Artranspennine08

2008-06-22T09:01:00.000-07:00

Welcome to Artranspennine08! taking place from June 13th - August 15th 2008. Artranspennine is a large scale cross-regional exhibition with an array of emerging and established artists working in a variety of disciplines. Artists will be placing work, staging performances and creating interventions at a variety of locations across the transpennine route. To hear about specific times and dates please join our mailing list at atp08@hotmail.co.uk or join our Facebook group, for general news click here. We will also be selecting events and artists of the week below to assist in your navigation of the blog, details of each artist’s projects can be found in the link list to the right.

Thanks for visiting; we hope you enjoy the show.

2008-06-21T08:08:00.000-07:00

For Artranspennine08, Bryony Moore presents her new video work, 'Halfway House' The work was filmed at Edale, a location on the Pennines halfway between Manchester and Sheffield -the two cities where the artist and her boyfriend live, respectively. Having spent years separated by this giant hill, 'Halfway House' presents Moore's attempt to take it on, while simultaneously creating the opportunity to star in her own real-life love story.

http://www.bryonymoore.blogspot.com/

2008-06-12T09:33:00.000-07:00

"We explore the presence of energy within ourselves, and the world around us, through a direct and conscious interaction between the two."

For the past few months Wess and Baskeyfield have been exploring the above statement through the manipulation of sculptural forms - The Frame, The Sheet, and the L Block - all of which relate directly to their earlier work within the studio and emphasise, at this stage, the importance of the studio to their practice.

For Artranspennine 08 Wess and Baskeyfield propose to take these forms outside the confines of the studio to a number of predetermined locations and explore them through the freshness of these new environments, and explore the environments through the forms. A residue of explorations will be left at each site, perhaps a white frame, or something more subtle. The entirety of their exploration will be documented. Wess and Baskeyfield will make journeys over the course of five weeks, on the Friday or the Sunday of each week, starting on Friday 13th June.

http://www.islingtonmill.com/wessandbaskeyfield
www://saatchi-gallery.co.uk/yourgallery/artist_profile/a/90070.html

2008-06-11T08:37:00.001-07:00

(to see the video in the context of Google Map click here)

'First Person Rambler'

This work involves the walking of a section of the Trans Pennine Trail, starting near Stockport and heading East. Fred McVittie will be carrying a stick over his shoulder, to the end of which is attached a video camera that will record his progress. The viewpoint of the video recording will echo that found in ‘first person shooter’ video games. Whilst walking Fred will also be speaking aloud whatever occurs to him at the time; this forming a soundtrack to the moving image.

The project is a bringing together of two ideas; firstly that of walking through a landscape as a metaphor for the bindlestiff ramblings of thought and feeling, and secondly the sense of being outside of oneself. This second sense is most vividly exhibited in the avatar relations of video games and online virtual environments, but also features within a wide range of discourses, from spiritual practices and psychotic episodes to the ideals of empirical objectivity.

Chris Clarke's project at the Cornerhouse Bookshop. For 'Untitled', Chris Clarke used the contents of a bookshop to create a site-specific installation. Throughout the day, Clarke wrapped all of the books in brown paper, obscuring their titles and covers in order to create a walk-in sculptural environment. While the shop (attempted to) function as normal, the materials inside gradually lost their individuality and were rendered indistinguishable. (Click on picture above to see Chris Clarke's Slideshow)

During Artranspennine 08 Tim Machin will be creating a narrative across the transpennine region - this will exist in a number of forms; cards in newsagent's windows, 'lost dog' posters sellotaped to lamposts and small–ads, together with some Google maps and writing created in unconventional, ephemeral places from bulletin boards to Flickr discussion groups, the whole project will be able to be monitored online at Lost Dog.

www.tmachin.co.uk

http://www.tmachin.co.uk/lostdog/

Jemma Egan is planning to make several tongue-in-cheek interventions at bus stops (locations tbc) that cast a new context on the would-be passengers. By altering the otherwise uniform, innocuous locations, Egan want to allow people (either knowingly or unwittingly) to participate in novel interactions with their everyday environments and at the same time become an exhibition for all that pass by.

www.jemmaegan.com

Janet Griffiths presents the further fantasy flying adventures of her alter ego ‘Wendy’ who whilst flying around the Pennines nosedives into a bush. Details of the location of this installation will follow soon.

