Jerwood Visual Arts (JVA) warmly invites you to make use of “NOW I GOTTA REASON” , a Jerwood Encounters exhibition co-curated by Marcus Coates and Grizedale Arts that focuses on art production as a useful and productive activity.
Participants include: Amy Feneck and Ruth Beale, Michael Davis, Fernando Garcia Dory, Steve Ounanian and An Endless Supply.
Coates’ work as an artist often uses ritual to offer insights into unresolved questions in society. His interest lies in how art can actively explore and answer valuable questions. Grizedale Arts’ approach, as demonstrated in their recent display at the Frieze Art Fair, sets out to ‘reconnect with the role of artists pre 1850, when arts practice in the UK diverged from its link to functionality and moved toward a self-referential culture, characterised by the making of art for art’s sake’.
As well as being a useful entity in itself, the exhibition will reflect on a significant shift in artists’ practice in recent years towards an activity whose primary concern is not one solely of aesthetic sensibility and the production of esoteric artefacts for the art market, but of a purposeful practicality; an attempt to create a relevance and genuinely useful role for art, culture and artistic activity in society.
“NOW I GOTTA REASON” showcases artists who place themselves within communities as enablers, adding creative solutions, answering questions and creating sustainable and valued projects. The participants will come together to jointly create a series of architectural wooden structures, housing activity which will happen during the exhibition including artist critiques and participatory events as well as active installations.
The exhibition content and events programme will build and develop over the course of the exhibition, exploring the activity and economy of exhibition making and systems of use value and exchange. The galleries will be turned into practical and usable spaces where the audience can participate, both as contributor and recipient.
The exhibition will include:
Honest Shop - Endless Supply's Honest Shop will offer both a sales place and a shopping experience. Visitors can sell their own handmade useful items and/or buy other peoples. Library – Visitors can contribute to an onsite library with books that they feel will be useful to other readers. The library will be built up from contributions by the participants and the public.
Lunch Club – Visitors can join the communal lunch; an opportunity to eat with exhibition participants taking place every week day between 12.30 – 1.30pm from 7 November – 9 December. Lunches cost £5 each and must be booked in advance.
Print Shop - An Endless Supply will working in the gallery two days per week and will be on hand to produce online and print flyer/poster material for exhibition participants and visitors.
Life Tutorials – For anyone seeking advice, bring your life questions to artist Marcus Coates as part of a Life Tutorial every Monday afternoon during the exhibition. Booking required as places are limited.
“NOW I GOTTA REASON” is a Jerwood Encounters exhibition from JVA. Jerwood Encounters aims to support emerging artists, curators, designers and makers to progress their practice, gain exposure and benefit from new commissioning and exhibition opportunities. Through the Encounters programme, Jerwood Visual Arts looks to identify, nurture and champion talented individuals whose practice has the potential to make a meaningful contribution to a thriving sector and artistic community.
“NOW I GOTTA REASON” will be open from 7 November – 9 December 2012 at JVA at Jerwood Space, London. Further details about the exhibition and to book a place at Lunch Club or the Artist Tutorials events please visit the JVA website: www.jerwoodvisualarts.org
We are seeking volunteers to assist with the exhibition. For further information please visit the Artist Opportunities page.
Biographies
Marcus Coates is a film maker and performance artist. He performs self designed rituals, informed by traditional cultures that seek insight into difficult personal, public and political questions. He has performed ‘consultations’ with a variety of clients from Tokyo City Council to the Mayor of Holon, Israel and worked with questions about prostitution and people trafficking to the Middle East Crisis. Coates’ videos, performances and installations have been shown internationally. He was the Calouste Gulbenkian Artist in Residence in the Galapagos Islands, Ecuador (2008), was awarded the Paul Hamlyn Foundation Artist Award (2008) and was the winner of the first Daiwa Foundation Art Prize (2009). Recent exhibitions include Proxy, Kate MacGarry, London (2012), The Trip, Serpentine Gallery, London (2011), Psychopomp, Milton Keynes Gallery (2010), Altermodern , Tate Triennial, Tate Britain, London (2009). He is represented by Kate MacGarry and Workplace Gallery. www.workplacegallery.co.uk / www.katemacgarry.com
Adam Sutherland is Director of Grizedale Arts, a curatorial project in a continuous state of development, based in the historic site of Lawson Park farm in the lake district. The site is run as a productive small holding and working farm house, with an ongoing programme of events, projects, residencies and community activity which develop the contemporary arts in new directions, away from the romantic and Contemporary mindsets that have dominated the last 200 years of art history. Underpinning this programme is a philosophy that emphasises the use value of art, and promotes the functions of art and artists in practical and effective roles, as a central tenet of wider culture and society. www.grizedale.org
Ruth Beale and Amy Feneck are collaborating together for the first time on a project focused upon the collections of the Working Class Movement Library (WCML) in Salford. Amy Feneck ’s practice is concerned with social and political infrastructures such as hierarchy, nationalism, political ideology and their relationship with the politics of personal, individual expression. Recent projects include ‘Arms Holding Flags’, Cura Magazine, Issue No. 10 with writer and curator Caterina Riva, ‘All I see is the Management’, Gasworks, (group),‘A Guide to the New Monument Complex’, live radio performance for Seven Sites project, Manchester/Salford, ‘The School Looks Around’, Whitechapel Gallery, London. Ruth Beale 's practice takes the form of action-research into historical and social discourses, investigating the shifting relationships between art, society and politics, and how the preservation and dissemination of ideas and objects impacts on what is valued and what is overlooked. Current and upcoming shows include 'On the desperate and long-neglected need for small events' at LGP, Coventry, and 'Ad Hoc', a bespoke salon space and events programme at David Roberts Art Foundation.
