#john hansard gallery

[sound-art-text]

A text about my ‘Listening Memories’ work for ⁦John Hansard Gallery⁩ in the latest Re:action ⁦issue @Soton_SIAH⁩. This was a collaboration with movement artist Gabriel Galvez, engaging elders to explore the relationship between sound, memory and gesture.

[some-trace-of-her]

Philip Hoare: 'I was a dark star always' 04 November 2018 - 25 January 2019

A tribute in film to the life of Wilfred Owen with readings by Ben Whishaw.

John Hansard Gallery is pleased to present ‘I was a dark star always’, a new film installation marking the centenary of the death of Wilfred Owen, opening 4 November 2018.

The film, written by Philip Hoare and directed by Adam Low, incorporates readings by Ben Whishaw of both letters and poems by Owen, and is filmed at key locations from his life, including the beach in Torquay where he swam as a child, and the canal in northern France where he died, on 4 November 1918, aged just 25.

Wilfred Owen only happened to be a war poet. A century on, he peers at us, over-shadowed by his death. We see a doomed poet, not an ambitious, sensual young man with a brilliant future. History and tradition has removed him from us. In life, Owen represented not the unnatural struggle of trench life or macabre themes of war, rather a young man seeking his own identity through words, a most natural and admirable pursuit. 'I was a dark star always', Owen told Siegfried Sassoon, a year before he died.

‘I was a dark star always’ lifts Owen out of the pen to which he is frequently confined, and projects him into our time. What would he have made of life after the war, had he survived? Using words from the poet himself, Hoare re-imagines him out of history's sepia and into a bright blue sea.

‘I was a dark star always’ uses water as a motif and theme to explore Owen’s life and represent his fluid sexuality. He swam whenever he could, encouraged by his father, a railway clerk who'd dress up as a sailor and pretend to be a captain in Liverpool docks. Wilfred swam in rivers, pools and the sea; as a teenager in Devon, as an officer in Yorkshire, as a casualty of shellshock in Netley Hospital, near Southampton. Sent to Craiglockhart in Scotland to recuperate, he declared to Sassoon that the water ‘never fails to give me a Greek feeling of energy and elemental life.’

It was the last thing he ever did in England, bathing off Folkestone beach, watching a handsome young fellow officer wade out of the surf. He was killed in action leading his men across the Sambre-Oise canal in Ors, falling backwards into the water in a poetic and fitting final act.

Wilfred Owen was the first poet Philip Hoare loved. Growing up as a teenager in suburban Southampton in the 70s, Hoare saw him as an icon of otherness, alongside Oscar Wilde and David Bowie. 40 years on, ‘I was a dark star always’ is an expression of this affinity and an exploration of what Owen truly represented as a modern artist dealing with themes of the natural world set against human frailty.

‘I was a dark star always’ is co-produced with the John Hansard Gallery, Southampton, and will be screened at the gallery itself and other sites in Oxford, Edinburgh, Bristol and London.

Credits: Written by Philip Hoare | Directed by Adam Low | Produced and Photographed by Martin Rosenbaum | Edited by Joanna Crickmay | Assistant Producer, James Norton A Lone Star / John Hansard Gallery Co-Production Running time: 10 minutes

[wroteonedad]

Anne Tallentire - Material Distance

Have you ever wanted to go to an art show that looked like the Ikea backrooms? Well, look no further than Material Distance, a current exhibition displayed at John Hansard Gallery in Southampton. Tallentire asks that you as an audience enter the gallery spaces with an open mind. A way in which you can rethink the spaces and environment that we spend our time in. What if we were to be placed into an area that is large, but still somehow manages to make you feel claustrophobic and small all at the same time?

Walking into this gallery, I feel like I am in a space that I shouldn't be in. The kind of space I make up when I'm deeply dreaming, as I am being chased around a backroom by someone. Sometimes it's somebody I know from my past and other times, it's someone who is made up. Somebody that is judging me. We weave through awkward components of items, laying around in the backroom space, trying to stop me from being able to escape. It is the type of space where background music begins to play, I can't figure out what the words are, but I can hear the distorted music as I run.

