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When the City Speaks: The City is the Stage … Reviews: Cities - Liverpool, London and Paris.
Review
of When the City Speaks - The City is a Stage on 30 June 2007.
Saturday 30 June 2007 artists from all around participated in ‘When the City Speaks – The City is a Stage’. Everyone met at the Fact Centre, Liverpool, England in the morning and their ventured out into the city to explore art in an urban context. The Curator, Jo Derbyshire, describes the days events: ‘Artists from around Liverpool and the surrounding districts came to contribute to the project. This was an open submission and artists from a range of contemporary art practices turned to up to engage in a Situationist initiative’. Derbyshire further explains the objectives of the overall project: ‘When the City Speak’ comes from a series of previous projects of art in the urban space. This new direction is subthemed ‘The City is a Stage’. It uses the landscape and invites people to become a flaneur, a city walker, observing the banal and everyday interactions’. ‘Due to the alternative nature of the space explored and removed from the conventional concepts of a studio or gallery, the spontaneous nature of urban space with a fusion of activities all on the go, the project becomes more one of the concept and experience rather than the end piece produced by each artist. Similar, the art becomes a residue itself and an annotation of the artists experience in this research project of urban space’. Writers, visual artists, musician and members of the public participated in the project. From the initial day of the ‘flaneur’ experience and collating research on the theme, the artists then had another twenty-four hours to finalise and finish their final piece. The next stage of this programme is London in July 2007 and then Paris for August 2007. An exhibition of the Liverpool collection of art produced will be from 10th August 2007 - 22nd August 2007 at the South Bohemia Gallery, Smithdown Road, Liverpool, England (http://www.freewebs.com/southbag). If you are interested in contributing to the next stage in London email Derbyshire at aprilskies1204@aol.com. Further information can be viewed at: www.joderbyshire.co.uk or www.transvoyeur.co.uk.
When
the City Speaks to Jo Derbyshire. ‘When the City Speaks’ has been a cultural research programme explored by Jo Derbyshire from her earlier and independent practice as an artist through to opening it up curatorial to other practitioners. The impetus has been to creatively explore the concepts of art in the constructs of the urban space and particularly alternative spaces of the pubic realm and readdress through a gallery context. The current development in this programme is ‘When the City Speaks: The City is a Stage’ and founded on artistic research in the city environment and consider in terms of the flaneur (The term "Flâneur" comes from the French verb flâner, which means "to stroll". A flâneur is thus a person who walks the city in order to experience it). The initial stage was set in Liverpool (UK), where a collective of artists entered the city and responded accordingly with their creative insight from which each derives a piece of art. This work will be shown as a large installation across the walls of the South Bohemia Gallery (Liverpool, England), each section interlinking to convey the lineage of experience from one place to another and reflect visual dialogue, signs and semiotics of media and urban cultural annotation we encounter. Derbyshire explains in an interview with Lucia Andrea Sweeney more the purpose and structure of this curatorial intiative from the onset of her own art to the broader insight of the shared creative expeirence it has evolved: Sweeney: The upcoming exhibition of 'When the City Speaks - The City is a State' is a programmed for three cities and launches with art produced on the theme of Liverpool from local and international artists. Can you explain the concept behind this brief? Derbyshire: I chose the three cities Liverpool, London and Paris for the personal connections to me, but each are cultural beds of a hive activity. Although random, all have an interesting history in arts and culture. ‘When the City Speaks’ is forms part of my research into urban culture and hybridity. I use the city environment as a stage for people to explore, take in and utilise in their work. Sweeney: What has been response and level of art produced by the artists who have contributed to this project? Derbyshire: It has been a good response. It is funny, as a lot of people are choosing to take photographs and paint and collage over the photographs. So, it will be an interesting turn out. The artists have chosen different methods, but the fundamental is the creative experience and not so much as the object of art as the end product, but some have chosen a more spontaneous approach, while others have initiated final produced art piece. This will be an interesting turn out, because there are similarities in how some have expressed there outcomes and others different. Sweeney: You are both Curator to this project and Artist too. How do the roles differentiate to the objectives of cultural dialogue? Derbyshire: I cant really separate the two as the project came from an inherent thing. Something that has been in my mind to do for the last ten years. Its like the cities I visited did really speak to me and I re-interpreted this as an artists in a kind of chaotic way using a collage of photographs, household paint, city scapes and more. As a Curator, I used narrative and research to achieve this. It was going on all at the same time so hard to separate for me. Sweeney: What work have you produced and what has been the creative process to encapsulate your own artistic interpretation to art in or derived from the urban space? Derbyshire: I have produced an array of art around the subject of urban space. These have ranged from large abstracts of mixed media paints on canvas to denote sense of fusion, transition and hybridisation a city space can convey to the senses and on a similar ethos take these concepts and express through live art project that have similarly allowed other participants to contribute in the creativity. Sweeney: You