On the other side of the table

Preston Street Union with Lucia Harley at Exeter Culture Launch - September 2018

I've just completed a two-month interim role as a Programme Delivery Consultant for Exeter Culture, an ACE-funded network of organisations that works to improve the resilience and ambition of the arts and cultural sector in my home city. Job sharing with fellow artist Paula Crutchlow, I helped to fill the gap between the departure of one director and the appointment of a new one. My particular focus was on producing day-to-day content for the organisation's website and social media.

I developed more practice- and practitioner-focused content for the website, advocated for a higher level of user-generated content and dialogue, revamped a volunteering guide, contributed to an ongoing discussion about artists' workspace, and co-authored a handover report for the organisation, which included recommendations on the future use of web and social media in achieving organisational goals.

As I usually earn my (non art) living as a writer for hire on short-term ad hoc communications projects for commercial businesses, this was an opportunity for me to work over a longer period with one organisation, doing something I feel personally invested in. But, more than that, it was a rare glimpse at what it's like to sit on the other side of the desk, as a stakeholder manager, a commissioner, an organiser, a strategist and an advocate. It was a steep learning curve and a privileged insight.

I'm also really chuffed that the role was opened up to two artists, even if only for a short period. We both have extensive project management experience but we are hardly your average arts administrators. You can't make much difference in just two months on part-time hours but I hope that, by championing the practitioner perspective, we might have left some sort of useful legacy.

www.exeterculture.com

Turn (the) leaves - now and then

Turn (the) leaves - Public participatory event and 8-channel sound installation.
Photo: Simon Tutty. Courtesy Thelma Hulbert Gallery

On 8 August 2018, Megan Calver and I brought together a group of people and trees at Woodbury Castle on the East Devon Way for shared reading and response. Working from a simple set of instructions, participants created a new work of art together by reading aloud.

Recordings made on that day were then re-assembled as a sound installation, with gallery plinths and sound equipment standing in for people and trees. These created an indoor copse through which gallery visitors were invited to wander.

The translation from live participatory work to gallery piece raised some interesting questions, with which I'm still wrestling: What does it mean to translate a public participatory event to the gallery? Who does the work ‘belong’ to? How do you give something meaningful back to participants (including the trees)? What difference does the work make?

Turn (the) leaves on 8 August was an attempt to create a space where dialogue with the nonhuman might happen. The readers and trees were not making our work but their work. The recordings enabled us to share some sense of it with a wider gallery audience, but we always saw this as a new and different iteration. Some visitors said they found the gallery installation 'austere' and 'unwelcoming' and 'not evocative of a woodland' but Megan and I were always clear about our wish to demarcate the public outdoor event from the indoor gallery work. It was the difference between something that happened on the site and in the moment -- and was simultaneously, privately and fleetingly experienced by individuals who took part -- and something mediated, reconstructed and repeatable that could be discussed and shared between different listeners experiencing it at different times.

Turn (the) leaves was commissioned as part of Art on the East Devon Way and shown at Thelma Hulbert Gallery, Honiton (2018). Sound Recordist: Tony Whitehead Technical Consultant: Tim King

Experiencing the Landscape - Art on the East Devon Way ran from 8 September 2018 to 27 October 2018 and included work by Gabrielle Hoad & Megan Calver, Jenny Mellings, Angus Rutherford and Anne-Marie Culhane.

Prospecting

Image: Davina Jelley, Somerset Art Works

I attended the Prospecting Symposium on 1 November at University Centre Somerset, thanks to a bursary from Visual Arts South West. Here's my report on the event.
https://www.a-n.co.uk/reviews/prospecting-symposium-review-by-gabrielle-hoad

An Od film

Here's a wonderful short film evoking the peaceful madness of the Od Festival, of which I was part.

https://vimeo.com/277316991

'The Art of Rivalry', Od Arts Festival was curated by Simon Lee Dickerand Bob Gelsthorpe, and featured work by Sadie Hennessy, Tom Smith, Tim Bromage, Phil Owen, Zoe Walker & Neil Bromwich, Janet Sainsbury, Peter Chesbrough & Laura Hopes, Nicola Bealing, Melville Mitchell, Megan Calver & Gabrielle Hoad, Isobel Adderley, Andy Parker, Rachael Allain and Wassail Theatre

www.odartsfestival.co.uk11-13 May 2018
East Coker and West Coker, Somerset

Jamboree 2018: generosity, joyfulness and purposeful fun

Jamboree 2018 Photo: Andy Ford

Running from 28th June - 1st July, Jamboree 2018 brought together 150 visual artists, curators and programmers from around the UK at the Dartington Estate near Totnes, Devon, UK. I was lucky enough to be one of them.

