire University and Loughborough University AirSpace hope to encourage communications between different artists and also to deliver an even more diverse show. The eight recent BA graduates provided the gallery with just that; from freakily realistic wax figures in the window, to a loud exercise video the exhibition was filled with excitement, and yet punctuated with moments of clarity.

Wendy Meyer provided a distraction for the streets of Hanley with her lifelike sculptures in the window space of the gallery. Meyer made her self young by placing a wax replica of her own head in a pram with a babies body attracting attention from passers by, even some who complained on the sunnier days when the figures were removed for fear of melting; ‘I’m not sure if I like it but I still want to see it’. This was juxtaposed with an aged image of herself situated inside. Meyer here is dealing with self perception, do I look old? Do I look young?

Matt Smith entertained us with short videos created using a blue screen technique; to see a person trying to interact with themselves again brought thoughts of self perception. If I wasn’t me would I like me? These types of questions were consistent throughout the exhibition and remind you of what it is to embark on a new beginning.

Other artists, including Alishia Morrison and Joanne Mostyn, used subtler techniques to bring equally powerful suggestions of self. Morrison uses rusting metal with childhood memories to discuss the effects of physical scars and Mostyn creates delicate monochrome sculptures representative of an obsessive desire to build a safe world around her self.

Coinciding with the opening of ‘Who Are We? Who Am I?’ was the celebration of the 2^nd birthday of the AirSpace Gallery. Directors David and Andy gave a short thanks to all those that have helped them and AirSpace get this far and then a quick pose for photographs before digging into the birthday cake.

Artists include: Kate Lynch, Wendy Meyer, Matt Smith, Helen Saunders, Jack Tierney, Aleshia Morrison, Ian Williams and Joanne Mostyn.

# 45 [12 August 2008]

The final show in the first Dialogue Box series opens in this monday.

Diana Ali, Nottingham

18^th- 25^th August 2008

Diana is a British-Syhleti artist. She has worked in mixed media painting, photography and installation. She has exhibited in various venues such as, Salford Working Mens Club and Bonnington Gallery, Nottingham. She is currently exploring the visual and the verbal as an art form by involving artists’ responses locally, nationally and internationally. 

# 44 [26 July 2008]

Plans for the Royal Albert Hall Project

Alison Ballance

As part of the Dialogue Box series

The second exhibition of the Dialogue Box series has been and gone, but for just over a week in July Alison Ballance’s piece ‘Plans for the Royal Albert Hall Project’ came to a close in the window space of the AirSpace Gallery. The striking window piece brought a red flash of art to the streets of Stoke on Trent, catching the eyes of passers by and drawing them in.

‘The piece in Dialogue Box is the last piece for Plans for the Royal Albert Hall Project which has been worked on, on and off, for several years. This project would involve inflating a hot air balloon inside the main auditorium of the hall. The hall’s eccentric and rotund shape turns it into a belly-like vessel. The hot air balloon would fill up inside the hall, silently pushing up against the building’s internal skeleton. During this time the project has gone from a formal, site specific installation, a surreal never-to-be-realised proposal, a romantic tribute, a collaborative piece with emphasis on the architectural structures; an idea which was realised in many different forms but never made. In preparation for this, plans have been drawn, models made, installation experiments been carried out, and re-drafted architectural drawings. I had originally proposed to show all the work I had made for this project in the Dialogue Box space. However when it came to installing the work I felt that a site specific piece would be better suited to the space, and more appropriate for the project as it was going to be the last piece made.

In my other work various media is again used to present either projects or responses to the built up environment, preferring to represent the fragment and the suggestion rather than crude over explanation. The proposal, by only being a suggestion of what it could possibly be, is a fragment. I see the fragment in architectural ruins, failures or incompleteness; attention is drawn to what is missing. My work has a reductive grammar which suits my conflicting feelings of life’s limitations alongside its potential. My primary medium is collage whether this takes its form in site specific installations or time specific pieces that are held together momentarily in a photograph. I use found objects, drawing and cuttings in my work all arriving fully loaded with cultural references and I enjoy seeing the dialogue that arises within the piece. ‘

-Alison Ballance