Poklong Anading (Manila)
Chris Bell (Austrailia/San Francisco)
Simon Blackmore (Manchester)
Simon & Tom Bloor (Birmingham/London)
Jon Brumit & Sarah Wagner (Detroit)
Michelle Carollo (NYC)
Mike Chavez-Dawson (Manchester)
Susan Chen (San Francisco)
Joshua Churchill (San Francisco)
Nick Crowe & Ian Rawlinson (Berlin/Manchester)
N. Sean Glover (Pittsburg, Penn., USA)
Mary Griffiths (Manchester)
Antony Hall (Manchester)
Taro Hattori (Oakland, Calif., USA)
Eric Hongisto (San Francisco)
Sarah Kabot (Ohio, USA)
Scot Kaplan (Ohio, USA)
Verity-Jane Keefe (London)
Yuen Fong Ling (Manchester)
Ivy Ma (Hong Kong)
David Moises (Vienna)
Ali Naschke-Messing (San Francisco)
Scott Oliver (Oakland, Calif., USA)
Susan O’Malley (San Francisco)
Laurence Payot (Liverpool)
Pest (Rebecca Chesney, Robina Llewellyn & Elaine Speight) (Preston, Lancs)
Anthony Ryan (San Francisco)
David Sherry (Glasgow)
Daniel Staincliffe (Manchester)
Tattfoo Tan (NYC)
Jenifer K Wofford (Oakland/Prague)
MM Yu (Manila)
Biography
Poklong Anading (b. 1975, lives in Manila) received his BFA
from the University of the Philippines—College of Fine Arts in 1999.
In 2002, he represented the Philippines in the 4th Gwangju Biennale held
in Gwangju, South Korea and was a participant in Jakarta Biennale 2009.
Anading has also been granted several awards including the First
Prize for the 12th Gawad CCP for Experimental Video (1999) and the prestigious
The Cultural Center of the Philippines Thirteen
Artists Awards in 2006
and the Ateneo Art Awards, Ateneo de Manila (2006 and 2008).
http://othermatters.multiply.com/photos/album/96/tattooed_heart_09
Biography
Born in Sydney (to new immigrants from Ireland). I have been living in the
Bay Area, CA for 3 years since finishing my (belated) MFA at Stanford University.
Prior to that I was living in Melbourne, Australia for 10 years. My BA was
received from Sydney College of the Arts in 1992. Since that graduation,
I have had a practice centered in the artist-run communities and galleries.
Only brief brushes with a wider public. I support myself and fund my works
through manual work, occasional grants and now some teaching.
Artist’s Statement
I’m interested in suggesting alternative views and uses of the simple
materials and objects we (in the West) live with. Our relationships with
one-another are often mediated with objects (clothes, cars, buildings, etc.).
These simple material signifiers are usually straight-jacketed and so strongly
co-opted to a ‘universal’ role that their essences are overlooked.
Changing the context and ‘performative’ qualities of objects
and materials—giving then new uses—is my attempt to inspire all
of us to see the potentials for creative interaction with the everyday.
Biography
Simon Blackmore (born in 1976, UK; lives in Manchester) makes performative
sculptures and installations using sound and custom-made technology.
Since gaining a First Class Honours degree in Sculpture at The University
of Wales Institute, Cardiff (1999), and an MA in Creative Technology
at Salford University in 2001, he has received commissions and exhibitions
from galleries throughout the UK and was nominated for the Beck’s
Futures Prize in 2006. He also creates and performs experimental music
internationally as part of the Owl
Project collective.
Artist’s Statement
I make sculptural artworks that often have a low-tech aesthetic and draw
influence from craft-based traditions such as green wood working, electronics
and open source software. During the last few years I have been making
a range of works that explore the relationship between physical space
and abstract concepts of technological space, the tactile and the digital.
Within these works, recognisable objects such as trees and boats have
been adapted to reflect and interact with the invisible sub-structure
of data that permeates our world.
Biography
Simon & Tom Bloor (both born Birmingham, UK 1973) have been
working collaboratively since 2003. They live and work in London and
Birmingham and are represented by MOT International, London. Past exhibitions
include Modes of Civic Life Transmission Gallery, Glasgow; The
Ballad of Gunpowder Joe MOT International, London; The
Long Take Moot, Nottingham
and As long as it lasts, Eastside Projects Birmingham. As well
as gallery exhibitions, they have produced projects in a variety of settings
including a zoo (What Are The Senses?, 2005), the London Underground
(The
necessity of everyday living, 2006-07), and a project on a canal
boat in Birmingham with Ikon Gallery (Hey for Lubberland!, 2009).
