A short review of PRE*

PRE* opening night (Monday 23^rd April) was hugely successful with a heavy footfall that (in the pouring rain) paid tribute to the promotional efforts in the lead up to the event.  Although the evening did not host much group discussion, the one-to-one type conversations between visitors and artists alike set the tone for the communication driven events of the coming days.  Elisa Heikkila and Carol Sowden’s participatory installations were particularly engaging exploring audience contributions/responses to bodies of work broadening the scope of experimentation and feedback.  The informal discussion was rich with quality criticism and interesting ideas triggered by the various displays/installations and became a valuable element of the programme’s process.

 Common room (Tuesday 24^th April) offered a second opportunity for a public exhibition opening with the addition of the consistent input from fellow third year degree students.  The atmosphere was lively and vibrant as the accessible nature of the ‘Enjoy’ art space encouraged the flow of people and interaction, with some featured artists taking the work from the space out into the street attracting much intrigue and positive reaction from passers by.  One visitor to the exhibition said:

“I’ve never been to an exhibition before and I don’t understand why people sit at home watching TV where everything is told to you, when you can come to an art exhibition and you can look at a piece and not necessarily understand it but you can look at it all day and find your own interpretation.” (Hell Boy. PRE* day 2)

Following the process theme, the exhibition space transformed as developments and reflection followed the opening night.  Discussion groups (Wednesday 25^th April) instigated much debate that often swayed from the proposed subject matter, however the relevance of the tangents reinforced the evident connection between individual practices and the PRE*/POST* proposal.  Tutorials were relocated to the exhibition space and took place within the central seating area so that the critical discussion and tutor input became a background conversation to the wider communal studio atmosphere.  One of the biggest developments taken from the experience of PRE* in its entirety has been the strength of the studio culture derived from the unsegregated space, allowing a visual conversation between both work and processes, that has begun to describe the underpinning narrative between the Interdisciplinary year of 2012 artist collective.  

By April Suzanne Comer

UPCOMING EXHIBITION

Work in progress event
PRE* is a programme of exhibitions, live artwork and discussions that divulge and examine the supporting actions and processes, both physical and mental, involved in creative activity. Making public the ongoing decisions that form a body of work will offer an alternative to the showcase of completed projects, putting the participant in the heart of the creative journey.

Joanna Geldard ‘Blueprints’

'Blueprints' Exhibition at Deda/Derby 29th March – 30th April

 

'We live our daily lives in a constant exchange with the set of daily appearances surrounding us – often they are very familiar, sometimes they are unexpected and new, but always they confirm us in our lives. They do so even when they are threatening: the sight of a house burning, for example, or a man approaching us with a knife between his teeth, still reminds us (ungently) of our life and its importance. What we habitually see confirms us…. Yet it can happen, suddenly, unexpectedly, and most frequently in the half-light of glimpses, that we catch sight of another visible order which intersects with ours and has nothing to do with it.’

John Berger, 1996, The Russian Way Interstices, Opus 21

‘Blueprints establishes the staring into the everyday, it focuses on the point of the body in space and it attempts to still and quiet the body whilst acutely aware of sensation. These Blueprints, ‘half light glimpses’ of the everyday body in space; between place and space. The reduction of line is used to create a graphic scoring of the body in space. It is this scoring that establishes the blueprint by which to create large scale pieces of work. The graphic line is an attempt to complete a notation of the body in space at once universal and absurd. Two singular concerns arise in this scoring; that of movement and that of sound, yet the line by its very nature stills this and fixes it as notation. For this reason the connection with the musicians’ tradition of graphic scoring is demonstrated within the images as the body recognises pulsation and resonance as both movement and sound in space. Thus the body is merely shadow that reverberates as energy in space underscored by a line.' Joanna Geldard

Link to Blueprint publication