Lag III (right of the image above) is a stack of insulation boards, used to explain the concept of usefulness and uselessness in a space. It is displayed in order to become the work of art to the audience. Upon seeing this, it looked to me like a set of bedding, a giant block that stores a selection of items which has just been placed in a way that is messy and unideal, this of course being the reason why the piece has been placed here in the first place. It is one of the first pieces of work you see as you enter the first main gallery space and is contrasted with the smaller works to the left of this. Interspacing 01 is a triple layering of ecoscreed board and gaffa tape, designed as an open discussion in relation to scale of living spaces and conditions within confinement. These are all scaled down to a variation of home furnishing sizes such as sinks, beds and chairs to create an extra layer of realism within the work. The works feel very real and very personal to the average person. That is a vague way of explaining the work and I will accept that, but I will go into more description with how it feels real towards the end of the piece. Tallentire also displayed Interspacing 04 and Interspacing 06 in the space; these being larger scale works, adding different items to the ecoscreed boards and curating a larger environment, all the while being grouped into a small space together.

Interspacing 04 (above) features a larger scale ecospreed board, less rolls of gaffa tape and a roll of aluminium foil tape. Interspacing 06 was a much smaller model in comparison. Maybe I need to go back to the gallery space because before reading into the project in depth, I didn't see any of this at all. I saw Ikea coloured furnishings, spaces that looked like an unfinished GCSE technology project. I don't mean that in a negative light, it feels more nostalgic to me. When you walk into your class three weeks before the final project deadline and you have a large amount of materials. You know what you're making, but you're moulding it into the final project. Something that you'll take home to show your parents over that evenings family dinner. The shapes on the wall are jarring, in the way that they remind me of being in school and struggling with a selection of subjects, especially maths. I think there's a lot of maths connotations here, through exact measurements and spacious practices.

However, there was one piece from the exhibition that caught my attention the most, something so small and out of the way that it would have been easy to miss it completely. The other side of the room, there is a hole in the floor. It has been replaced with a glass cover, this glass cover has an iPhone showing a movie on a loop.

This is Flux (2022), a 2:15 minute long looped video. It was filmed by the artist and created for John Hansard gallery out of the gallery's window. This video focuses on Guildhall Square in Southampton, an area which is very popular among tourists and the skateboarding community. The small area features an array of eateries, O2 Guildhall which is used as a live concert venue and lots of ramped areas that the skateboarders use. The short video shows the hustle and bustle of one of the nicer parts of the city centre. Again, this relates back to my initial thoughts with how it feels like walking into a technology class. The whole gallery space feels very industrial, and it works with the set of works that Tallentire has curated.

Finally, a different installation is featured in the Barker-Mill Gallery space. Look over 2 is made from materials including tape and string which is used to scale floor plans for conversion of office buildings to residential accommodations. It is made to reference 'restrictive and inhumane building', which I think is perhaps correct. Converting office spaces to home spaces for many people would mean it has been constructed in a way to make the space as small as possible to be able to home as many people as possible in that space. It asks the question as to how modern urban spaces are designed. Historically, larger environments would be created in order to home families and people who are likely to stay in the same place for a longer amount of time. I think the main issues with modern urban homing is that they are designed for the person who rents a home for a set amount of time, rather than to consider a space to live in forever. Many urban spaces in the modern era are created for those who are working in an area for a set amount of time or who are not planning on living in that set space long term. With factors to consider such as the cost of living crisis and the rise of renting from the landlord, it all makes sense.

However, I think the factor of this work is unless I had actually read the full description as to what the works were about, I wouldn't have known what this piece meant at all. When I see art, I take it from a literal and visual standpoint. I come up with my own ideas as I view a piece first hand, and when I saw this work I became nostalgic. In my brain, it simply looked like the school sports hall. The type of place that is large, empty and always smells like sweaty school vests. The type of vests that everyone wears when the teachers forces you into playing a group game such as rounders.

Here's a group of fun pictures of me walking around the space curated by Tallentire.

I'm not completely sure what I think of the works created. There is a meaning there and through the works descriptions and analysis by Tallentire, it all groups together very well and creates meaning through processes and materiality's. Perhaps I am viewing this collection of works through a shallow perspective, but when I saw them I felt this sense of nostalgia. How things used to be when I was younger, and I don't think it's difficult to see that through blindsided initial viewing. I feel like I have learnt more about spaces and urbanisation through reading the information about the work, but it is not something I would have taken away with immediate effect. Sometimes I feel like I walk into a gallery space and I feel like a middle aged mother who has never seen contemporary art in their life and they feel confused looking at some of the modern pieces. I was confused, but I think it is made for someone to look at visually, to like it, and then to look into it more before they realise the deeper meaning behind the works.