The Artranspennine Reading Room

Curator: Lewis Biggs

At the back of the Artranspennine98 exhibition guide is a page of ‘Thanks and Acknowledgements’. Signed by the Curators-in-Chief, Lewis Biggs and Robert Hopper, it concludes with the following sentence about Tate, Liverpool and the Henry Moore Institute, Leeds;

"The work of these two organisations over the last decade had provided the solid foundation upon which artranspennine98 has been built, as the first in a series of recurring exhibitions in this unique region."

The Artranspennine98 Reading Room is an installation to be shown at the Artanspennine08 hub space, Manchester, and focuses on the idea of legacy as it runs through the Artranspennine project. The piece consists of a bookshelf on which are placed copies of the Artranspennine98 Exhibition Guide, a 144 page, perfect bound, publication measuring 12.5cm x 15.5cm. There will be a dozen or so copies of the book. The bookshelf is set at a height of around 110cms – roughly eye height for a seated person. In front of the bookshelf are two empty chairs for the visitor to sit on.

The Artranspennine98 exhibition guide is presented as an artefact. We think of this piece as a sculpture rather than an archive, which allows the visitor to reflect upon the development of the exhibition over the ensuing period. The reading room of the title becomes a parody of contemporary museum practice in which reading materials are provided to illuminate the actual exhibition. The redundancy implied in having many more copies of the book than positions to sit and read it reflects the contents of a publication now, for the most part, ten years out of date. However it’s worth noting that a number of the original public projects are still present in the region and the occasional utility of the guide points to larger issues surrounding the continued existence of the Artranspennine concept. Indeed much of the pleasure of flicking through an out of date Exhibition Guide is derived from the chance to make a casual assessment of what has persisted and what has disappeared.

In this sense questions of legacy are foregrounded in the work much in the same way that the entire Artranspennine project has become a mediation, by a diverse and growing group of artists, on the legacy of a project initiated as a collaboration between the north’s two leading Museum spaces. That artranspennine98 has initiated a series of recurring exhibitions as originally intended, although through a mechanism quite different perhaps from that foreseen by the founding curators, is the subject of a work that takes the format of the exhibition, rather than the region in which it occurs, as its organising principle. We are particularly pleased that this work affords us the opportunity to collaborate with Lewis Biggs as project curator, enabling his return to an exhibition concept he co-founded over ten years ago.

Currently installed at Apartment - view by appointment.

Transmerge

Becky Bowley will take the train from Sheffield to Manchester. In Sheffield she will dig a hole and take the earth to the next stop, Grindleford, where she will then dig another hole and fill that hole with the earth from Sheffield, she will then take the earth from Grindleford to Hathersage, where she will then dig another hole, and fill that hole with the earth from Grindleford, and this process will continue along the hope valley line until she reaches Manchester and then goes back to Sheffield to fill the original hole with the earth from Manchester.

Transmerge is a ritual that communicates an artistic desire to merge body and land for creative peaceful purposes without boundaries of ownership. Prehistorically land and rock art may have been used to define boundaries, and ownership of the land to certain ‘tribes’ and to indicate their beliefs and rituals. These boundaries of land and people continue today causing global and personal conflict between individuals. Land and people are separated by differences that can be transformed into a merger of unique parts at peace with each other, which is ritualised in the performance of Transmerge.

