YARD’s Young People’s Panel meets on the first Tuesday evening of every month at New Art Exchange. The panel are currently planning activities for young people for June 2012 at New Art Exchange. Forthcoming dates for Young People’s Panel meetings:
6 December 2011
10 January 2012
7 February 2012
6 March 2012
3 April 2012
1 May 2012
5 June 2012
3 July 2012
If you would like to get involved please contact Rachael Young or call 0115 924 8630
YPP Blog: Let’s Set the Scene
Hi everyone,
As promised here is the next installment of YPP’s progressive blog, and I think an introduction to the artists running the sessions is due. I briefly mentioned them in my first post but they without a doubt deserve a formal ingress, as it were (ingress; great word).
And so, in a strictly unbiased and alphabetical order we have, Chris Lewis Jones, an artist based primarily in the East Midlands, exhibiting in solo and collaborative shows, but also artistic residencies, all of which have broadened his experiences on an international level. In his own words, his work seeks to explore ‘evolving notions of identity,’ which of course makes him a perfect collaborator in our workshops. Drawing from his involvement with numerous facets of visual mediums, Chris hopes to conduct his workshop through conversation and developed understanding of what constitutes a cultural identity and the ways in which it manifests in our immediate environments.
What does it look like? How does it sound? What does it smell like? Can we feel it? These are the types of questions which Chris will be encouraging young people to think about in order to illuminate the way in which the beauty and diversity of individual cultural identities, irrigate society and encourage it’s growth. Thinking about this now, I couldn’t agree more and this is how I imagine it; The place we live, whether it be urban, rural or whatever is a blank canvas and without culture it remains this way. It is only the people that inhabit the space who provide colour, with hot reds and burnt oranges coming from eastern countries; turquoise and cerulean the boarders of the Mediterranean, dazzling yellows and hot lime from Africa, and fertile, lush greens and earthy browns from the forests of south America. Of course, there are hundreds more but isn’t a lovely idea? If the pigments were watercolours (which I imagine them to be), each one would bleed into it’s neighbour, resulting in twice, three times the variety than before. This is why cultural difference is so important because through it we can learn and develop from one another. A place with a single cultural identity would only have one colour. That’s just boring.
It may sound abstract but I think it’s a great way to visualise it and turn it into something manageable, which is exactly what Chris intends to do. During a tour of NAE he will get groups to think about the space they are in, what it’s function is, how it looks, the ways it fits into the immediate environment (Hyson Green) and how they can interact with it. At each point of interest, Chris and the groups will think of an interesting way to capture these experiences, whether it be through sound, spoken word, collage, or anything else that springs to mind. The final piece will be a collaboration of all of these experiences, creating a unique montage personal to the groups and impossible to duplicate.
The workshop will demonstrate both a physical and artistic journey as the groups firstly become move familiar and ‘At Home’ within the NAE space, and secondly a journey through a constantly morphing artistic process, since their initial ideas will transform as they begin to engage with the space on a more personal level. Personally I cannot wait to see the out come of this project and want to say a big thank you to Chris for approaching Patel’s work with such personal involvement. Only time will tell what the outcome of the session will be but you’ve heard it here first, it’s going to be like nothing you’ve seen before…
Phew! I’m already exhausted. Second to our stage is dance performer and artistic facilitator, Dwayne Antony Simms. Born and raised in Nottingham, Dwayne has a very personal connection it’s cultural climate. Dwayne has not only worked as a solo performer but also as part of collaborations through workshops and dance collectives both locally in Nottingham and across the boarder to Europe. His work has been described as having an essence of European flavour and a highly experimental approach.
There is no question that Dwayne strives to think out of the box; an endeavor which seems to deliver interminable success. It is his acute awareness of the whole body in motion which makes his work so engaging and it is an exciting prospect when combined with the cultural qualities of Hetain Patel’s work.
Dwayne will guide the workshop into an investigatory discussion of Identity and Culture which, combined with his own considerations of the difference between Object and Subject, will encourage groups to look at their community and consider ways in which it is perceived on various levels. Dwayne quite rightly calls this process a ‘collage of information,’ which will be the core foundations for further creative engineering. This collage will then be transformed using microphones and video cameras to produce a multi-sensory performance. The idea of a live feed also manifested itself during our creative ‘brainstorm,’ an idea which I think would be high impact and allow the participants to be both performer and audience, whilst also creating a unique experience for other visitors to NAE.
