Blank Media Collective

Neck of the Woods

12 February - 11 April 2010, Nexus Art Cafe, Manchester

Neck of the Woods is a group exhibition investigating artists’ responses into the concept of community and how this is evolving. Artists and practitioners join from throughout the UK and Internationally to challenge the audience’s preconceptions of community and how this can be explored within their own personal artistic practice.

Throughout the exhibition there will be performances and interactions available for visitors to get involved in:
* Monday - Wednesday, 11am-5pm: Branka Vidovic-Butler will be listening to your stories in the cafe and compiling them on www.mancunianproject.blogspot.com
* Wednesday - Friday, 5-6pm: Canadian artist Lynne Heller will be performing as her alter-ego, Nar Duell in Second Life and available to talk via Skype

Listen to Mark Devereux (Director), Jamie Hyde (Curator) and John Leyland (Spoken word artist) talk about Neck of the Woods on AllFM...

Please see below for further information about the artists taking part in Neck of the Woods...

FURTHER INFORMATION:

ARTISTS TALKS & WORKSHOPS:

You, Me and the Budgie, Rhiannon Hunter: talk and workshop, Thursday 11 March, 11am-5pm

WITH THANKS TO:

Nexus Art Cafe | Dale Street | Manchester | M1 1JW | www.nexusartcafe.com

Sanctus 1, www.sanctus1.co.uk

Binaural recording equipment kindly on loan from Computing, Acoustics and Future Media | School of Computing, Science and Engineering | University of Salford | www.acoustics.salford.ac.uk

Read Exhibition Review

Participating Artists

Denmasons_taneesha: Taneesha Ahmed & Alex Moore

The Denmasons project is a collaborative project between Taneesha Ahmed and Alex Moore. The intention of our art practice remains to promote the ideology of The Denmasons.

The imperative for the Denmasons to be a collaborative piece was to produce art that did not have an individual authorship. The paradox of the formation of a cult would suggest that there is no identifiable author, but this is in fact myth being presented as truth. The Denmasons fictionalise and subvert their own authority, by parodying themselves and their actions. The intention was to create and disseminate fiction as fact, where we have created a layered narrative
that is simultaneously nonsensical and completely farcical.

Taneesha will be leading a special Den-making workshop on Saturday 13 February, 2-4pm in the garden area at Nexus Art Cafe. CLICK HERE for further information…

www.taneeshaahmed.com
CustardETC: Ryan Campbell

I’m an aspiring freelance designer and illustrator from Greater Manchester, currently studying at the Manchester School of Art. My current clients range from book publishers, and small businesses and individuals to more offbeat quirky magazine editorials. Intricate illustration and a thoughtfully reserved palette unify the natural and man-made elements frequently juxtaposed in my work. I strive to bring this theme and aesthetic to all artistic media, as well as to my commissions, which attempt to bridge the (very large) perceived gap between graphic design, illustration and fine art. Working both for clients and as an exhibiting artist allows me to satisfy my desire to express myself emotionally as well as visually and allows me to thrive creatively.
Rhiannon Hunter: Rhiannon Hunter

Rhiannon’s work explores notions of travelling, belonging and shifting environments. Journeying through an environment is a combination of personal, physical and external encounters.

As we negotiate spaces, we make conscious and unconscious bonds with surfaces and objects, storing them to memory and imprinting them with a sense of significance that roots us to a sense of place and belonging. We navigate spaces, dance over obstacles and make fleeting encounters. In much of her practice, Rhiannon entertains ideas surrounding communication, interaction and connectivity through material installation and live performance art.

Rhiannon Hunter will be leading You, Me and the Budgie workshop on Thursday 11 March (11am-5pm) at Nexus Art Cafe. CLICK HERE for further information…

www.wooloo.org/roobyshoes
rrhodes: Renee Rhodes

Through video, animation, photography and performance, I explore the spaces of unknown rituals, systems and communications. These systems are often appropriated from the natural world to be transposed uncomfortably onto human communities.

What emerges are the visual patterns and architectures of clustering crowds, caught in pointless task-like cycles, practicing for a mode of relating and communicating that haphazardly attempts a return to togetherness. Accumulations of human physicality are explored as infrastructures and tools of relation - both through the lie of digital composites or the documenting of created social interactions. The hand of technology and its ability to both connect and dramatically isolate always looms in the background.

These fabricated communities exist at the level of cells, emergent swarms, and organizing pixels. This is togetherness created through the lens of technology and repetition, created through social gatherings and unnaturally structured games. My work is about learning to dance, to touch and to move together. The failure and humour of trying often overshadows any achievement of a utopian moment. These awkward alignments explore insufficient solutions to modern loneliness.

www.reneeArhodes.com
Product_of_boy: Productofboy

Lindsay Duncanson, Marek Gabrysch and Victoria Conlan are a group of artists from Newcastle and Manchester who formed as a way to maintain a creative dialogue between the two cities. We have diverse creative backgrounds and trainings including Science, Photography, Video and Music. The work that we create is reflective of this, utilising text, video, photography, sound, electronics, installation composition and performance. We all have a process-lead approach to creating work, responding to and gathering data from the environment. Finding ways to illuminate and animate spaces using video projection, collecting and manipulating recorded sound, devising interactive sound works in response to a site or transforming a site into a musical instrument. We all have a strong sense of social and community engagement and this is reflected in the work that we create as individuals or as a collective. We strive to make work that challenges, inviting the audience to re-examine the way they perceive their environment.