The performance will be two days long and take place on the 21^st and 22nd of June, Becky will work closely with arts photographer Julian Hughes to document the performance. The photographs will be exhibited alongside a diary of the process and mapping of exchanged earth holes at http://beckybowley.blogspot.com/ where details of times, and stops will follow shortly.

www.beckybowley.com

http://www.julianhughesphotography.blogspot.com/

2008-04-30T13:39:00.000-07:00

Artranspennine 98 was a massive exhibition which included internationally acclaimed exhibiting artists supported by a £3 million budget. Intended to enrich the understanding of a bureaucratic construct by highlighting the transpennine route as a region, a celebration of a cluster of world class cities built on the successes of the Industrial revolution during the 19th century. Collectively cities in this region such as Liverpool, Manchester, Leeds and Sheffield have the population, wealth and resources to rival London.

The curators of Artranspennine 98, Lewis Biggs and the late Robert Hopper believed that England was seen from the south and argued that until there is “real regionalism” there would not be an art world outside London. They asserted that the curators had as much right as anyone to propose a region and saw that the transpennine trade corridor may be a way to recontextualise this area and potentially help create a regional sense of identity, and consequently encourage a cultural shift toward seeing England from an alternative viewpoint.

Five years after this big budget exhibition originally participating artists Nick Crowe and Ian Rawlinson decided to reinvigorate this concept deeming the ‘brand’ of Artranspennine too significant to “fall into abeyance”. They felt that the “cultural momentum generated by the first Artranspennine exhibition was in danger of disappearing” and the pair went on to stage the second Artranspennine with a fraction of the budget of the original, though keeping very much within the confines of the original Artranspennine framework. The exhibition itself was a legitimate quality show and a gentle biennale parody, the final sentence of their curatorial statement announces that “Someday all biennales will be run this way”.

Ten years since the original Artranspennine, and five years since the second, Nick Crowe and Ian Rawlinson seemed determined to maintain the significance of the Artranspennine brand and approached us to stage Artranspennine 08. The challenge was an extremely daunting and exciting opportunity which, after much deliberation we felt unable to reject. We spent many hours discussing the nature of this particular inherited exhibition and its curatorial concept. We questioned how to explore and reinvigorate Artranspennine and enable it to be seen through a contemporary lense:

A decade later London continues to dominate the cultural landscape; this seems unlikely to change though possibly what has shifted is the drive to alter the south centered view of England. Frequently artists based in the north are bypassing the dominance of London and are heading overseas to exhibit, aided by the explosion of online activity. Quick to inhabit cyber space artists are using websites and free blogs, embracing my-space and Facebook as a vital networking utilities and using on-line resources as a legitimate promotional tool and occasional exhibition space.

Unlike the first Artranspennine our agenda is not to challenge the position of the north as parochial outsider or to promote the Pennine corridor as newly formed location of cooperation but to celebrate the benefits many artists enjoy living outside London as the realities of the internet and affordable airfares continue to place less emphasis on geographical location.

Artranspennine offers an exhibition template, a framework to view the work on show. The artists have the opportunity to challenge the notion of this mythical region or to totally disregard its potential limitations. Our main alteration of the original concept is to disregard a selection process. This democratising tool shows the level at which the ‘brand’ operates, who is engaging with it and what cultural relevance it still has? Artists have chosen to include themselves in Artranspennine 08 revealing the artists opinion of this decade old exhibition concept and its relevance to current practices. This ‘Call to Arms’ shows how artists continue to engage with a ‘brand’ or proposal often with little reward. A lack of fee and potential for failure seems not to dissuade the brave few that willingly place their work in the hands of a sanctioned ‘organisation’.

For Artranspennine 08 our curatorial hand is almost absent, all we have done is enable Artranspennine 08 to happen, we have constructed the infrastructure that will enable the work to be seen along the route whether people travel to see it or not. We have set up a free blog which will act as exhibition hub and audience first port of call, we have set up a face-book group which will facilitate debate and networking opportunities a Photo-bucket account that allows the work to appear as a slide show on the blog and an e-mail address which aids the dissemination of the relevant information to the artists who are participating and the interested audience, and we have taken every effort to promote the exhibition to the public and to on line and printed media.