In addition to their collaboration together they also work with artist/curator
Gavin Wade (as Gavin Wade mit Simon & Tom Bloor) on their series
of Kiosk projects.
Artists’ Statement
We use a variety of media, making projects that develop from research
into a diverse range of subject matter including historic documents,
20th Century architecture & design and contemporary popular culture.
Past works have combined images and texts to create new possible readings
and alternative interpretations in an attempt to reassess obscure histories
and flawed utopias.
Biography
brumit = collaborative and solo isms
brain = radio
body = demolition using a 2x4
future = baby + teaching (saic) + $100 house + 10th annual byobw next easter
best friend = that lady in the postcard with me sarah wagner!
Artist’s Statement
i like talking to people and making things. i am excited to show this postcard
and give one to everyone else in the show!
Biography
Michelle Carollo (New York) was born in New York, 1980. She received
her MFA in painting from the San Francisco Art Institute in 2007
and her BA in studio art from the State University at Stony Brook
in 2002. Carollo is a recipient of the Marie Walsh Sharpe Art Foundation,
Space Program (2008-2009) which has provided her with a studio until
August 2009.
Artist’s Statement
I make installations that are based on Modernist ideals: simplifying
form, eliminating ornament, and arranging pure color. I play with the
idea of making a painting in space. I am interested in translating
illusionary space, like that found in painting, into physical space
like that found in sculpture. I never subscribe completely to either
medium. My process investigates mixing three- dimensional elements
on two-dimensional painted surfaces-sculptural painting. The elements
are found, made, and painted, then compiled, collected, and constructed.
I base each structure on a limited palette and a set of predetermined
conditions: building, composing, and removing elements.
“My art practice is interdisciplinary and research led, framed by an exploration into revealing the ‘myth’ of the artist’s intention against the audience perception. I intend to expand and challenge an audiences experience whilst offering alternative bridges/means to interpret; this is usually through multi-part works that sit between ‘performance’ and ‘curation’. It’s the continual habit of cross-referencing seemingly opposing languages, narrative structures and interpretative motifs that invigorate my critical concerns, as these pave the way to widen cultural gaps and make transparent ideological conditioning. Collaboration, facilitation and non-sectarianism are at the heart of my creative endeavours. I am investigating by practice ‘the borders between performance and documentation from a contemporary visual art perspective’.” MCD, 2011
Mike Chavez-Dawson graduated from Manchester Metropolitan University, Interactive Arts BA (Hon’s) in 1997 and MA (Art as Environment) in 1999; he is now currently a PhD (by practice) research fellow at MIRIAD. He was the Visual Arts Editor for Flux Magazine and founding curator for Flux Space for just over a decade. Chavez-Dawson work’s crosses an interesting path of disciplines, such as fine art & design, performance, music, curating and publishing. To date he’s ran a gallery in a publication, utilised alter egos as living portraits, ran a club night as an artwork, formed a band to explore the relationship between visual presentation and it’s audio, interviewed dead artists through a spiritual medium, created a cinema using hypnotism and gave gallery tour’s as estate agents and crime solving detectives.
Recent shows/projects include: ‘Memory Flash’, Carter Presents, London. ‘Magda Archer: Crazy Mad’ Cornerhouse, Manchester. ‘Re-Covering’, Untitled Gallery, Manchester. ‘Network Aesthetics – The Reading’ , Castlefield Gallery, Chinese Art Centre, Cornerhouse, Cube, Manchester Art Gallery, John Ryland’s Library, The Reading Room Collection MMU Library, Manchester. ‘Nigh Revolve-Lution’ (Live Text Performance), British Art Show 7, Nottingham Contemporary, Nottingham. ‘Re-Motive View(s)’ (Live Text Performance), The Surreal House, Barbican, London. ‘Unrealised Potential’ Cornerhouse, Manchester, NGCA, Sunderland, VOID, Derry, N.Ireland. ‘Involved Socially’, Base Gallery, San Francisco, USA. ‘Title Murdered’, ‘Strange Days & Some Flowers’, The Storey Gallery, Lancaster. ‘Selling the Psycho-Geographical Breakdown’ for Afterhours ‘Subversive Spaces’, The Whitworth Art Gallery, Manchester. ‘A bANdA dA’ Late at the TATE, TATE Britain, London.
www.myspace.com/mikechavezdawson
Biography
Born in Houston, Texas and lives and works in San Francisco. Chen received
her MFA in 2006 from the California College of the Arts. Exhibitions include “Butterflies
Shift North” at Skydive: Houston TX, Eleanor Harwood Gallery: San Francisco,
San Jose Museum of Art, and Patricia Sweetow Gallery: San Francisco.
