Devon comes alive

'Encounter - The Arrival' by Zierle & Carter

Exeter Contemporary Open 2011, preview night. A room full of arts professionals, being sociable, talking to each other about their upcoming projects and making new connections. It happens all the time, right? Well, not in Exeter. The imminent opening of the British Art Show (BAS) in Plymouth seems to have given contemporary art here a new surge of energy.  As well as supporting SW artists like Stuart Robinson, Zierle & Carter and Bryony Gillard, we all had our own events to promote in the upcoming BAS7 and fringe. There was wine, there was gossip, there was a real live snake. It was buzzing.

http://plymouthbas7.org/ 

Snake on Twitpic

Found and lost

Spending quite a lot of time in anxious reflection on curation. It comes as I contemplate making a deliberately disorderly exhibition.  For the culmination of HEIST, we're aiming to create a kind of thieves' den, where all kinds of art and artefacts will rub shoulders in a fairly random and disorienting way. We'll then present the very opposite in an online archive where everything is carefully logged, analysed and categorised.

It's probably a physical playing out of tensions within my own practice. Curating has never an end in itself for me - it helps me generate interesting opportunities to work as an artist and to connect with others. However, it seems to be leading me into places I never meant to go.

Through a mixture of necessity and ideology, I've found myself organising exhibitions almost exclusively  in shops (both empty and still trading). Necessity: because there are few low-cost venues in Exeter apart from shops. Ideology: because I like to make exhibitions that can be discovered by everyone - not just my fellow artists - so accessible, central locations are essential.

I've been hugely grateful to the shop owners and letting agents who've accommodated our exhibitions, but I am starting to feel as if I'd like more control over the setting, partly for myself as a curator, but even more for the artists whose work I'm representing. There are simply too many compromises involved.

White cube galleries get a lot of stick, but my recent visit to Structure & Material at Spike Island made me think again. It was such a relief to be in a clean, quiet space where all I had to think about was the art. Rather than having to fight to understand what was going on - what was the art and what was the setting,  I felt the benefits of the curators' expertise and the resources of time, space and experience they had to draw on. Katrina Brown and Caroline Douglas presented me with a thoughtful, meaningful, separate experience; not just part of life's general distracting babble.

As an early-career artist I know I won't always have perfect circumstances under which to show my work or that of others.  If I wait for them to arrive, I'll never get anything done. Some art can surprise you by thriving in such settings. Some wouldn't have happened at all if it hadn't been inspired by the place. And the social aspects of such projects have been illuminating and rewarding.

That's all good stuff, but it doesn't mean I haven't occasionally winced as I've placed a piece of art in an environment where I can see it's fighting for survival, knowing that hours of careful thought and making by an artist are being scrambled in an instant.

www.foundspace.co.uk

Coming to get you (or not)

Rumour has it that one or more galleries in Plymouth mistook our British Art Show fringe project HEIST for the real thing and needed to be reassured that we aren't really coming to steal their stuff. While the good-girl me feels sorry for any distress caused, my inner bad girl is just a little bit pleased to ruffle a few feathers. After all, what kind of art criminals advertise their intentions in advance?

Don't say a word

Karla Black, What to ask of others (2011). Courtesy Galerie Gisela Capitain, Cologne. Photo: Jonty Wilde

Up to Bristol last week to catch the last days of Structure + Material (Karla Black, Becky Beasley and Claire Barclay) at Spike Island and The Sea Wall (Haegue Yang with an inclusion by Felix Gonzalez-Torres) at Arnolfini. At some point I expect I'll have to write about this work but, right now, I don't want to spoil the memory.

Structure & Material  9 July - 4 September 2011, Spike Island
133 Cumberland Road, Bristol BS1 6UX 

http://www.spikeisland.org.uk/exhibitions/structure_material

The Sea Wall 16 July - 4 September 2011
16 Narrow Quay, Bristol BS1 4QA
http://www.arnolfini.org.uk/whatson/exhibitions/details/1007

Seeing the wood and the trees

David Nash Cracking Box (1990)

Followed a visit to David Nash: Sculpture and Drawings at the Centre for Contemporary Art & the Natural World with a walk around the nearby Haldon forest. A perfect combination of activities: you see, hear, touch and smell trees in a completely different way after interacting with Nash's work. But it also makes me feel a bit acquisitive: I'd like that Cracking Box for my house please.

Until 25th September 2011. Centre for Contemporary Art & the Natural World, Haldon Forest Park, Exeter, Devon, EX6 7XR http://www.ccanw.co.uk/

David Nash Charred Cross Egg  (Photo: Jonty Wilde).

From paper work to paper play

Paper Labour by Household, Spacex installation

In my previous life as a London office worker, I had my own form of lunchtime stress relief:  I used to go and have a good feel of the handmade and specialist papers in the Paperchase store in Tottenham Court Road. My quick outing to The Paper Co-operative at Spacex last Saturday had a similar effect.

For a month the gallery has become a tactile treat - a kid-friendly space with robust, giant-sized paper sculptures for crawling and lying in (commissioned from design collective Household) and a number of book and paper works - most available for browsing - from artists including Tom Sowden, Emily Speed and Georgia Russell.  The exhibition has continued to expand as the output of numerous gallery workshops joins the collection.

The best thing about The Paper Co-operative, however, is the combination of inspiration and instant gratification. The gallery is equipped with scissors, rubber stamps, staplers and a range of exciting papers. You don't have to wait to get home to try out what you've just seen.

The Paper Co-operative, 6th August - 3rd September, Spacex, 45 Preston Street, Exeter EX1 1DF

Beg, borrow, steal

www.foundspace.co.uk/heist.html