As artist/curators we see ourselves as facilitators who like all the artists involved it seems find it difficult to turn away from a challenge. As we write this, the work is beginning to pile in to our in-box and we are both excited by the quality of the work and delighted by the generosity of all the artists involved. We are curious to see the potential of viral marketing, to see the reach and breadth these resources allow. We are looking forward to seeing how the exhibition evolves and to discover whether the Artranspennine ‘brand’ was worth resurrecting for the second time and we wonder whether it will return again for Artranspennine13.

Paul Harfleet and Hilary Jack

2008-04-22T02:31:00.000-07:00

The first of the Artranspennine exhibitions, ATP98 was held between 23 May and 16 August 1998. Artranspennine98 was an exhibition of public art that combined the method and language of the art museum (the bringing together of artworks to create the ephemeral experience of an exhibition) with the method and language of those commissioning public art in the

(the permanent siting of artworks to create a legacy within the public domain). It occupied a specific territory, bounded by Liverpool to the west and Hull to the east and traversed by the M62 motorway. Artranspennine98 aimed to foster a new sense of pride in this territory (diverse as it is, encompassing Yorkshire and Lancashire) through the proposition that it should be considered a region . It was always intrinsically concerned with its own legacy, both in terms of the number of permanent works of art situated in the public domain and in terms of the precedent for inter-institutional cooperation across the region.

The exhibition involved 64 artists working on 40 projects at 30 sites across the transpennine region and was a joint initiative of the Tate Gallery, Liverpool and the Henry Moore Institute, Leeds. Curators-in-chief Lewis Biggs and the late Robert Hopper worked for some five years to develop the programme and coordinate the involvement of numerous regional institutions.

The intention was to create a unique art exhibition which also enriched the understanding of the area. It was the largest exhibition of its kind ever mounted in the United Kingdom and was in itself the recipient of the largest ever Lottery award allocation for a single exhibition, close to £1.8 million, in addition to approximately £1.2 million of private funding and other sponsorship. The presentation of Artranspennine98 was based on the region, not on the personality of the artists. It articulated a new impetus toward regional association and the role of cultural forums: it understood that England is seen from the south and until there is real regionalism, in the sense of devolution of resources and decision making, there won’t be an art world apart from disparate elements such as the Henry Moore Institute, etc, outside of London. Furthermore, the exhibition asserted that the curators had as much right as anyone to propose a region.

There had been a Transpennine Ltd (a company lobbying politicians at Westminster and Brussels) in existence for some years, supported by business and local authority subscribers ambitious for the region to be accepted as a single entity from a planning point of view. The economic potential has been recognised by the European Union in its designation as “the growth corridor for the 21st Century” - the E20 route. This is the trade corridor that commences in Limerick, spans the North of England and ends in St.Petersberg. The Transpennine Railway built in the 1860’s was the last element in the economic and industrial infrastructure that gave the region its world importance in the 19th Century. The region is one of the most densely populated and urbanised places in the world.

The transpennine regions contains some 42 universities, 456 hospitals, it produces one third of the gross domestic product of the UK, consists of a land mass larger than Belgium and containing some 13 million inhabitants. It is, in short, a small country.

Note: Much, but not all, of the above text is culled from an essay by Robert Hopper and Lewis Biggs in Leaving Tracks, the publication which was produced after Artranspennine98

In 2003 artist/curators Nick Crowe and Ian Rawlinson re-invigorated the ‘brand’ of artranspennine by asking artists to respond to the notion of the artranspennine region, the following appears on the artranspennine 03 website. (http://www.artranspennine.org.uk/)

“More pertinently the desire to stage the second Artranspennine exhibition came from the simple observation that if the ‘brand’ were permitted to fall into abeyance then the cultural momentum generated by the first Artranspennine exhibition was in danger of disappearing. Put simply this gesture is about keeping open the cultural 'Rights of Way'.