Artist’s Statement
My practice is inspired by 19th century Romantic painting of sublime landscape
of the Arctic the mythical notion of Arctic Eden, the dream of a tropical
paradise in the middle of a world of frozen oceans and glaciers.
Leftover visual memories stemming from Caspar David Friedrich and John Martin get filtered though stories and pulp fiction from Jules Verne and sci-fi to movies and TV shows like “Lost.” Islands and the arctic regions are my riffing point. These symbolic places for transformation are disappearing and once again the weather or nature has sublime power in it’s original sense of awesomeness and potential destruction of the viewer.
Biography
Joshua Churchill was born in Oakland, CA and received a BA in Studio Art
at the University of California at Santa Barbara. Churchill currently lives,
works, and plays in San Francisco, California. Joshua Churchill’s work
is currently on exhibit at Adobe Books Backroom Gallery in San Francisco. His
work was featured in the survey exhibition “Bay
Area Now 5” at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in 2008, and he has
also exhibited and/or performed at Audio Visual Arts (New York), Meridian
Gallery (San Francisco), Chapel of the Chimes (Oakland), Luggage Store Gallery
(San Francisco), Recombinant Media Compound (San Francisco), 7hz (San Francisco),
National Showa Kinen Park (Tokyo), Aqua Art Fair (Miami), New Media Scotland,
San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Post Gallery (Los Angeles), and Galeria
Ze Dos Bois (Lisbon, Portugal).
Artist’s Statement
My artistic practice crosses a number of media and disciplines, including
immersive site-specific sound and light installations and performances and
photography. One of the underlying threads to my work is an awareness of
site and environment, be it physical, spatial, psychological, or emotional.
Regardless of media, I strive to evoke the inherent mystery contained within
the environments with which I work by interacting with it and representing
it in a dynamic and often abstract manner.
My installation work tends to focus on environments and objects that are in states of transition, disuse, or decay. I recontextualize and reanimate these environments and objects using sound, light, and appropriated technology, while exposing the ways in which sound and light can simultaneously effect and define both urban and natural environments, as well as its inhabitants. The majority of the sounds I use in my installation work are created and collected on site in a performative matter, representing my personal exploration of the site or object’s surface and history.
Biography
Live Berlin and Manchester.
Worked collaboratively since 1994.
Biography
N. Sean Glover (Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA) received his BFA from
The School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston MA. He was granted
a fellowship at Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in 2003
and has studied fresco restoration at Lorenzo de Medici Scoula de Arte
in Florence Italy. Sean was a recipient of a 2005 Traveling
Scholars award at the SMFA in Boston. His work has been
included in many group shows including The Portland Museum of Art in
Maine and the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, Massachusetts. Sean Glover
is an instructor for fresco techniques at the Skowhegan School of Painting
and Sculpture. He is a candidate for a class of 2011 degree as a Masters
in Fine Arts at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, PA.
Artist’s Statement
I am challenging the viewer to consider alternative uses for objects
that have otherwise been forgotten. This is my reaction to the economics
of planned obsolescence. It is important to me that the viewer reconsiders
their relationship with technology, the production of objects, history,
and experience. To reconstitute an object, to tinker, is to produce
an act of bricolage. The gesture of bricolage is not meant to perform
as a sweeping solution to obsolescence. Instead, it acts as one of
many small gestures that accumulate into a greater experience and understanding
of our surroundings.
Biography
Mary Griffiths (b.1965) studied English at the University
of Newcastle (1984-87) and Museum Studies at the
University of Manchester (1988-89). She has worked as a curator since
1989 and is currently Curator of Modern Art
at The Whitworth Art Gallery, The University of Manchester. She is studying
for an MA in Fine Art at Manchester
Metropolitan University, UK, and has shown work in the The
Origins of Nine, Islington Mill, Salford (2008); The
Jerwood Drawing Prize, London and touring (2008); Four
Manchester Artists,
FAFA Gallery, Helsinki, Finland
(2009); Where the Garment Gapes, The Triangle, Manchester (2009). Pictures
of War, a book of her drawings of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq was
published by Carcanet in June, 2009.
