PRESS RELEASE
SEPTEMBER 2005
ART SHEFFIELD 05: Spectator T is an ambitious city-wide
contemporary art event which takes place within Sheffield’s major
galleries, project spaces, non-gallery venues and public sites from 29
October to 27 November 2005. The programme includes a mix of
emerging and established artists and comprises existing works and pertinent
new commissions, all responding to a fictional Spectator T, who doesn’t
ignore Art he hates it!
Simon & Tom Bloor’s collaborative practice focuses
on context specific projects, using images & texts culled from diverse sources
including film, lyrics, 20th century design and novels. The works create new
meanings and encourage alternative interpretations through a shift in context.
In the past they have produced posters, t-shirts, booklets and stickers, sold
cheaply or given away to visitors, allowing the dissemination of the work to
be by the audience and outside the artists’ control. For ART SHEFFIELD
05 they will produce a new series of stickers using texts taken from science
fiction stories by Kurt Vonnegut.
Gordon Dalton constructs a full-scale model of a Harley Davidson,
using the instructions from a matchstick model kit with lengths of 2x2”
timber. This is shown alongside a series of original watercolour flower paintings
also by Dalton. The display of the motorbike and the watercolours offer a set
of opposite relations to each other, and within each piece.
Christian Jankowski has his works “The Hunt” and
“My Life as a Dove” appropriated for a major movie produced by Columbia
Tri-Star Pictures, in which a female video artist named Rosa is the main protagonist.
He allows the feature film to incorporate his works in exchange for the production
of his own project utilizing the same actors and cameras. Jancowski’s
video work, Rosa is a film within a film which freezes the normal movie flow
as the actors respond in their own words to Jankowski’s set of questions.
The clichés the filmmakers employ to create their art world story inspire
Jankowski’s inquiries.
In a new chapter of Twenty-Two Tasks, Joanna Rajkowska will be an artist for
rent, where anyone who wants to, can ask her to perform a task (within reason
– no sex or violence).
With Gifts to the City of Sheffield, six London-based artists
make a piece of public art that will have a significant visual or physical impact
in a public area. The coordinator of the exhibition will turn up in a van at
their studios to collect the work and then dump it somewhere in Sheffield. The
work will have nowhere else to go but down, battling the weather or vandalism…at
least until the local council decides to take it away.
Ivan & Heather Morison’s project aims to locate a
patch of waste ground in Sheffield and investigate the process of negotiating
the permanent planting of an area of Siberian taiga or forest upon it.
Becky Shaw’s residency at Yorkshire Art Space in Sheffield
which will take as starting point the character of Tony T. What will Tony T
do when he grows up? He is clearly bright and keen to work out what reality
is. Maybe Tony T will go to university.
Also producing new works for Sheffield are Ryan Gander, Juneau
Projects, Jo Mitchell, Savage, Joanne
Tatham & Tom O’Sullivan, Laureana
Toledo and Bedwyr Williams.
At the heart of Art Sheffield 05 is artist-curator Gavin Wade’s proposed
context, Spectator T:
“In the early 80s the conceptual art group Art & Language wrote of
a Spectator A and B. Spectator A goes straight to an artwork, waits till s/he
gets the proper feelings and comprehension and then he just might look at the
title of the artwork, seek information and confirmation of his experience and
understanding. Spectator B goes immediately to the catalogue and press release,
seeking to discover how to read the artwork. Artist and writer Dave Beech has
put forward a Spectator C who isn’t interested in Art at all and ignores
it. Beech suggests that there may be a whole alphabet of spectators out there.
The alphabet could range from philistines to serial killers. Tony T. falls somewhere
in between. He doesn’t ignore Art he hates it. He feels like it attempts
to interfere with his life. The artworks presented in Spectator T: ART SHEFFIELD
05 will take a stance on whether they are designed with Spectator T in mind.
Do the artworks oppose Spectator T., are they for him or do they come from a
similar position as the Spectator? “
Gavin Wade.
The artists involved to date include: The artists involved include: Simon
& Tom Bloor * (UK), Robin Close (UK), Gordon Dalton* (UK), Graham Fagen
(UK), Ben Fitton (UK), Josephine Flynn (UK), Ryan Gander * (UK), Gelatin (Austria),
Gifts to the City of Sheffield * [Anthony Gross, Kirsten Lyle, Lisa Mahony,
Luke Oxley, Mark Pearson, Jen Wu, (UK)], Dan Griffiths, Matthew Harrison (UK),
Christian Jankowski (Germany/USA), Juneau Projects * (UK), Camilla Lyon (UK),
Matt & Ross (UK), Jim Medway (UK), Jo Mitchell * (UK), Heather & Ivan
Morison* (UK), Damon Packard (USA), Antoine Prum (Luxembourg/Germany), Joanna
Rajkowska * (Poland), Savage * (UK), Becky Shaw * (UK), Joanne Tatham &
Tom O1Sullivan * (UK) Laureana Toledo * (Mexico), Bedwyr Williams * (UK)
[*producing a new commission]
Andy Carver, Executive Director, Arts Council England, Yorkshire, said: 'Arts Council England is pleased to be able to support this major high-quality event for contemporary visual arts in Sheffield. Our investment in the fast-growing creative industries sector, including support for contemporary artists, is important to the region's economic success, and Art Sheffield 05 is very much part of this development.'
Please see programme at http://www.artsheffield.org.uk/spect/programme.html
for the full list of artists and projects’
Download press images here. (12.7MB zip file)
For further press information please contact:
Catharine Braithwaite on +44 (0)161 237 5252, +44 (0)7947 644 110 or cat@we-r-lethal.com
Click on the link to download the following images and information:
Simon and Tom Bloor, Love is Life (stickers) 2003
Gordon Dolton, Grand Canyon 2004
‘ARTIST FOR RENT’ Advert, Joanna Rajkowska,
Twenty-Two Tasks (PDF)
Joanna Rajkowska, Twenty-Two Tasks