That there is a transpennine region at all is something of a bureaucratic invention. Certainly trade has flowed across the Pennines for hundreds of years but to ask people from Hull, Sheffield, Lancaster or Bolton if they belong to a region called transpennine would be to invite at least confusion if not a derisory kick in the teeth. Thus the way in which we have organised this exhibition has, in the first instance, grown out of our appreciation of artists as the primary artistic resource of the region.

We would not expect visitors to the exhibition to see it all, even in three days of concerted traveling. In fact as curators we are unlikely to see all of the projects. We do hope, however, that experiencing even one of the works in the glorious complexity of its specific context will give the viewer a significant encounter with contemporary art, a better understanding of the transpennine region and an appreciation of the true cultural capital it possesses.

Note: Much but not all of the above was culled from Artranspennie03’s website

2008-04-03T08:39:00.000-07:00

Below is some coverage from Flux Magazine, Artists are continuing to send us updates and images to our in-box, more artists then ever now have slide shows of their work on this blog so do browse the site!!

Hello and welcome to our news section as you can see below we have been really busy! The show has been going well with some press attention across the region. We were voted website of the week on 24 hour museum and have had over 13,000 hits on the site so far! Lots of the artists taking part have been sending updates and the site is becoming richer and richer as time passes. We will be sending further updates out soon. Thanks for visiting!

Above a slide show with images from the Artranspennine08 launch event at The International 3 on Friday. The launch event and open day generously hosted by International3 enabled artists to promote their work to press and public and to meet and network with other participants. Each artist was invited to pinpoint the location of their work across the region on a map in the gallery. Access to the blog enabled visitors to browse the various works alongside publicity material placed on the Artranspennine08 information desk. Temporarily International3 acted as the physical hub for Artranspennine08 creating a gallery context and a location for celebration, interaction and dialogue

Click on the 'Press' above to access our press coverage so far, we will be uploading press coverage here regularly, If you're a participating artist and secure your own press for Artranspennine08 then let us know and we'll post it on the blog.

The Launch of Artranspennine08 is TONIGHT!... 5-9pm at International3 who are generously hosting the event and we hope to see you there. We will also be at the gallery tomorrow from 12-5pm to meet visitors and talk about the project so if you’re overwhelmed by the activity in Manchester tonight then do come and see us tomorrow!

In case you’re not familiar with International3 here is the address: 8 Fairfield Street, Manchester, M1 3GF. Just opposite Piccadilly Train station and next door to the Bulls Head pub!

In other news we have had over 9000 hits on our blog!

We have 53 posts/activities on the (links to the left) involving over 60 artists! We are delighted with the array of activity that is taking place over the next couple of months and we will endeavour to keep you up date with all the activity so come back and visit the blog as each artists post will evolve and grow as their works are documented!

Thanks for visiting and hope to see you tonight!

News just in! 24 Hour Museum have written a full article on Artranspennine08 click on logo above to go to article!

The weather should be fine and sunny on Friday! for more up do date weather reports click here

The Launch event of Artranspennine will take place this Friday (13th) from 5pm at International 3! There will be no artwork in the gallery though artists will be able to add their contribution to Artranspennine 08 to a map placed in International 3 and will also be able to bring business cards, ephemera and publicity from their ongoing projects. We’re delighted with the amount of artists that have chosen to take part in Artranspennine and we hope to see you on Friday! There are also the degree shows at MMU and a preview at Castlefield Gallery so Friday promises to be a packed evening!

We’ve just added some new artists to our list so do have a look at the links on the right!

We've recently updated the 'frequently asked questions' area (click on picture for link!), with instructions on how to submit! The closing date is not until June 12th, though please forward your submissions as soon as possible to atp08@hotmail.co.uk.

Hello Everyone! and welcome to the ‘news’ section of our fabulous blog! We will endeavour to keep you up to date with all the developments over the next couple of months with Artranspennine 08. Please do join our mailing list or Facebook group if you’d like to get regular updates.