consider the term 'flaneur'. Can you explain how the term has been researched and embodied in your work and that of other artists? Derbyshire: I also consider the situationism but in post-modern terms and what that means today. Particularly, Liverpool is the changing urban environment and how the buildings are making people react. I have noticed in a lot of the work that people are more attracted to the old buildings, sub cultures like that within Quiggins, graffiti and fly posters. Something not conducive with the public image of new buildings, Capital of Culture and regeneration, and more, but I suppose if this is considered as a culture it is an homogenised version of something the artist don’t consider worthy or worth mentioning about Sweeney: Liverpool in particular has been in a transition with the regeneration and lead up to the European Capital of Culture 2008. Have these changes influenced your own insight as Curator and Artist? If so, how? Does this current creative initiative align to these, whether inspired or reactionary? Derbyshire: I have discovered something interesting and the focus has been on the old, the established and the hidden rather than the new. Perhaps this is because the old is revered, known and understood. I think there is a lot of resilience and resistance to the new as there are areas of Liverpool becoming the forgotten town whilst the wealthy move in with disregard to people’s history or community. I am not fully against change. I think Liverpool is looking a lot better with some redevelopment but if a councillor suddenly moves into a city apartment whose builders they voted in favour of at a planning meeting, I’d be asking for an enquiry. Its probably happened in the area I grew up in where a build firm kind of won the rights to build irrespective of the show the building will cast and views the high rise block, but again the wealth derived has something to do with this the individual can be forgotten when economics come into the equation so can our social and cultural history – it’s a bit like the 60’s and 70’s revisited. On the other handm I do like the changing skyline and Liverpool is moving with the times a bit I just think a bit rapidly and without much thought. In brief, Culture Company, well no surprises there, you cant create culture and art it exists any way on many levels and with money or not it will continue. The Tate is brilliant we have one in the city and the Turner Prize coming up, so that is positive. Emin and Blake feature in my collage and are very much becoming iconic figures of Liverpool. Sweeney: The next research projects and exhibitions are scheduled for London (UK) and Paris (France). What do you hope to realise from the overall programme? Derbyshire: How the urban environment is important and influential on not only my work, but work of others. How the environment is constantly changing proving that the camera does lie in one sense. I will have to see how it develops and I think I will have a lot of time reflecting on this. Sweeney: What do you envision for the next stage of development? Derbyshire: The project is one that has and allows for an organic development in how it evolves. From the shared experiences of this current programme will determine how indeed the next stage of ‘When the City Speaks’ expands and evolves. This
exhibition will run from 10th - 22nd August 2007. Jo
Derbyshire The
South Bohemia Art Gallery Further information on the When the City Speaks Programme is available at: Associate
exhibitions programme: Affiliate
to Transvoyeur.
Review
... When the City Speaks: The City is a Stage - Liverpool Exhibition
at the South Bohemia Gallery, Liverpool, England, Curated by Jo
Derbyshire.
‘Due to the alternative nature of the space explored and removed from the conventional concepts of a studio or gallery, the spontaneous nature of urban space with a fusion of activities all on the go, the project becomes more one of the concept and experience rather than the end piece produced by each artist. Similar, the art becomes a residue itself and an annotation of the artists experience in this research project of urban space’. This was the introduction by Jo Derbyshire, the Curator, on the current exhibition at the South Bohemia Gallery on Smithdown Road, Liverpool, England. There was presented an array of art in eclectic explosion across the walls of the gallery. Each work merged with next forming one large installation. It reminded me of sketch book work and conveyed the experiences of each individual artist through their visual dialogue on art in the urban space. The amalgamation of art moving into the next communicated the journey of the flaneur to have the viewer engaged and explores and dissect each piece of art. On the night of the private view, Friday 10 August 2007, George Lund provoked an impromptu performance and adopted only his yellow feathery mask, which usually belongs to the rest of Funkadelic suit. He enticed co-artist, Gaynor Evelyn Sweeney, to spontaneously join him in a dance to the sounds of Bolero by Bizet. They came together to waltz and then moved to gesture to the art on the walls, turning to each other again spun out of the gallery entrance and took the performance into the streets. Eccentric, bewildering, enticing and fun, the onlookers laughed bemused and confounded to the antics of the two artists. The exhibition has work from many different creative practictioners, such as writers, visual artists, musicians and more. The artists who contributed to this research project were Colin Binns, Claudia Brookes, Sarah Brookes, Peter Carr, David Chalkey, Ingrid Christie, Sarah Cox, Jo Derbyshire, Kate Eggleston-Wirtz, Kofi Fosu, June Rose H, Tony Knox, George Lund, Eddie Lyons, Gaby Malcolm, Steve McKay, Karen McLeod, Elaine Stapleton, Natalie Russell, Lucia Andrea Sweeney, Gaynor Evelyn Sweeney, Andrew Taylor and Peter Worthington. This exhibition will run from 10th - 22nd August 2007. Jo
Derbyshire The
South Bohemia Art Gallery Further information on the When the City Speaks Programme is available at: Associate
exhibitions programme: Affiliate
to Transvoyeur.
Review to be updated.
Review to be updated.
Review to be updated.
Review to be updated. |
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