www.productofboy.net
Lynne_Heller: Lynne Heller

I am a Canadian artist who works in a variety of disciplines including sound, new media and virtual worlds such as ‘Second Life’, websites, and immersive sculptural installations. My work reflects my interest in exploring the gap between our desires / yearnings, and reality. This topography is filled with odd juxtapositions, quirky beauty, endearing ugliness and human day-to-day struggles as we live, work and play. Dreams and actuality bump up against each other and manifest in idiosyncratic coincidence, and engaging fumbles. My current production explores our adaptation as we wander around—mostly lost—improvising in this rocky terrain. I love contemplating our humanity and finding an exquisiteness amongst the over-familiar artifacts of our both natural and manufactured landscapes / culture.

My desire to reflect on our human condition feels like a romantic notion to me. Instead of peering only into the enormity we call nature and feeling awe, I also look into an abyss of technological change and try to find a similar wonder and incongruent beauty. I have been equally fascinated by the material, and the virtual, and am constantly navigating between the two as I bridge many divides — dreams/reality, material/virtual, visual/aural and high art /low art.

Lynne will be performing live Wed-Fri, 5-6pm for the duration of the exhibition and a special performance at the public preview (11 February, 6-9pm)

lynneheller.com
John Leyland: John Leyland & Annette Cookson

Can the perception and vision of the artist be reconciled within the actuality of any community? Annette Cookson is a social and emotional commentator, a true Mancunian performer whose wide experiences of life inform her art. Her poetry is free, her voice strong; always searching to convey the humanity in society. John Leyland is a poetic magic realist. His work often explores the communal nature of personal relationships. He transports the audience to an honest, creative truth, observing with significance the importance of detail. Through poetic voice, performance and movement, John Leyland and Annette Cookson aim to explore the dichotomy of art and social realism within the notions of space and community.

John and Annette will be performing live at the public preview of Neck of the Woods (11 February, 6-9pm)
Ima_Okon: Ima-Abasi Okon

I draw connections between my faith as a Christian and the things that surround me on an everyday basis. My work is an abstraction of my faith expressed through architectural forms that take on anthropomorphic qualities. Making direct links with the functionality of architecture and the human body as the temple of God, I set out to prove my belief in a contemporary context. I predominately focus on structures that are built to house, protect and preserve, including those designed to herald the future. Intrigued by urban landscapes that speak of neglect and social decay I form visual narratives based on architectural terms such as growth, sprawl, ghetto, nomadism and utopianism. These narratives are combined with coupled notions such as ‘external and internal’, ‘flesh and the spirit’, ‘temporal and eternal’ and executed across a wide variety of media that includes print, collage, film, and more recently explorations into sculpture.

Graduating form Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design in 2008, my work has been featured both in Creative Review’s Annual Graduate Showcase and The Little Black Book of Art, an online Journal. Recent group shows have included an exhibition in Mayfair hosted by fashion label Lot 78, Reg Perfect & the Squeegees at The Portman Gallery, London and Gifted at the Wren Theatre, RIBA, London. I also participated in Wide Open 09 and in 2006 received The Richard Stapley Award consecutively for two years. I am currently completing a residency in the Print Department at Central Saint Martins.

www.imaokon.co.uk
Fivethreefive Project: Fivethreefive Project

We are an experimental theatre company, currently based in Manchester, creating original contemporary performance. We devise work which relates back to the human condition - what it is to feel under pressure; to be a member of a community; to be nostalgic. Fivethreefive Project are interested in producing performances which not only present a state of being, but actively involve audiences in the creation of experience. We play with varying forms and universal concepts, to create atmospheric, innovative pieces which are intellectually engaging and emotionally stimulating.
Edwyn_Butler: Edwyn Butler

Edwyn Butler is a Performance artist based in Manchester, he goes under many guises and wears multiple disguises. In the past he has provoked public spaces that could be considered awkward such as lifts, By dressing up and playing ukulele,under the name Edwina Ukulady getting varying responses. He has also performed a toy orchestra, and was a highlight at last years Free For Arts Festival.

Edwyn will be performing live at the public preview of Neck of the Woods (11 February, 6-9pm)
BrankaV: Branka Vidovic-Butler

Traumatized as a child, torn from all support, normality and peace, my art journey started as a method of survival. Years of producing art as an expression of anguish, pain, confusion and loss eventually led to a form of journey to take my expression and share it with others. Throughout my time, text, language, words, signs, maps and threads have heralded new dawns, new nightmares, traumatic instances, beautiful experiences, imagined fears and eventually led to new doors opening. My art deals with all these things.

As an exile, my loss of identity leads me to examine identity as a concept, as perceived by others and myself. I constantly struggle to make sense of my experience, to find a sense of belonging and of purpose. Through the use of language both written and non-written, I try to form a link or an instigator to give the viewer a link to an inner world.

In my art I use performance, video, photography, text as drawing, installation and mix these to present a vision to the viewer. Each peace is a work on its own whilst at the same time being part of a larger piece.

Branka will be listening to your stories Mon-Wed, 11am-4pm between 15 February - 17 March and a special performance at the public preview (11 February, 6-9pm)

www.brankavidovicbutler.blogspot.com