We have decided to extend the submission phase of Artranspennine so as many of you as possible can be included. We will stop taking submissions on Friday June 13^th, the same day as the opening event at International 3. Though to guarantee inclusion on the blog in time it would be best to get it to us as soon as possible.

We're delighted to announce that Flux magazine is our media sponsor for Artranspennine 08, Flux was the media sponsor for Artranspennine 03, so we're pleased to carry on the tradition of working with this Manchester based cultural institution.

International 3 have confirmed that they will host a special Artranspennine08 opening event that will take place on Friday 13th of June. For the Friday evening and Saturday day International 3 will act as a physical hub for the Exhibition, (times to be confirmed soon) Artists will be able to spread the word of thier own projects and learn what other participants have been up to.

For visitors to Manchester the event coincides with the Manchester Metropolitan degree shows, always a great event! International 3 is just opposite Manchester Piccadilly, it would be possible to stop off at International 3 on your way to MMU which is just a short walk across town.

International 3

The Super Lamb Banana was the original work of Japanese-based artist Taro Chiezo. Commissioned for the Art Transpennine Exhibition of 1998, the sculpture was a controversial, but welcome addition to the public art arena in Liverpool. Standing an impressive seventeen feet tall and comprised of concrete and steel, the statue first attracted interest from its original position on the Strand. The unusual artwork was created to warn of the dangers of genetically modified food, whilst being appropriate to the city of Liverpool due to the port's rich history in the trade of lambs and the import of bananas.

This work is being 'reinvigorated' in a competetion organsied by Granada TV as part of Liverpool's Capital of Culture. The public have been asked to add 'decoration' to this work, for more information click here.

2008-02-26T05:17:00.000-08:00

Click the logo above to access the article at 24 Hour Museum

2008-02-26T04:42:00.000-08:00

Anton Harding plans to make his folio of prints available for hire at a negotiated hourly rate. Proceeds will fund the development of grander forms of distribution. Interested parties can arrange a meeting to view the portfolio by email hardinganton@hotmail.com or phone - 01484 349194.

www.myspace.com/photostudy

2008-02-25T03:55:00.000-08:00

During Artsranspennine08 Lee Machell will investigate the potential for changing the architectural nature of space by a minimal mechanical intervention. This will be achieved through the process of performative drawing; the ignition of a horizontal line of matches.

The location for this drawing is the disused HGV garage situated on Hulme St, Salford, M5 4PF.
This building was chosen for its atmosphere of decay and its historic relevance to the industrial flow of commerce through the Pennines

The duration of the drawing will span from the 23rd of July to the 31st of July.

Leemachell@hotmail.co.uk

www.leemachell.co.uk

2008-02-24T07:01:00.000-08:00

Mark Kennard will create a new series of drawings in response to Artranspennine 08. A publication will be produced at the end of the project, acting in part as an unofficial catalogue of the event.

2008-02-23T03:04:00.000-08:00

Site #001

London Road Station (1958)
Built 1842 by London & North Western Railway.
Pulled down and replaced by Piccadilly Station in the early 1960’s.

More details to follow soon..

2008-02-22T02:52:00.000-08:00

The Transpennine Memorabilia Collection

Date: Friday 15th August 2008, 6-9pm

Venue: 29 Rockdove Avenue, Hulme, Manchester, M15 5EH

For Artranspennine08, Kwong Lee visited charity and junk shops in the Transpennine region collecting discarded memorabilia that represents the region’s villages, towns or cities. These objects, formerly cherished by the original purchasers as symbols of connection, identity and pride, will once again take the limelight in a one-night only display in a residential living room.

The collection is a snapshot of local interests that contrasts with the generalisation that aspirations to internationalism bring. While it may be hard to distinguish places by their contemporary architecture or high street shops, the images selected to represent their locations are often historical buildings or structures that, over time, have varying significance and reverence. These popular images are channelled through objects that have a function within both local pride and tourism.

