Tuesday, March 29, 2011

Workplace Gallery at The Armory Show 2011, New York


Workplace Gallery at The Armory Show 2011 presents:

Eric Bainbridge

Catherine Bertola
Marcus Coates
Jo Coupe
Laura Lancaster
Mike Pratt
Matt Stokes
Wolfgang Weileder

PIER 94
MARCH 3-6, 2011

BOOTH 545
www.thearmoryshow.com

For a full list of available works please contact info@workplacegallery.co.uk

image:
Matt Stokes
Prelude to Cantata Profana: Paroxysm's rehearsal room, Kassel, 2010
Lightjet print, Diasec Mounted
171.4 x 120 cm
67 1/2 x 47 1/4 in
(MS0052)

Courtesy of the artist and Workplace Gallery

Kindly supported by


Laura Lancaster: "Visual Artist of the Year" The Journal Culture Awards 2010


Workplace Gallery is delighted to congratulate Laura Lancaster on winning the Visual Artist of the Year at The Journal Culture Awards 2010.

Workplace Gallery represented artists again dominated the shortlist with Jennifer Douglas also a finalist.

image:
Laura Lancaster

Untitled, 2010
Oil on board
51.5 x 61 cm, 20 1/4 x 24 1/8 in
(LL0385)
Courtesy of the artist and Workplace Gallery
   

Friday, March 25, 2011

Matt Stokes: "The Distant Sound" De Hallen Haarlem, Netherlands


MATT STOKES - The Distant Sound

26.03.2011 - 13.06.2011

http://www.dehallenhaarlem.nl

De Hallen Haarlem presents the first solo exhibition by Matt Stokes in a Dutch museum. This British artist is chiefly known for his video work in which he investigates underground currents in contemporary music. The museum is showing new and recent work by Stokes, in which he focuses on the subcultures of grindcore and Northern Soul. The exhibition can be seen from 26 March through 13 June, 2011.

The English artist Matt Stokes (b. Penzance, 1973) does work in which performance, music and social engagement flow together. Stokes generally produces video work that zooms in on the social and visual codes of specific subcultures, and which is preceded by a period of intensive research and active cooperation with local communities. For instance, in the past he has made work on the folk tradition in Camden, hardcore punk in Austin, Texas, and the Northern Soul movement in Dundee. Rather than the documentary form which is usually employed with subjects of this sort, Stokes opts for a more subjective approach in which he is guided by the reconciling and liberating aspects of the shared musical experience.

In a co-production with the Kunsthalle Fridericianum in Kassel Stokes realised the video installation Cantata Profana especially for De Hallen Haarlem, in which grindcore, an extreme punk/metal variant, is central. In Cantata Profana (2010) a piece of classical music is performed by six grindcore vocalists, all familiar figures in this radical current in music. The monumental six-channel video installation which is to be seen here combines the raw vocals of grindcore with the stately, ‘respectable’ structure of the classical composition. In the confrontation between traditional aspects of Western musical history and eccentric contemporary genres Stokes exposes their shared roots, and these fundamentally contrasting elements are merged into an exciting new hybrid form.

For the composition of Cantata Profana Matt Stokes worked together with the British classical composer Orlando Gough, who wrote a modern interpretation of a classical cantata. Stokes then invited six singers from England, Germany, America, Norway and The Netherlands to simultaneously record the six voices of the cantata in a music studio in Berlin, while he filmed the singers separately with six cameras. This is illustrative of the way in which Stokes works: for all his studies into subcultures he seeks the cooperation of people who are active in them, and with regard to the final result there is what could be called ‘shared auteurship’. Thus his work is always a collective production in which the shared experience, both social and artistic, plays a crucial role.

For the rousing dance film Long After Tonight (2005) Stokes brings a Northern Soul evening in a church in Dundee back to life, as devotees of the genre demonstrate the characteristic athletic manner of dancing. The visually compelling and rhythmically edited Long After Tonight is an ode to the ecstasy of the dancing, and an homage to the North of England working class soul music of the 1970s.

The title of the exhibition, The Distant Sound, refers both to the physical sensation that arises when approaching a live concert, and to the remembrance of something that is past – two notions that are invariably present in Stokes's work.

image:
Matt Stokes
Cantata Profana, 2010
Six-channel HD video and audio transferred to synced hard-drives
Duration: 06:48 minutes
(MS0048)
Photograph: Nils Klinger
Courtesy of the artist and Workplace Gallery, UK
Installation View: 'No Place Else Better Than Here' - Kunsthalle Fridericianum, Kassel, Germany

   

Thursday, March 17, 2011

Marcus Coates: "Self-portrait as Worcestershire" Movement, Worcester, UK


10.03.11 - 16.04.11

MOVEMENT
Platform 2
Worcester Foregate Street Railway Station
WR1 1DT
T. 07590 075185
info@movementtimetable.com

Self-portrait as Worcestershire

MOVEMENT proudly presents Self-portrait as Worcestershire, a series of videos and photographs that document a number of early performances by English artist Marcus Coates. Many of these were made while staying in the Malvern Hills, 10 miles from MOVEMENT, and furtherafield at Grizedale Arts between 1997 and 2000. The series includes the photographs Self portrait as Worcestershire and Natural (1998) Red Fox and Goshawk (1999) and the short film Stoat (2000).