Artist’s Statement
(Manchester-based) Mary Griffiths’ observations of everyday architectural
configurations are rendered in watercolour, graphite, and also as wall
drawings. These drawings aspire to the condition of airy nothingness,
through slightness of line but also its density. In the case of the graphite
drawings, the tarnished sheets of paper are reminiscent of early photographs,
transformed into something through the revealing of an image in their
burnished surfaces. Like negative/positive photographs, each latent image ‘develops’,
hanging upon and within the piece of paper. Made using outmoded office
carbon paper, the drawing shown in This & That continues this employment
of the metaphorics of the now arcane processes of the machine age.
Biography
Antony Hall, UK, b.1976
MA. Art as Environment, Manchester Met University 2002
Antony Hall is a multidisciplinary artist who investigates biological and physical phenomenon like the behavior of liquid or animals, and the physicality of sound. He is interested in how we interface with science & technology—visually, physically and ideologically—and how these interactions effect us creatively and socially. This takes the form of long-term research projects, residencies, performance, and sound art—often working within universities and museums, in collaboration with scientists.
His work has been developed, exhibited and demonstrated across Europe and the UK including; Arts Council International Artists Fellowship with Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS), Dutch Electronic Arts Festival, BIOS, International Festival of Art/Science/New Technologies, Trondhiem Electronic Arts Festival, and the European Forum for Emerging Creation. In the Owl Project, he collaboratively creates, exhibits and performs internationally hand-crafted wooden devices (the Log1K & iLog) and other instruments.
Artist’s Statement
My working process involves locating and identifying behaviors and developing
control structures [devices & instruments] within which certain
unique, special events can exist. Essentially these take the form of ‘tabletop
experiments.’ I construct assemblages as discrete environments
which function as systems, [electrical, biological or chaotic] presenting
active processes. They are created in order to sustain or nurture a
particular event, for example; a vortex in a coffee cup, or the life
of microorganisms in a droplet of water. These ‘tabletop’ works
assimilate phenomena which, being susceptible to change within themselves
and the environment that directly surrounds them, require to be nurtured.
Through presenting active investigative processes, the work is a continuous play on potential failure and possible solution, where failure is as important as resolution.
Biography
Taro Hattori (Oakland, California) is an installation artist. He has
been awarded residencies at Kala Art Institute, Djerassi Foundation,
Taipei Artist Village, McColl Center for Visual Art, and Headlands
Center for the Arts. Hattori’s
work has been exhibited at numerous venues, including Contemporary
Art Gallery in Opole, Poland; LMAN Gallery, Los Angeles; Yerba Buena
Center for the Arts; Mission 17; The Lab, San Francisco; Headlands
Center for the Arts, Sausalito; Swarm Gallery, Oakland; Peter Miller
Gallery, Chicago; The Asian American Arts Centre, NYC and Ssamzie Space,
Seoul. He curated exhibitions at Mission 17, San Francisco, and Kala
Art Institute, Berkeley, and currently serves as a curatorial committee
member at The Lab, San Francisco. He holds a BA in Clinical Psychology
from Sophia University, Tokyo and a MFA in Time Arts/Video from the
School of the Art Institute of Chicago.
Artist’s Statement
My art practice is a way of measuring distances between myself and things
that are unacceptable. I try to define myself by examining what I hate,
what I feel uncomfortable with, and what I do not understand. Dealing
with those “unacceptable” elements as significant constituents
of my world, I try to integrate them with other “pleasurable” elements
to render my world more coherent and balanced. In the search for order,
my work functions like a machine. As Paul Klee’s Twittering Machine
illustrates the chirping of birds through the movement of an off-centered
shaft, my work reveals a sort of “mechanical” undercurrent
of factors in my private and public life. This hidden undercurrent
shows how the viewers and I play our roles in the condition of our
contemporary life.
Biography
Currently lives and works in San Francisco.
