Friday 2 November, 2012
My name is Stephanie Bolton and I have been working with Beacon on a three month graduate placement scheme on the Compass project. I graduated from The University of Lincoln this summer, with a BA in Journalism.
Michael Saunders
The evening began with an impromptu talk from artist Michael Saunders, since the minibus with the Nottingham speakers was stuck somewhere in traffic. Michael had literally just arrived back from Cuba
a few hours earlier, where he’d been for the 50th anniversary of the Cuban missile crisis. He gave some background to his trip, informing the
audience that he was born just before the missile crisis, but felt that the
fear had somehow imbued itself in him and that this work is a way to somehow
discover or put aside that fear. His current project began with
him photographing a chain of nuclear missile sites in Lincolnshire, until he
found them unsatisfactory in his quest for “trying to find a way to express the
waste of human effort that went in to fighting the Cold War.”
He’d been contemplating visiting
for 8 years, but it was only two months ago that, quite impulsively, himself,
his partner and his Spanish friend bought tickets. He spoke of his pre-trip
plans to take certain things into Cuba that would break the quarantine Kennedy
set up in the Cold War years - a photo of a piece of missile (he would’ve taken
the actual piece but discovered it had asbestos) and shirts patterned with
aerial views of missile sites – and when he confessed this to the Cubans they
erupted in laughter. He spoke of the friendliness of the people, the
environment of recycled and mended products because of the economic blockade
and the fear of the Cubans that the Americans want to invade their country.
It was at a conference organised
by a union of historians and writers that Saunders was welcomed to join a
workshop and a drive out to one of the missile sites – an obvious high point in
his trip.
He explained the nervousness and
difficulty surrounding his trip, and how it had turned out to be “much more
complex” than he anticipated. He said the trip had changed him, and that
although it has allowed him to put the Cuban missile crisis and Cold War behind
him, it has also “thrown up loads more things”. For now, he said that he is
just trying to process what an amazing, mad process it was.
Thank you Michael for the fascinating stories.
The minibus arrived and the first of the Nottingham based guests was
Rebecca Beinart
She gave an overview of her practice since her graduation
through to her current work. Her final project for her BA in Fine Art at
Nottingham Trent University was a treasure hunt around the Victoria Centre
market that ended in a revelation about the history of the centre. Beinart said
she wanted to show this project because it was at the time when she was
becoming interested in art as an experience, situation or intervention as
opposed to an object. This was the beginning of recurring issues that kept
coming up in her practice, most notably finding different ways of looking at a
place.
After graduation she started
Yolk, an artist collective she worked on with two of her peers, through which
they built relationships with all of Nottingham’s twin cities, inviting artists
over to do collaborative projects and visiting those cities themselves.
In 2007 Beinart started an MA in
Arts and Ecology in Devon, an experimental course that brought a range of ideas
and cross-disciplinary artists together. It was this, and the set of questions
it provided, that has shaped her work since.
She spoke of her 2009 work Corridor, commissioned for a festival in
Bristol, for which she walked along the River Malago with seven different
people including a birdwatcher, member of the council, and a local campaigner
to get different perspectives. She then worked these into a walk that was a
public event.
Beinart also discussed Field Kitchen, a self-sufficient mobile
kitchen from which to create meals form food found in her surroundings; Exponential Growth, a project that asked
ecological questions about growth and limitations; Potion, which explored her interest in the balance between a plant
being poisonous and medicinal; and her on-going collaboration with her sister, Origination, about family history,
migration and memories.
She admits that her projects,
which are often collaborative, are often quite big and have lots of layers to
them; so much so that most of them have their own website.
Her current project with
Wasteland Twinnings is a worldwide network of artists who are researching
wastelands, giving them an opportunity to share methodologies and knowledge.
Beinart’s wasteland is Nottingham Island, once the site of the Boots factory,
now used for recreation. In September, the site was twinned with wasteland in
Jakarta in Indonesia and an agreement was printed from elderberries and the
maringa tree from Indonesia.
Yelena Popova
is another artist based at Primary Studios in Nottingham, (where Rebecca Beinart also has a studio). she talked
about the work she’s produced since she graduated from the Royal College of Art 15
months ago in a practice that is a mixture of painting, installation and video.
She showed a piece from July this
year. The theme was the Olympics because of
the time at which the project was shown and Popova tried to find a metaphorical
equivalent to the practice of painting in sports. She looked at the figure of
the discus player and drew comparisons with painters through their combination
of balance, circular movement, force, repetition, creating distance and moving
forward. This can be seen in more detail on her Discus Discourse website.
She also spoke of the project
that was the result of her Chinese residency; an 8 minute documentary that
looked at the Chinese coalmining industry and the industrial history and
differences of the East and the West. She discovered another repetitive process
that takes place when the East copy the changes they see occurring in the West.
An interview with an elderly gentlemen who used to mine coal in Mansfield in
Nottinghamshire brought all the elements together and allowed Popova to make
the film and the connections.
She also discussed her ink
drawings, made from Chinese ink, the recurrence of ghostly figures in her
works, and her installation that took place in a ruined building in Norwich, to
which she bought ovals into what she felt were very masculine
surroundings.
Matthew Chesney
An artist and
director of Backlit Studios in Nottingham, Matthew spoke about his work throughout the last 6 years, giving a brief
introduction mentioning his interest in role play contemporary art and his
influences, among which he lists avant-garde theatre director Robert Wilson.
He spoke about several of his
works; ‘Tis Pity, on which he worked with the drama department at New College
Nottingham and which he also took to the Musashino Art University
in Tokyo; collaborative works exhibited in Germany based on the German
underground brotherhood; and a performance by himself and his twin brother
under Damien Hurst’s spot paintings at the Tate Modern.
Chesney talked about Backlit, the
voluntary organisation he begun with his peers in 2008: “It was really about giving
graduates an opportunity to curate and show their work,” he said, as well as
providing artists with a chance to play. “That was the premise at many shows at
Backlit, let’s get people to challenge their practice, show something they’re
scared of showing.”
In 2011 they were forced to move
to a new space in Nottingham, but the programme continues with critical debate,
skills development across all artforms and BackCrit, critical sessions that
provide feedback in an informal environment.
On being an artist-turned-curator,
Chesney says it’s been a “huge turning point” in his career as an artist and in
his practice.
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The minibus departed back to Nottingham, having offered a wonderful glimpse of the current visual art activity in Nottingham...