Developed by LOW PROFILE, the event was a response to a situation many of us recognise: the struggle to meet other visual art professionals for reasons including money, geography, time, other work and family commitments. 

Participants co-delivered a programme of presentations, micro-exhibitions, activities and discussions to share practice. The hope was that attendees would meet new people, find out about each others’ work, build new relationships and make connections that led to new projects. 

Jamboree 2018 also offered the “chance to stop, engage, interact and recharge in a positive, critically-engaged environment”. I will confess, I didn’t quite believe the part about recharging.  I thought it was an important and useful event to attend, but I never expected it to be quite so liberating or quite as much fun. 

It began in quite a familiar way, with a series of presentations by four curators and one artist: Alistair Hudson (Manchester Art Gallery), Simon Morrissey (Foreground), Sonya Dyer, Lucy Day (A Woman’s Place) and Ingrid Swenson (PEER), and a communal meal by the Real Junk Food Project of Plymouth. The following morning I attended a further talk/provocation by Alistair Hudson about ‘useful art’, drawing on his experiences at Grizedale and MIMA. 

But then things started to get really interesting. Choices were difficult in such a packed programme but I went on a Walk & Talk with Bettina Wenzel where we discussed rules and restrictions in the context of our work. I then joined Simon Bayliss for ‘Landscape Painters Anonymous’ by the river, where I was faced with a situation I haven’t encountered for years: a view and a box of watercolours. It was indeed a “guilty pleasure” as billed  – once we realised we were all pretty bad watercolourists, let go and had fun.  I then returned to the river to paddle alongside Simon Lee Dicker’s ‘Silent Swim School’.

The next day I joined ‘Telling Time’ a voice and text workshop run by Mark Leahy, where we created a wonderful group performance, reflecting on personal and abstract time, in just two hours. Next came a session led by Lara Goodband: communal poetry-making by the river.  Finally I joined Zoe Toolan for ‘Lone/ly Wolf.  I think it was at this point, as I looked around me at a group of adults howling uninhibitedly in the forest, that I remembered making art can be joyful and playful when, in recent years, it has sometimes felt like quite a slog.

There were also 20:20 artist talks, artist film screenings, plus the camp shop selling artists’ editions and a show of artists’ miniatures, giving every participant a chance to showcase their practice. And, of course, a wild and noisy party on Saturday night. The event ended on Sunday morning with a standing ovation for the organisers and helpers who had made it happen.

Jamboree had a very special atmosphere, It was a place away from the hard grind of day-to-day life, helped along by perfect weather and the idyllic Dartington setting, but, more than anything, by a spirit of generosity, openness and kindness between all participants. It was the best kind of professional networking because we did it by having fun and making memories together.  Roll on Jamboree 2020.

Jamboree was developed by LOW PROFILE in partnership with a-n The Artists Information Company and Plymouth College of Art and was part funded by Arts Council England. 

https://artistsjamboree.uk

It went up and it came down again

Preston Street Union Galleries R Us  presents Pete Kingston Marshmallow Towers,
Exeter Central Station, May 2018 | Photo: Jonathan Price

Preston Street Union - Galleries R Us - Art Week Exeter 2018

“Could our problems become our practice?” we asked ourselves in October 2017 as we began to plan for Art Week Exeter. The continuing struggles of Spacex, the organisation that brought Preston Street Union into being, weighed heavily over the meeting. We wanted to revisit the political implications of being a ‘union’, to address our city’s increasing lack of gallery and studio space, and to use our time at Art Week to say something about cuts to the arts budget.