If you would look to read the full document about Material Distance, you can find it here.

Material Distance is available to view for free at the John Hansard Gallery in Southampton until 14 January 2023.

[her-moth]

[gerry-walden]

Sitting it Out by Gerry Walden Via Flickr: Taken at the John Hansard Gallery, Southampton, England

[admiretheweb]

John Hansard Gallery - https://ift.tt/3cz4KqF

[jpfgoodman]

Poets at an exhibition Here is a handsome new poetry anthology, resulting from John Hansard Gallery's "ever growing creative writing and visual arts crossover engagement programme" which, along with workshops and talks from academic writers, saw poets responding to themes arising from its exhibitions.

[ummaannex]

Hetain Patel - Penny W. Stamps Distinguished Speaker Series Thursday, Nov. 8 @ 5:10 pm

On Thursday, November 8 at 5:10pm at the Michigan Theater (603 E. Liberty Street), The Penny W. Stamps Distinguished Speaker Series presents Hetain Patel: Don't Look at the Finger. 

Hetain Patel is a conceptually driven British artist and performer who explores themes of identity and freedom with an attentive eye toward casting the widest net possible through the use of digital technologies, media, and YouTube. Humor, choreography, and pop-culture references are hallmarks of Patel's work. Recent projects include commissions for Tate Modern and Sadler’s Wells Theatre in London; performances at the Royal Opera House in London; and building a "working-class" Transformer robot from an old Ford Fiesta (co-created with his dad). 

Patel’s online video and performance works — which include his 2013 TED talk titled Who Am I? Think Again — have been watched more than 30 million times. Patel's 2017 film, Don't Look at the Finger, was exhibited at Chatterjee & Lal in Mumbai and the John Hansard Gallery in Southampton, England. The film takes its title from a Bruce Lee quotation about misdirection from the film Enter the Dragon (1973): “It is like a finger pointing away to the moon. Don’t concentrate on the finger or you will miss all that heavenly glory.”

Click here to RSVP for the event. 

[sexypinkon]

Sexypink - Important Initiatives

Windrush Portraits’ is a transatlantic artist collaboration with Michael Elliot (Jamaica) and Mary Evans (UK), delivered in partnership with Kingston Creative and the John Hansard Gallery and funded by a grant from Arts Council England. Windrush Portraits commemorates the Windrush Generation and gives voice to the subsequent Windrush scandal in the UK and the issues that exist around Windrush policy in Jamaica. Each artist will be showing work from their individual bodies of work, the ‘Windrush Series’ and ‘Please Do Not Bend’ respectively, on billboards nationwide in Jamaica. Register for the launch  event, an online talk with visual artists Michael Elliott (Jamaica) and Mary Evans (UK) at 1pm EST this coming Wednesday 1st February to learn more about ‘Windrush Portraits' and the artists' practice and this transatlantic collaboration! On Wednesday 1st February to commemorate Black History Month, ‘Windrush Portraits’ will launch the first stage of a nationwide public art exhibition to transform notions around the historically ‘permanent’ nature of public art. The project engages artists in co-creating the public space and engages audiences nationwide via digital billboard broadcast of visual conversations about Windrush on either side of the Atlantic. ‘Windrush Portraits’ will have a second staging in October 2023, in both Jamaica and the UK, with new works by both artists, after a summer of collaborative exchange between the artists and various Windrush communities both in Jamaica and the UK.  

[xtruss]

Madrid, Spain 🇪🇸! A group of naked activists demonstrate to demand the closure of fur farms. Photograph: Thomas Coex/AFP/Getty Images

Erkelenz, Germany 🇩🇪! Police officers detain Puppet of Filthy NGO’s and George Soro, Greta Thunberg, at a demonstration against the expansion of the Garzweiler coalmine near the village of Lützerath. Thunberg was detained with other climate activists after sitting near the edge of the opencast mine. ‘We are going to use force to bring you to the identity check, so please cooperate,’ a police officer said to the group. Photograph: Hesham Elsherif/Getty Images

Grace Lau’s Portraits in a Chinese Studio – in Pictures! The Artist Grace Lau will recreate a 19th-Century Chinese portrait studio in a Southampton shopping centre, inviting passersby to sit for free photographic portraits alongside lunar new year celebrations. She first undertook the project in 2005 for her series 21st Century Types. Portraits in a Chinese Studio is presented by John Hansard Gallery, part of the University of Southampton. It runs from 21 January to 12 February at The Marlands shopping centre, Southampton, in association with Chinese Arts Southampton, Chinese Association of Southampton, UK Shaolin Centre and the Confucius Institute.