Biography
Sarah Kabot was born in Royal Oak, Michigan. The visually repetitive
environment of the suburbs continues to inform and influence her sculptures,
drawings and installations. In 2006, Sarah had her first solo museum
exhibition and catalog, titled On the Flip Side, at the Museum of Contemporary
Art in Cleveland, Ohio. Recent exhibitions include the Apparently
Invisible
at the Drawing Center, X and Paper City at Mixed Greens Gallery both
in New York City, and One by One at Smack Mellon in Brooklyn, New York.
She has been granted 2009 residencies at Sculpture Space in Utica,
New York, The Nest in Oakland California, and Dieu Donne Papermill
in New York, New York.
Artist’s Statement
My work examines the act of artistic production within certain
conceptual boundaries of contemporary art concerning the nature of reality
and perception. Through close reproduction and manipulation of an object
the work calls into question the significance of that object and emphasizes
the shift between original and reproduction. The techniques of repetition
I use in all of my work—rotation, mirroring, and amplification—create
visual tension between the original and the intervention, between the
existent object and the imagined object.
Biography
Scot Kaplan has lived and worked across the United States since receiving
his MFA in sculpture from the University of Pennsylvania. The forms that
his artwork’s take range from experiencial installations, to multimedia
interactive objects, to performance and video. He has exhibited widely
both across the US and internationally most recently with his piece Control
Room which debuted in Stellenbosch, South Africa in 2006. Mr. Kaplan currently
holds an Associate Professor of Fine Art position at The Ohio State University.
Biography
Verity-Jane Keefe is a visual artist based in Hackney, East London. She has exhibited widely in galleries in the UK, whilst devising and delivering participatory art projects and completing residency and research-based projects in Shanghai, Pistoia (Italy) and Whitechapel, East London.
Most recently, she has completed Rooms with a View. A self-generated project funded by the Arts Council England, Barking Council and the demolition company 777, her film is a document of the built and social structure of a now-defunct social housing scheme. It featured in the 2009 East End Film Festival.
Verity worked on collaborative projects with muf architecture/art, including the European Public Realm prize-winning scheme for Barking Town Centre, the exemplary Creative Partnership Project at Dale Primary School and the Channel 4 Big Art project Feral Arcadia.
Verity has talked about her practise at various symposia, including Fly Eric Symposia Series and the Artistic Intervention conference, Ireland.
Artist’s Statement
Verity-Jane Keefe is a visual artist, working predominantly within the
public realm, using moving image and installation based work to explore
the complex relationships between people and place, and the idea of
the landscape as museum. She is interested in the role of the artist
within urban regeneration and how experiential practice can touch upon
and raise ambitions of existing and invisible communities. Research
is at the heart of Keefe’s practise, which is of paramount importance
in the evolution of a project: how a thought turns into a thing underpinning
much of the work.
thewhitechapelgiftshop.com/blog/artist-residencies/verity
Biography
Yuen Fong Ling (b.1972 Salford UK) is an artist living in Manchester
UK. He is a recent graduate from Glasgow School of Art’s MFA programme
from 2005-2007, including an exchange with Hunter College New York in
Autumn/Winter 2006. Ling is now embarking on his PhD research in Fine
Art at the University of Lincoln.
Ling has exhibited and curated widely including exhibitions at International-3 Manchester, Tramway Glasgow, Artnews Projects Berlin, The Central Academy of Fine Art Beijing touring throughout China, Denmark, Australia and UK, Urbis Manchester, Gasworks London, and Transmission Gallery Glasgow.
Artist’s Statement
My practice involves adopting the strategies of model, artist and curator,
to make, read, and disrupt the authority of the work of art. Recent
projects have considered the role of the life model and life drawing
instructor in a re-appraisal of the life class as a methodology for
questioning the theoretical notion of ‘performance’ and ‘participation’ in
relational art aesthetics, and its subsequent documentation. Through
this reconfiguring of the life class, I aim to problematise the authenticity
of these representations of the body towards an examination of identity
and authenticity through my ‘self’ and others.
Biography
Ma (Hong Kong) attained her BA (Fine Arts) degree from Royal
Melbourne Institute of Technology (RMIT) / The Art School in 2001 and
the MA degree in Feminist Theory and Practice in the Visual Art University
of Leeds, UK in 2002. She received the FCO Chevening
University of Leeds Scholarship from the Hong Kong Arts Development
Council in 2001. Her work has been included in the Hong Kong Biennial
and collected by the Hong Kong Heritage Museum. In 2007, as The Aland
Archipelago Guest Artist Residence in Kokar, she started her art
practice in drawing. She has been awarded a 12-month Lee Hysan Foundation
Fellowship
from Asian Cultural Council to take part in residency programs, attend
courses and observe developments in contemporary visual arts in the United
States in 2008-2009. In the period of her stay, she took part in two
artists’ programs—The Headlands Center for the Arts in
San Francisco (3 months) and Location One in New York City (5 months).