We settled on the idea of presenting an itinerant, portable gallery space. Drawing inspiration from Rebecca Horn, Ciara Phillips, Lucy Orta and Emily Speed, we decided on a wearable gallery. If the gallery was modular, and we each wore a part of it, we had to be there to make it happen. The more of us who met, the bigger the gallery would be. We decided to call the project Galleries R Us.

Working sessions involved old tents, bamboo canes, umbrellas, fishing rods, hula hoops, rolls of lining paper, waste vinyl, lengths of fabric. In the end we settled on a set of plastic aprons, some modified brewer’s tubing, some stretchy white netting and sou’westers made from IKEA bags. These would be brought together in different combinations to create different kinds of gallery spaces.

At the same time, we decided to do a call-out for other artists to join us by undertaking five-minute micro residencies. We knew that the conditions we were offering (no money, no time, no power supply, no hanging system, no weather protection, no guarantee of an audience) made the task extremely challenging. Many artists made enquiries and decided not to bother. But four brave souls - Nick Davies, Lucia Harley, Laura Hopes and Pete Kingston - offered us ambitious, interesting proposals and a willingness to join us in taking to the street. We also programmed in a number of our own micro-events to take place in the gallery space.

Our plan was to work with limited resources but not to allow them to limit what we considered possible. We would be inventive, determined and professional. We didn't set out to fail but knew that some element of failure was inevitable and would just have to be accepted by us, our artists and our audiences.

Although the logistics and choreography proved to be complex, the idea was simple. A few minutes before the appointed hour, the commissioned artist would meet in a designated public space with ‘Red’, a figure wearing a red lab coat in honour of one of our original mentors, Emily Warner. For Art Week Exeter 2018, this role was taken by former Spacex Project Manager Kathy Norris.

At an agreed time, the people making up different parts of the gallery would emerge from the crowd and surround the artist and the site of the work. Joining together, they would watch the work impassively for exactly five minutes, before dispersing again and leaving the artist and their work alone with Red. A theme of precarious architectures - and of building and dismantling - emerged both from the works presented and the formation and dispersion of the gallery itself.

Events ranged from Lucia Harley’s intense five-minute performance Up Down delivered to bemused drivers and passengers at Exeter Bus Station, to Pete Kingston’s Marshmallow Towers, a participatory activity involving the passing public. Laura Hopes set the gallery on the move as a marching, drumming army in Surrender and Nick Davies presented a sound and text work Reaching Out To Icarus (Architects) at a noisy building site. Other events included Daniel Cray’s Covert Karaoke and Tim King’s spoken-word performance The Big Pig. Each morning began with the gallery encircling Exeter’s much-loved blue boy statue in the busy Princesshay shopping centre, offering a perfect match for his bright blue hat and cloak. Preston Street Union’s own Group Show at the quayside, was attended by two older ladies who, touchingly, inspected every single piece of work, each of which was held in its maker’s hands.

Interestingly, as an event without a venue, we were not considered worthy of the attentions of Art Week Exeter's official photographer. Or perhaps he just found it hard fit our - admittedly brief - events into his schedule.

The programme concluded with a sombre vigil outside the locked doors of Spacex's former home at 45 Preston Street.

Galleries R Us took place on 24th and 25th May 2018 as part of Art Week Exeter. It was created, worn and performed by Bettina Amtag, Megan Calver, Gabrielle Hoad, Kathy Norris, Becca Nutt, Janet Sainsbury, Felicity Shillingford and Stella Tripp, with contributions from Daniel Cray, Nick Davies, Lucia Harley, Laura Hopes, Tim King and Pete Kingston. Supported by Exeter Phoenix and Stormpress.

Full Programme

An Ex Space

Preston Street Union | Ghosted | 2018 Photo: Tony Whitehead

“There is no need to confirm your subscription to this mailing list, 

as we will be deleting our whole database.”

On 24 May 2018, Spacex officially announced its closure. The only dedicated contemporary visual art organisation in Exeter, it had been struggling since 2015, when Arts Council England ceased funding it regularly. At this point the organisation left its long-time home at 45 Preston Street and continued to operate with a reduced staff on a project-by-project basis. But, by March 2018, it was all over. An internationally recognised, ‘strategically important’ (to quote ACE) arts organisation, that had been part of the Exeter cultural scene for over 40 years, was no more.