Marcus Coates is best known for performances in which he attempts to mediate between the human and animal. The work shown at MOVEMENT are early examinations of this process exploring humaness in a rural environment more densely inhabited by wild creatures than by people. Field and forest become the studio and the behaviours and appearance of indigenous animals and the landscape that they inhabit are embodied in a physical and immediate way; Coates is buried in the topsoil, becoming the landscape, he crouches on all fours dressed head to toe in red to become a fox in a Worcestershire field. Perched precariously high in a distant tree, he becomes a rare bird, the Goshawk and learning, albeit clumsily, how to move stoat-like he wears a special pair of homemade shoes, to replicate the bounding stoat. These attempts although futile become an unconscious exploration of our definition. In Natural, Coates adorns himself with a ragged wig, a false beard and a smearing of mud. The idea of what is natural becomes a superficial and romantic notion which requires a cultural and perhaps biological distance and separation from our modern selves.

Other recent exhibitions by Marcus Coates include: The Trip, Serpentine Gallery, London, 2011; The Sydney Biennial, 2010; Psychopomp, Milton Keynes Gallery, 2010; Altermodern: Tate Triennial, London, 2009; Kunsthale Zurich, 2009; Tomio Koyama Gallery, Tokyo; Manifesta 7, Trento, Italy, 2008

Image:

Marcus Coates
Red Fox (Self Portrait), 1999
Archival Inkjet Print
90 x 90 cm
(MC0002)

courtesy of the artist and Workplace Gallery, UK

Marcus Coates: "The Trip" The Serpentine Gallery, London


03.03.11 - 02.05.11

The Serpentine Gallery
Kensington Gardens
London W2 3XA
T 020 7402 6075
information@serpentinegallery.org

The Trip

The Serpentine Gallery, in collaboration with St. John's Hospice, London, launches a major new project by UK-based artist Marcus Coates. The film is produced as part of the Serpentine's ongoing Skills Exchange project and is the result of a long-term residency by Coates at the hospice.
Coates began the project by asking hospice outpatients to suggest ways that vicarious action could enrich their experiences and offered to enact unfulfilled dreams on their behalf. Suggestions ranged from the creation of an exhibition of photography, to a parachute free-fall, to a trip to the Amazon. The last of these requests, made by the late Alex H., was realised by the artist in 2010.
Coates was given precise instructions for the trip. He was asked to travel to an isolated village in the Amazon jungle and to ask the indigenous people a set of prearranged questions. The project was an exchange, Coates offered a way of expanding Alex H's imaginative world beyond the hospice and in return Alex H. offered Coates a challenge to see the world for someone else.
The Trip presents audio recordings of the conversations between outpatient and artist firstly as they plan the journey and then as they share the memories following Coates' return.
While Coates' work is well known for questioning the role of the artist in relation to a range of social issues or problems – often in conjunction with official governmental organisations – in The Trip he develops this central concern through exchanges between individuals, bringing a level of sensitivity and intimacy to the resulting presentation.
Presented in collaboration with St. John's Hospice.

St John's Hospice Logo 2010_175.jpg

Image:
Marcus Coates
The Trip
2010
Documentary photograph
Courtesy of the artist and Workplace Gallery, UK
MC0134


   

Cath Campbell, Peter J. Evans, Laura Lancaster and Rachel Lancaster: "Graphite" Gallery North, Newcastle upon Tyne, UK


28.01.11 - 23.02.11

Gallery North
Squires Building
Sandyford Road
Northumbria University
Newcastle upon Tyne
NE1 8ST
Tel. 0191 227 3105
gallerynorth@northumbria.ac.uk

Graphite

Graphite was named by German geologist Abraham Gottlob Werner in 1789, an allotrope of carbon the name is derived from the Greek, graphein meaning: to Draw or Write. The precise, and formal, relationship between the material's name and it purpose, or action, will be explored through the work in this exhibition.

Graphite will consist of emerging and more established artists, many with alumni links with Northumbria University, The exhibition explores work that engages drawing (in graphite) as a formal instrument for conveying aesthetic, conceptual, or philosophical ideas. The exhibiting artists are: Alice and Joe Woodhouse, Michael Mulvihill, Jane Millican, (Vane Gallery), Louise Hopkins (Doggerfisher Gallery), Richard Forster (Ingleby Gallery), Cath Campbell, Peter J Evans, Laura Lancaster, Rachel Lancaster (Workplace Gallery). The approaches of these artists evoke the practice of Vija Celmins.

An Artists' talk and the launch of the publication 'GRAPHITE' will take place on Thursday 17 February at 5pm followed by refreshments.

Image:

Rachel Lancaster
Water
2009
Charcoal on Paper
35.5 x 29.5 cm

courtesy of the artist and Workplace Gallery, UK
   

"Laura Lancaster", DLI Art Museum and Gallery, Durham, UK


22.01.11 - 13.03.11

DLI Museum and Durham Art Gallery
Aykley Heads
Durham
DH1 5TU
T. 0191 384 2214

Laura Lancaster

Laura Lancaster's works use photographs, slides and cine films of strangers - found in flea markets, junk shops etc. as their source, translating them into drawings, paintings and installations.
The translation of these lost images becomes at once a devotional act on the artist's part; an attempt at rescuing these images from obscurity. The appropriation of found imagery allows for a focus on the painting process itself and the exploration of the slippage between artistic intention and result, which is mirrored in the source material's own failure to carry out the task it was made for.
These are now the lost moments and memories of strangers which raise more questions than they answer, the moment in time they were made to fix is gone.

Image:

Laura Lancaster
Untitled
2009
Graphite on Paper
76 x 57 cm
(LL0257)

courtesy of the artist and Workplace Gallery, UK