Artist’s Statement
For years, the use of ephemeral, disposable materials and found
objects, the responsive site specific installations, and later, the photographic
and drawing works have been creating a spiritual journey on the state
of mind, in the threads of nature and cities.
Biography
Born 1973 in Innsbruck/Austria
Lives in Vienna
Education
95-02 University for Arts and Industrial Design, Linz, Austria
98-99 Humboldt Universität zu Berlin, Germany
Solo Shows
2008 Galerie Patrick Ebensperger, Graz/Austria
2005 Charim Gallery, Vienna/Austria
2004 Neue Galerie, Graz/Austria
1999 La Panaderia w. Wolfgang Thaler, Mexico City/Mexico
1998 Kunstbüro 1060, Vienna/Austria
Latest Exhibitions:
2009 Codes und Clowns, Heinz Nixdorf Museum, Paderborn/Germany
2009 Supernova, La Generale, Paris/France
2009 Quergeblickt, Technical Museum of Vienna/Austria
2009 Phaenomenale, Phaeno, Wolfsburg/Germany
Artist’s Statement
David Moises is in every sense an artistic
inventor. In the course of his sedulous “research” in the area of design and waste
materials, banal everyday or more complex hobby technical procedures,
especially those dating from the 50s to the 70s, he first comes across
objects that interest him. The second stage of his creative process
is the analysis of these “object trouvés”, which
consists of partly or completely
dismantling the object, and may also end as a finished product on show.
The striking feature of Moises’ works is their entertainment value.
The viewer can both smile at his work and find it stimulating. —Michael
Braunsteiner
Biography
Ali Naschke-Messing is an installation artist working primarily with
thread, architecture, and light. She is currently based in San Francisco,
where she received her MFA from the California College of Arts in 2007.
Artist’s Statement
I tell stories through multiple voices, claim the written word as physical
material, uncover narratives layered in geographical sites, and reinstate
presence using a light touch. I am compelled by narrative—what
gets told and what is often left silent, and that compelling space
in between where transmission occurs through gesture and trace and
residual intuition.
Biography
A San Francisco based artist and curator, Susan O’Malley uses simple
and recognizable tools of engagement— making inspirational posters,
offering a Pep Talk, distributing flyers in a neighborhood’s mailbox—to
offer entry into an understood, and sometimes humorous, interaction of
everyday life. Her work strives to create surprising instances of positivity
and optimism. O’Malley received her MFA from California College
of the Arts’ Social Practice Area, O’Malley has exhibited
her work in the Bay Area galleries, including Southern Exposure, Mission
17, and Ping Pong Galley, CCA’s PlaySpace.
Artist’s Statement
I want to have this conversation with you. I am looking for a moment
between us, a diversion from our lives so that we can understand each
other better. THIS is all part of my process. THIS is part of my practice.
You, yes, YOU, are part of it. I have been hanging inspirational posters,
giving pep talks, making cupcakes, and organizing artist-in-residency
programs. All for art. So that we can share this moment. You have already
participated, by being here, right now. At this very moment we are
making art: You reading the words here, my voice, and this moment.
This IS art! Yes!! We ARE MAKING ART! YAY US!!
Biography
Scott Oliver is a project-based artist and writer living and working in Oakland,
California. His work explores the sculptural possibilities of everyday
objects and relationships between people and the built environment—often
integrating social exchange into the making process. Oliver received his
MFA from California College of the Arts in 2005. His work has been exhibited
at UCLA in Los Angeles, Pulliam Deffenbaugh Gallery in Portland, Oregon,
and Grounds for Sculpture in Hamilton, New Jersey. He has also shown widely
at local venues, including the Oakland Museum, Yerba Buena Center for the
Arts, San Francisco Arts Commission, Southern Exposure, and the de Young
Art Center.
Oliver is currently working on a project entitled Once Upon A Time, Happily Ever After: An Audio Walking Tour of Oakland’s Lake Merritt. His upcoming Project Space Residency at Headlands Center for the Arts begins in September.