I won’t pretend that Spacex was a perfect arts organisation; it wasn't. It often struggled to inspire (or even be noticed by) many residents of the surrounding urban and rural areas. But, as an artist and art lover, it was one of the main reasons I came to live in this city 15 years ago. Spacex's closure follows the loss of the city's the art college in 2007, which relocated to Plymouth 50 miles away, removing a vital source of audiences for and makers of contemporary art. And, in a further blow, the leasing of the Preston Street building to new tenants has resulted in around 12 artists losing their workspaces (the upper two floors were given over to studios).

Spacex brought the work of many internationally important artists to the South West and contributed to the careers of many emerging artists and curators. It also had a highly regarded education and outreach programme that introduced art to many people in the wider Devon community. I volunteered there as a student, worked with them to run a writing programme, and occasionally contributed to their press and marketing work. I also had a studio space above the gallery for around nine years.

The most important legacy for me, apart from all the great art I experienced, was the chance to be part of Preston Street Union, an affiliation of artists that grew out of a residency in 2015 by Birmingham-based artist Trevor Pitt. Trevor’s residency, which came at the very end of Spacex’s occupation of their Preston Street premises, explored collaboration as a strategy for artists ‘making things and making things happen’.  About one third of the artists involved in the original project have continued to meet and organise public-facing events, as well as offering support and learning opportunities to each other.

Our latest project, Galleries R Us, made for Art Week Exeter 2018,was a response to the diminishing arts infrastructure in Exeter, specifically the loss of institutions dedicated to the teaching, production and presentation of contemporary art. The official announcement of the organisation’s closure came in the middle of two days where we assembled and disassembled an itinerant, makeshift gallery on the streets of Exeter. Our final iteration of the gallery - Ghosted - was made at 45 Preston Street as a farewell.

http://spacex.org.uk/throwing-in-the-tea-towel/

A postcard from Od Arts Festival

Trevor H Smith was the Writer in Residence for Od Arts Festival, Somerset in mid-May. You can read his account of it here.
http://www.vasw.org.uk/features/postcard-from-/postcard-from-od-arts-festival-the-art-of-rivalry.php

Lean at Od Arts Festival - 'The Art of Rivalry'

Megan Calver & Gabrielle Hoad | Lean (An Invitation) | 2018

Just back from the Od Arts Festival with Megan Calver, where we presented a new work Lean. This series of objects and actions prompted thought and conversation around ideas of rivalry and cooperation, two themes played out across the wider festival.

Inspired by a wonky shed in the East Coker woods, we invited residents and festival visitors, as well as an online audience, to lean on bars, lamp-posts, walls, trees and each other, and to notice the incidental leaning of objects and bodies.

Megan Calver & Gabrielle Hoad | Lean (An Invitation) | 2018

For Lean (An Invitation) we travelled between the two villages of East Coker and West Coker offering props, prizes and printed scores to initiate both competitive and collaborative leaning actions. Encounters ranged from a gentle conversation about straightening wonky pictures with a man waiting for his motorbike to complete its MOT, to a raucous improvised skittles competition in a West Coker pub.

Megan Calver & Gabrielle Hoad | Lean (Tools for Rivals)
with painting by Janet Sainsbury | 2018

Lean (Tools for Rivals) was a series of everyday leaning objects such as brooms, door wedges, branches and walking sticks that were inserted into displays across the festival. They were identifiable only by subtle markings in fluorescent paint or tape and were used to distract from and disrupt our artistic rivals’ work.

Megan Calver & Gabrielle Hoad | Lean (Wonky Shed - East Coker) | 2018

Finally, Lean (Wonky Shed – East Coker) was a digital print of the leaning shed that inspired it all, installed in a pub's skittle alley, between and behind a series of plumb lines to highlight its list.