The 25 or so collected objects are reproductions of copper or steel etchings, watercolours, pencil or colour pencil drawings, hand-coloured steel engravings, embroideries and photographs. They are mostly manufactured on paper, metal plates, ceramic plates, thimbles, jigsaws and metal spoons. A few appear to be unique and hand-crafted.

Visitors are welcome to bring their own souvenirs and memorabilia from the Transpennine region to donate to the collection. After the one night display the collection will be available for loan free of charge, for display in a home, workplace or public space.

The collection includes images of:

Bold Hotel, Southport

St. Oswalds, Lower Peover

Leeds Town Hall

York Minster

Church of St Mary and All Saints (‘Crooked Spire’), Chesterfield

Selby Abbey

The Shambles, York

Chester Cathedral

Bridge Street, Chester

Eastgate, Chester

Six Chimneys, Kirkgate, Wakefield

Jubilee Clock, Market Square, Otley

Manchester Cathedral

The Royal Exchange, Manchester

The Old Transporter Bridge, Widnes

Chorley Old Hall, Alderley Edge

The Parsonage, Haworth

Lymm Dam

2008-02-21T09:37:00.000-08:00

Nikola Irmer will be sending hand-made postcards from Berlin to randomly selected addresses across the transpennine route.

www.nikolairmer.com

2008-02-20T09:07:00.000-08:00

http://www.bryonymoore.blogspot.com/

2008-02-19T16:25:00.000-08:00

'Half way Hole'

Maeve Rendle will be filling holes that exist in the road/ floor between her studio and her intended destinations along the Art Transpennine Trail. The holes found will be filled with parts of things belonging to the things she has ingested throughout the course of a day spent working in the studio, or those being ingested at the time of departure. Each hole however successfully filled will be photographed and become part of a sequence of photographs mapping and connecting place, time, routine and habit. Depending on the repetition of frequented destinations away from the studio, some holes in parts of pathways may become halfway whole once more.

2008-02-18T16:07:00.000-08:00

Quintessence

Gaps, in-between-spaces, holes and crevices manifested.

Complicated bonding with at-ease support.

Mutual connection of respect.

Marriage/Lean on me.

We are all standing in for something.

"Walking along the Pennine walk I am consuming. Enveloped in time and all things forgotten it has become an object of desire. The liaison is beginning, if I can only get my hands on it.

It begins with a lust, the need for that raw material. I had the most utter fulfilment when I found the first piece lying there, forsaken and unwanted.

A love of the abhorrent, what an antonym!

Optical outlines of aphasia, the objects were alluding to their lost ability to articulate ideas through spoken/written language, invoking dialogue and communicating stillness, they were functioning at last.

No-one knew where they had been found, they didn’t know their past or their previous condemnations, all that is important was what they are doing now; shifting into stylised and mannered sculptures imposing questions with no room for doubt. They had become an object of art and I like the viewer: simply a bystander.

Will you see them? Will they see you?....."

2008-02-17T15:58:00.000-08:00

'The Glorious Twelfth'

Dave Griffiths will lead an astronomical field trip to the Dark Peak on 12
August, from dusk till dawn. Together we will observe and record the
celebrated Perseid meteor shower which climaxes in the northern hemisphere
around this date. You may bring a looking-glass of choice, or survey the
heavens with your naked eye. Our horizontal scrutiny may result in
convivial connection with one another and the firmament, and awareness of
England's dwindling dark-sky areas. If you are interested in joining this
rustic ramble, please get in touch - exact itinerary and location to be
confirmed.

griff@davegriffiths.info

2008-02-16T08:10:00.000-08:00

www.tmachin.co.uk

http://www.tmachin.co.uk/lostdog/

2008-02-15T08:01:00.000-08:00

"Attici Amoris Ergo" Artist Yuen Fong Ling will lead a workshop/discussion/performance twisting the traditional life class format to reconfigure the artist's model. Responding to the National Heritage site Rufford Old Hall in Ormskirk, Lancashire, the artist as the model will be working with members of LAN (Lancashire Artists Network) in the Great Hall where it is believed that William Shakespeare had once performed. By re-staging the life model set-up for Nicolas Hilliard's "Portrait of an Unknown Man Clasping a Hand from a Cloud" 1588, also believed to be connected with the young Shakespeare, the event aims to transpose the mythology of the portrait, through the artist as model, to speculate upon the creation of the myth.