Michael Davis is an artist and writer based in Glasgow. Often working collaboratively, he employs commonplace creative processes with an amateur aesthetic, to reach practical, cathartic or just humorous results. Graduating in 2010 from Cumbria Institute of the Arts, he has worked with Grizedale Arts and is currently working as programme manager for 44 High Street, a voluntary arts space for Falkirk town centre, and as a freelance writer.
Fernando García-Dory’s (b. 1978) work engages specifically with issues affecting the relation between culturenature now, embodied within the contexts of landscape, the rural, desires and expectations related with identity aspects, crisis, utopy and social change. He studied Fine Arts and Rural Sociology in Madrid, Spain. Interested in the harmonic complexity of biological forms and processes, his work addresses connections and cooperation, from microorganisms to social systems, and from traditional art languages such as drawing to collaborative agroecological projects, actions, and cooperatives. Recent projects include Dream Farms, a note book and activated project for dOCUMENTA (13), Hungry Cities, Kunstraum Kreuzberg, Berlin (2012) and A Dairy Museum , Mostyn Art Centre, Wales (2012). www.fernandogarciadory.com
Steven Ounanian (1984, Redlands, California), studied Design Interactions at the Royal College of Art, where he received his Masters Degree in 2008. Ounanian received the 2010 Arts Admin Bursary award for Live Art to continue his investigations into emerging technologies and religious belief. He has lectured and performed internationally, including the Tate Britain, and the Barbican in London. www.stevenlevon.com
An Endless Supply is a design studio and independent publishing activity organised by Harry Blackett and Robin Kirkham. Working in many roles — as designers, editors, printers, researchers, writers — a primary objective of the studio is to support the production of new art and writing. Recent activities include: The Colosseum of the Consumed , Frieze Projects, London (2012); We Love You, Limoncello, London, (2012); Department of Overlooked Histories , Wysing Arts Centre, Cambridgeshire (2011). The studio is currently working on a publication to accompany Andy Holden and David Raymond Conroy's staging of Brief Interviews with Hideous Men at ICA, London . www.anendlesssupply.co.uk
Notes to Editors
Jerwood Visual Arts (JVA) is a contemporary gallery programme of awards, exhibitions and events at Jerwood Space, London and on tour nationally. Jerwood Visual Arts supports and showcases the work of talented emerging artists. It aims to make connections and provoke conversations within and across visual arts disciplines. JVA is a major initiative of the Jerwood Charitable Foundation. www.jerwoodvisualarts.org
Jerwood Encounters are one-off curated exhibitions which provide artists and curators with new exhibition opportunities and the chance to explore the issues and territories in the borderlands between the main disciplinary fields of the Jerwood Visual Arts programme. Previous exhibitions in the Encounters series have included Passing Thoughts and Making Plans (Curated by Catherine Yass 4 November – 13 December 2009), For the Sake of the Image (Curated by Suki Chan 3 March – 1 April 2010), SHOW (Curated by Sarah Williams 16 March – 21 April 2011), TERRA (Curated by Hayley Skipper, Forestry Commission 9 November – 11 December 2011) and ASSEMBLY (Curated by Sarah Williams 9 May – 24 June 2012).
The Jerwood Charitable Foundation is dedicated to imaginative and responsible revenue funding of the arts, supporting artists to develop and grow at important stages in their careers. The aim of their funding is to allow artists and arts organisations to thrive; to continue to develop their skills, imagination and creativity with integrity. It works across art forms, from dance and theatre to literature, music and the visual arts. www.jerwoodcharitablefoundation.org
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