'The Art of Rivalry', Od Arts Festival was curated by Simon Lee Dicker and Bob Gelsthorpe, and featured work by Sadie Hennessy, Tom Smith, Tim Bromage, Phil Owen, Zoe Walker & Neil Bromwich, Janet Sainsbury, Peter Chesbrough & Laura Hopes, Nicola Bealing, Melville Mitchell, Megan Calver & Gabrielle Hoad, Isobel Adderley, Andy Parker, Rachael Allain and Wassail Theatre

#lean_at_odfest
www.odartsfestival.co.uk
11-13 May 2018
East Coker and West Coker, Somerset

Talking Tisscope

I was recently invited to contribute a text to Skelf, the virtual project space, to accompany an online work called Metroscope2000® Kids! by US artist Morgan Hamilton.

Knowing Morgan's work would centre on a telescope as a way of exploring observation, 'truth' and authority, I decided to visit a telescope of my own, make a quick low-tech sound recording, and faithfully transcribe what I heard.

You can read the results, and see Morgan's work at skelf.org.uk 3 May - 6 June 2018, after which it will be archived elsewhere on the site.

Galleries R Us with Preston Street Union

Presented by Preston Street Union, Galleries R Us is a modular, itinerant, wearable artspace space appearing at multiple sites during Art Week Exeter (AWE). 

Over the course of AWE, Preston Street Union will roam the streets of Exeter, constructing a temporary artspace at various points of interest and activity. We have also commissioned a series of microresidencies to take place in and around the space.  

Galleries R Us is made in response to the diminishing arts infrastructure in Exeter, specifically the loss of institutions dedicated to the teaching, production and presentation of contemporary art. 

Preston Street Union is an affiliation of artists in and around Exeter who meet to explore collaborative processes in the context of contemporary art practice. Art Week Exeter 2018 runs from 22nd to 28th May.

Details of the Galleries R Us programme can be found at https://www.facebook.com/events/950369175144360/

Reading to trees on the East Devon Way

Burned Trees - Woodbury (video still) | Gabrielle Hoad & Megan Calver | 2018

I've been invited to create a number of public engagement activities to celebrate 25 years of the East Devon Way, a 40-mile walking route between Exmouth and Lyme Regis that runs through the East Devon Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty (AONB)

Read (to) the trees is an extension of work originally made for Organic Arts -  Return by 24/09/17 - and later revisited with Megan Calver as part of Fatal Exchanges. I will be inviting the public to get to know the local trees by reading aloud to them and observing how they respond.

And in a new iteration, Turn (the) leaves, Megan Calver and I will bring together a group of people and trees for simultaneous shared reading and response. Working from a simple set of instructions, they will be part of a new, temporary work of art made by reading aloud. We'll then present a version of this work at the Thelma Hulbert Gallery, Honiton, in the autumn.

Art on the East Devon Way artists include Anne-Marie Culhane, Justin Quinnell, Jenny Mellings and Tony Whitehead.

Art on the East Devon Way activity map, various locations May - September 2018.

Art on the East Devon Way exhibition, 8 September - 27 October 2018, Thelma Hulbert Gallery, Elmfield House, Dowell Street, Honiton, Devon EX14 1LX.

A celebration of rivalry

The Buffer Zone (Perching) | 2016 | Photo: Susie David

I'm delighted to be producing work in collaboration with Megan Calver for the Od Arts Festival, curated by Simon Lee Dicker (Artist / Director of OSR Projects) and Bob Gelsthorpe (Artist / Writer).

The Od is a crooked stream that meanders through the villages of East and West Coker in rural Somerset, UK. Multi-site curated exhibitions, new commissions, and participatory projects by artist-led groups - all themed around rivalry - will take place across the villages over one weekend.

Inspired by a wonky shed in the woods, Megan and I will present a series of leaning actions and invite visitors to carry out their own, using bodies and other materials to hand to create temporary sculptures. We're interested in the different meanings of 'lean on' - which can imply both coercion and a need for support.

Od Arts Festival, Somerset 11-13 May 2018
Sadie Hennessy | Tom Smith | Tim Bromage | Phil Owen | Zoe Walker & Neil Bromwich | Janet Sainsbury | Peter Chesbrough & Laura Hopes | Nicola Bealing | Melville Mitchell | Megan Calver & Gabrielle Hoad | Isobel Adderley | Andy Parker | Rachael Allain | Wassail Theatre

http://odartsfestival.co.uk