Artist’s Statement
Lake Merritt is often referred to as the “Jewel of Oakland.” A
faceted gemstone, at once reflective and translucent, is an apt metaphor
for the shimmering body of water at the heart of Oakland. But this only hints
at the complex relationships that comprise one of the city’s most significant
centers of public life. Centrally located and relatively uncommercialized,
Lake Merritt and it’s accompanying parks and attractions are a democratic
space within the city where the diversity of Oakland’s citizenry is
both visible and dynamic. More broadly a multitude of artificial (cultural,
economic, political, historical, architectural) and natural (solar, tidal,
avian, botanical, meteorological) forces are at play in and around the lake
at any given moment. (Not) This & (Not) That explores some of the physical
forms these forces take as they converge, overlap, intermingle and coexist.
www.scottoliverworks.com (coming soon)
Biography
I am a French artist based in the North West of England. I work with
local, national and international artist groups, galleries and cultural
organisations, and co-direct The Royal Standard, Liverpool, where I also
have a studio. I have exhibited in a number of successful group and solo
exhibitions in England, Scotland, Wales and France, with two recent awards
from Arts Council England, and a residency in Libya with the British
Council and Liverpool Biennial of Contemporary Art.
Artist’s Statement
The main catalysts for my work are patterns found in everyday life. I
ask the viewer to question patterns that have become mundane and almost
invisible, by altering them slightly and turning them into something
uncanny. My work uses “chameleon techniques”, allowing
me to create site-specific work that looks like it has always belonged
there. I don’t intend my work to stand out at a first glance,
but when a person discovers it, what is revealed is unexpected and
disturbing—a small shock or revelation that something has been altered.
Biography
Pest was established in 2007 by Preston (Lancashire UK) based artists
Rebecca Chesney, Elaine Speight and Robina Llewellyn to explore how artists
appropriate, intervene and work within alternative places, spaces and
contexts. Pest undertook a twelve-month research project, through which
they visited a large number of artist-run initiatives in the UK, Toronto
and Budapest. Their findings informed the production of three publications
that examine artist-initiated projects in domestic spaces, in museums
and archives and in social spaces. The publications have been made freely
available at artist led spaces and galleries throughout the UK.
Artists’ Statements
Rebecca Chesney’s work deals with rural and urban landscapes and
how we translate and romanticise them. She is currently working on a
research project with Dr Andrew Whitehouse, Anthropology Dept, University
of Aberdeen, and at The Weather Station for John Fox on the Cumbrian
coast.
Elaine Speight explores issues of place through a curatorial and artistic
practice. She is currently working in Preston on the In
Certain Places public art programme and on the Wirral for Liverpool Biennial’s
Art for Places scheme. She is also studying a practice-based PhD at Birkbeck,
University of London.
Robina Llewellyn is an artist working mainly with traditional photographic processes. Her work explores the nature of identity in people and places. She is currently taking part in a photography residency with Lancashire Artists Network and the University of Central Lancashire.
www.pestpublications.org.uk
www.rebeccachesney.com
www.elainespeight.net
www.robinallewellyn.blogspot.com
Biography
Anthony Ryan (San Francisco) is a multi-disciplinary artist who received
his BFA from Purchase College in 1991 and his MFA from San Francisco
State University in 2009. His work has been exhibited nationally including
at the deYoung Museum in San Francisco and the International Print
Center New York. In 2009 Anthony was a Graduate
Fellow at the Headlands
Center for the Arts.
Artist’s Statement
In my work I seek to investigate modes of representation and systems
of pattern that arise from the historical and process-based nature of
print media. An ongoing affinity for decorative sources and forms has
led me to examine the use of systems of pattern and repeat. Such systems
have led to work that is the result of prescribed parameters and self-imposed
limitation. Within these means, I seek to create work that coaxes meaning
from process and material.
Biography
David Sherry holds and MFA from the Glasgow School of Art and a BA
from the University of Ulster at Belfast. He has shown widely across the UK
and Europe including solo shows and presentations at the Zoo Art Fair, Mother
Tankstation (Dublin), Villa Concordia (Germany), M and M Gallery (Antwerp),
Jack Hanley (San Francisco), the Glasgow MOMA and Schnittraum (Cologne).
