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.