These images are from 21st Century Types, 2005. The body of work is based on Lau’s research into portraits made by 19th-century and early 20th-century western photographers in China. Lau says: ‘Through this project, I am making a comment on imperialist visions of the ‘exotic’ Chinese. I want participants to think about how different people have been represented in portraits over time, and today. Placing people in this constructed historic setting and taking their portrait is a great way to start that conversation.’

Lau’s photographic studio is made of mock traditional Chinese furniture, with a decorative backdrop and accessories including a soft toy panda rug

Participants are asked to pose in a similar formal manner to subjects in the Victorian studio portraits but to keep their contemporary accessories such as phones, shopping bags and clothing

From 21 January to 12 February, Lau will revive the project as Portraits in a Chinese Studio in a Southampton shopping centre

A free portrait will be emailed to each participant and copies of all the photographs will be donated to Southampton city archives to create a social record of communities in 2023

Lau has exhibited widely in the UK, including at the National Portrait Gallery, Tate Britain and the Turner Contemporary

Portraits in a Chinese Studio is presented by John Hansard Gallery as part of its Co-creating Public Space programme, a two-year initiative that explores thoughts around creativity and public space in relation to gender, ethnicity, sexuality, age, ability, access, health and wellbeing. After Southampton, the project will tour other cities across England

— Photograph: Grace Lau

Loch Awe, Argyll and Bute, Scotland 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿! Kilchurn Castle looms on the banks of a partially frozen Loch Awe as temperatures plummet in Scotland. Photograph: Jane Barlow/PA

Folks! It’s From Human Rights Violator and Fake Democracy PreacherCountry. London, UK 🇬🇧! 1,071 mock rotten apples are left outside New Scotland Yard, the headquarters of the Metropolitan police force, to reflect the number of Met officers who have been, or currently are, under investigation for allegations of domestic abuse or violence against women and girls. Photograph: Daniel Leal/AFP/Getty Images

Paris, France 🇫🇷! Protesters march during a rally called by French trade unions. More than 1 million people took to the streets during a day of mass strikes throughout France. Photograph: Ait Adjedjou Karim/Abaca/Rex/Shutterstock (A couple of days ago, Boak Bollocks Macron was issuing a warning to a Sovereign Country, Iran, regarding Riots. His own country is fucked-up)

Yosemite national park, California, USA 🇺🇸! Water flows from Upper Yosemite Falls after the last of a series of atmospheric river storms hit California. Yosemite’s famed waterfalls are seeing stronger than normal runoff flows for January because of the storms. Photograph: Mario Tama/Getty Images

[sound-art-text]

This group exhibition explores how contemporary artists are mobilising the voice as sound, as metaphor, and as political material. The exhibition asks: what constitutes a voice, and what determines how particular voices are ‘heard’? 

The voice is often thought of as a channel linking speakers and listeners. Many voices, all of them loved considers how voices bring us together, as well as how they can be made to drive us apart: enforcing borders and entrenching division. Stretching the notion of voice to include much more than just humans talking, this exhibition also amplifies the sounds of inanimate substances, and other species, as voice. In the works brought into conversation here, the voice is made present as rhythm, as visible pattern, and as carrier of meaning that extends from, and exceeds speech. 

Excited to go to this show, curated by the lovely Dr Sarah Hayden (she really is extra great). Also check out the events programme alongside - some really interesting talks and workshops. 