His work has also been seen in group shows such as Futures 50 Axis (Leeds),
Beck’s Futures and Gagosian London. Forthcoming shows and residencies
include a Bergamo, Italy Gallery project curated by F Vavassori, the Szpilman
Award (Istanbul) and an Artist Residency Deveron Arts (Huntly). He is
the recipient of numerous grants from the Scottish Arts Council and residencies
including the Artists Lab Residency at the CCA Glasgow and NIFCA Residency
(Suomenlinna, Finland).
Artist’s Statement
I make drawings, videos and performances. I am interested in actions, communication
and activities. I like to make a series of drawings that look at a bombarded
consciousness.
I make work that takes a humourous look at serious life.
Biography
Since graduating from Manchester School of Art’s BA Interactive
Arts in 2008, Daniel Staincliffe has exhibited with The VAULT Gallery,
Lancaster, Startrunning, Manchester and the Contemporary Art Manchester
consortium. During April 2009 he was resident with Red Gate Gallery,
Beijing. His residency project, An Urban Ecology
of Chance, was supported
by the National Lottery through Arts Council England and The Confucius
Institute at The University of Manchester.
Artist’s Statement
My work explores details of our everyday environments that are overlooked
or insignificant, fleeting or peripheral. Conceptual and aleatoric
methodologies are employed in order to abdicate total conscious control
over the products of my creative practise. Collections of squirrel
footprints, salvaged media and dialogue with Shanghaineese passers-by
are all examples of my interest in the chance encounter. The re-presentation
of everyday entities such as puddles or urban icons like pigeons calls
for a re-examination of the known.
Artist’s Statement
(New York based) Tattfoo Tan’s art practice seeks to find
an immediate, direct, and effective way of exploring issues related to
the individual in society through which to collapse the categories of ‘art’ and ‘life’ into
one. Through the employment of multiple forms of media and various platforms
of presentation, Tattfoo promotes group participation between himself
and an ‘audience’. Within this collaborative practice both
minds and bodies are engaged in actions that transform the making of
art into a ritualized and shared experience. In keeping with the spirit
of this transformative act, Tattfoo prefers to develop projects that
are ephemeral and conceptual in nature.
Biography
Jenifer K Wofford is a Filipina-American artist currently based in Prague. Her creative practice encompasses installation, painting, drawing, photo, video, performance, teaching and curating. Wofford is also 1/3 of the artist trio Mail Order Brides/M.O.B.
Wofford studied at the San Francisco Art Institute and UC Berkeley. She has exhibited locally at the Berkeley Art Museum, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, Southern Exposure and Kearny Street Workshop, nationally at New Image Art (Los Angeles), Nora Eccles Harrison Museum (Salt Lake City), thirtynine hotel (Honolulu), and internationally at Future Prospects (Philippines), and Osage Gallery Kwun Tong (Hong Kong).
Wofford’s awards include grants from the Fleishhacker Foundation, Art Matters Foundation, UCIRA, and the Pacific Rim Research Program, and artist residencies at Solyst AIR Center, Denmark, The Living Room, Philippines, and Chateau de la Napoule, France. Wofford is the lead organizer of the Galleon Trade Arts Exchange Project.
Artist’s Statement
Happily, my practice takes many forms, often combining installation, sculpture, painting, performance, and/or video. I try to make work that is irreverent, honest, interior, and still somehow social, employing as many strategies as seem appropriate. It’s a process anchored in drawing, which is the most immediate way that I can initiate and illustrate these investigations. The themes that compel me are generally at once political, imaginative and visual: my work frequently addresses intercultural exchange, often playing with notions of culture, difference, liminality or authenticity.
Much of this is the result of a bi-cultural family (Filipino/American), a third-culture upbringing in Hong Kong, the UAE and Malaysia, and an adulthood in liberal, diverse California. I am committed to a practice that engages voices often unheard or under-represented in the arts. While big portions of every project are of course solitary endeavors, I really don’t consider myself an artist in isolation: the most satisfying work I’ve done involves exchange, joking, and cooperation. It makes things more relevant, and more fun, immediately.
Biography
MM Yu received her BFA (majoring in painting) from the University
of the Philippines College of Fine Arts in 2001. An artist who swings
between abstract painitng and photography, her street images won her
the 2007
Ateneo Art Award with the exhibition entitled thoughts
collected, recollected, an installation of photobooks posing as sculptures on a
shelf. Yu has participated in the Big Sky Mind’s 18th
Avenue Artist Compound Residency in 2003 and in numerous group exhibitions since 1998.
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