The idea of a live feed, catalyses so many possibilities that perfectly capture the idea of a ‘local reality,’ because what could be more local and real than experiencing yourself and others in your immediate environment, performing and experiencing a shared space, which houses and celebrates the promise of cultural diversity? YPP input in this workshop would also work well, since the transience of a live feed can be captured in our video blog and immortalise the experience. As with Chris’ work, Dwyane’s final piece will be entirely unique and it is not something we can let slip through our fingers!
Last, but certainly not least we have photographer, Sian Stammers. Sian has been involved with most art institutions in Nottingham and beyond, working with Nottingham Contemporary, QUAD in Derby and our own New Art Exchange to name a few. Her work often has local origins, capturing the environment which surrounds her with a incredible tenderness and respect. Her hazy landscapes emulate the romantic nostalgia of a late autumn morning, whilst effortlessly revealing beauty in the normal. With this in mind, Sian intends to use various forms of photographic display, including projections and portraiture to comment on Patel’s work.
I think it was Sian’s initial and unique response to Patel’s work which captured the YPP’s interest and imagination in terms of her original proposals. She was most interested in the way in which we had interpreted Patel’s work, and was keen to explore our inital thoughts as well as her own.
After speaking with Patel and learning the origins of his work, we found that whilst the large majority of it explored the dialogue between western and eastern cultures; it also drew upon some very specific biographical references. Be Like Water is a video performance in which Patel reenacts a kung-fu sequence from a film whilst wearing traditional Indian clothing. Patel told us he would imagine his Kurta as a kung-fu outfit instead, embodying the marital arts heroes he saw in his favourite films. The YPP interpreted this as a example of escaping aspects of a cultural identity to which you may belong, but not necessarily wholly affiliate with. We found this avenue of exploration interesting because it is general enough to apply to everyone but specific enough to generate unique responses. Patel is an example of such a response, and the YPP thought the workshops could follow his example.
Sian is eager to explore ideas presented by YPP in relation to her own interpretations. This will include portraiture and photography but not in the conventional sense. Sian will demonstrate that portraiture permeates more art forms than we may first realise. I think that the ways in which our portraits are defined leads very nicely to an exploration of cultural identity since, what is portraiture anyway? Is it just a likeness, an accurate representation of our face? Partly. But most importantly a portrait should be an outward demonstration of the things that make us who we are, and crucially, it should celebrate those things. Now I don’t mean to get all ‘art history’ on you but this idea has been around for a long time. In the oldy Renaissance days, those wealthy enough to have a portrait painted would not just have themselves painted, but they would include the things that made them successful and in some cases, the envy of everyone else. If it was an artist portrait, he would have his hands highlighted to demonstrate their delicacy, echoing his craft, as well as being surrounded by classical sculpture and other paintings, inferring that he (unfortunately there weren’t many she’s) was part of a long lineage of picture-making. A soldier may include his armor to symbolise his conquests, whereas a scholar would be depicted in clothes specific to his academic practice. This didn’t just happen in western societies, in fact examples of this trend can be found in any culture you care to mention; Chinese, Native American Indian, Japanese – I could go on forever about this but you get the picture (I’ve just written a dissertation, so sue me) …
So what Sian hopes to do seems to me like an extension of portraiture, and a brilliant one at that. By encouraging groups to think about their own identities, through various mediums including voice recordings, a sculptural arrangement of their most important belongings, and working on acetate, she will allow each person to come up with their own interpretation of what a portraiture should be and so moving beyond just a physical likeness. She will bring a third dimension to a traditionally 2D construct, which is innovative whilst echoing the charm and romanticism of her own work. Genius.
So there you have it, an introduction (although a lot longer than first anticipated) to the lovely artists who are going to run the show. We’re all very excited about what lies in store and are eager to see the results. Until there’s much to be done and later, if you’re lucky, I’ll divulge to you the monopolistic game of marketing and promotion! There is also the launch of Hetain Patel’s exhibition at NAE coming up which you should definitely check out.
Anyway, thanks again for supporting YARD see y’all soon!
Holly Stanton
YPP