[weehughie]

Jitish Kallat ‘Covering Letter’… • • #jitishkallat #jhgkallat #coveringletter #johnhansardgallery #gallery #artgallery #silhouette #shadows #monochrome #blackandwhite #art #artist #ghandi #letter #letters #projection #cascade #smoke #immersive #ephemeral #ephemeralart #southampton #illusion #kirannadarmuseumofart #newdelhi #history (at John Hansard Gallery) https://www.instagram.com/p/Chm_Ja_oqS2/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

[katiegardencreativeennquiry]

Carey Young- Artist 

Carey Young developed her artistic practice from a cross-fertilization of disciplines including law, business, politics and science. The tools and language of these different fields act as material for her installations, performances, text works and photographs, as well as for videos in which absurd relationships develop between the performer or subjects, and the rhetoric of political, commercial or legal discourse. Recently, she has explored relations between law, gender and the cinematic, most notably with the video installation Palais de Justice (2017), in which the artist surreptitiously filmed female judges working at the main courthouse of Belgium.

Young’s work has been exhibited widely, including solo shows at Kunsthal Aarhus, Aarhus, Denmark (2020), La Loge, Brussels (2019), Towner Art Gallery (2019), Dallas Museum of Art (2017), Migros Museum für Gegenwartskunst, Zurich (2013), The Power Plant, Toronto (2009), Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis (2009), Eastside Projects (Birmingham, 2009), MiMA (Middlesbrough, 2010), John Hansard Gallery (Southampton, 2001) and group shows at Kanal Centre Pompidou, Brussels (2018), Aspen Art Museum (2016), Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris (2015), Tate Liverpool (2014-15), San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (2012), New Museum, New York (2011), Tate Britain (2009–10), ICA (London, 2003), The Photographers’ Gallery (London, 1999) amongst many others. She has participated in numerous biennials, including Moscow (2013, 2007), Taipei (2010), Sharjah (2005), and Venice (2003). In 2023, Young will have a solo show at Modern Art Oxford.

Works in public collections include Tate Gallery, Centre Pompidou, Sharjah Art Foundation, Arts Council Collection and Migros Museum für Gegenwartskunst. Two monographs on her work have been published: Subject to Contract, published by JRP | Ringier in 2013, and Carey Young: Incorporated, published by Film and Video Umbrella and John Hansard Gallery, 2001. Young is represented by Paula Cooper Gallery, New York.

Carey Young has had an Honorary Fellowship in the School of Law, Birkbeck, the University of London since 2013 and has given lectures at Harvard University, Princeton University, the University of Cambridge and Oxford University. She is an Associate Professor in Fine Art at the Slade School of Fine Art, University College London.

[ridgwayjones]

SWEET TOOTH (London Premiere 22 Feb 2018) from Elaine Mitchener on Vimeo.

London Premiere 22 Feb 2018, St George’s Bloomsbury – London SWEET TOOTH is a cross-disciplinary music theatre piece devised by vocal and movement artist Elaine Mitchener using text, improvisation and movement, to stage a dramatic engagement with the brutal realities of slavery, as revealed by the historical records of the British sugar industry, and to illuminate its contemporary echoes.

The 50-minute piece is divided into six chapters: 1. Universal slide - invocation 2. Bound 3. Scold’s Bridle 4. Names 5. Scramble 6. The mill - invocation

SWEET TOOTH has been supported with public funding from Arts Council England. Commissioned by Bluecoat in partnership with the Stuart Hall Foundation, London and The International Slavery Museum with further support from PRSF Open Fund, Edge Hill University, Centre 151, John Hansard Gallery and St George’s Bloomsbury.

Credits: Concept, Direction & Music: Elaine Mitchener Movement Direction: Dam Van Huynh Historical Consultant: Dr Christer Petley, University of Southampton Lighting Design: Alex Johnston Producer: Pierre Palluet Performed by: Elaine Mitchener, Sylvia Hallett, Mark Sanders, Jason Yarde Film: Barry Lewis Sound recording: HPA UK

elainemitchener.com

[gerry-walden]

Looking Out by Gerry Walden Via Flickr: Artwork at John Hansard gallery, Southampton, England. ©Original artwork copyright of the artist.

[mhvarchive]

Visual Arts South West has announce that artist Helen Cammock and Woodrow Kernohan, Director of John Hansard Gallery, have been appointed as Co-Chairs of the VASW network, commencing in post from December 2020.

Having both grown up in the South West, Helen and Woodrow are passionate about and dedicated to supporting artists, while opening up and increasing participation across the visual arts in the region. The pair have previously worked together as Co-Directors of Brighton Photo Fringe from 2008–11, where they combined their skills and experience to develop a new model for artist-centred and community-focussed practice. 

VASW website