Rufford Old Hall, 28th June 2008, 11am-3pm, standard National Trust Entrance Fees apply, to participate member of the LAN need to book by email to: mail@celia-cross.co.uk. This event is supported by MAP.

http://www.nationaltrust.org.uk/main/w-vn/w-visits/w-findaplace/w-ruffordoldhall
http://www.vam.ac.uk/images/image/11773-popup.html
http://www.lanarts.com/
http://yuenfongling.blogspot.com/
http://romanbricks.blogspot.com/

2008-02-14T04:43:00.000-08:00

Waist High Passimeter

Artranspennine 08 sees the beginning of a nation wide project, by the collaborative team Jones2, which celebrates and reveres a variety of unsung crafts from across the UK.

Throughout July the duo will be travelling sections of the Pennine Way, and its surrounding areas, documenting the mechanisms used to close and lock gates along pupil bridal ways and footpaths. Gate mechanisms will be selected on their creativity and use of materials, their location will be recorded and where possible their province will be sought. Medals of gold, silver and silver guilt will be awarded to the most innovative of mechanisms, displayed on a plaque and stand planted aside each gate.

To follow the progress of the project visit

www.jonessquare.co.uk

You can keep an eye on the progress of this project if you follow this link as well.

2008-02-13T04:25:00.000-08:00

The Anniversary Tea Party

In 1844 a grocery shop opened for the first time in Toad Lane, Rochdale. It was very small and sparsely fitted out, but over a short period of time transformed from humble beginnings to the Co-op movement. With a tiny capital, twenty-eight impoverished workmen founded the Rochdale Society of Equitable Pioneers. From bitter experience the Pioneers realised the shop traders, who were mostly the factory owners, forced a trade of inferior goods sold at inflated prices.

The selling of adulterated food was common – sand was mixed with sugar, chalk with flour, plaster of Paris added to bread and perishables passed off as edible. The shop’s first stock order consisted of; “ Butter 1 quarter 22lbs; Sugar 2 quarters; Flour 3 sacks; Oatmeal 1 sack and 2 dozen Candles.” Most of it was sold on the first night. By 1850 the Rochdale store had increased its members to 600 and by 1859 the number of members had risen to 2,703. By now the majority of ruthless shopkeepers were clearly threatened and handbills were distributed with the words “Will the shopkeepers still go on aiding the men who are fostering the system which is destined at no distant period to snatch their daily bread from their very jaws?”

As the store prospered the directors decided to celebrate with an Anniversary Tea Party. The men paid £4 for a ticket and the women £3 a ticket. So committed to the cause of improving the quality of life for its members and community, the Pioneers focused on issues beyond business - education being top of their agenda. In 1845 the directors decided “the members who did not attend the annual tea party be fined or charged the amount”.

Lisa Penny muses over these historical facts through a montage of retro adverts and found moving images, and by placing the sampled track of Michael Jackson’s ‘Beat It’, playfully suggests the lyrics resonate with the spirit and great struggle of the Rochdale Pioneers.

2008-02-12T05:43:00.000-08:00

Artranspennine08

The Durds will be performing at Islington Mill on Friday from 8pm as part of Artranspennine08

They will be supported by Mark Pilkington/ Anotherthoughtuniverse

(very smart electronic/ electroacoustic music, check out www.thought-universe.co.uk)

Watch this space for further news.

THE DURDS are Electronic folk/ research-based pop with elements of visual art, experimental sound and performance art.

6 songs played electronically with live vocals plus additional sound and music between tracks.

Dan, sits on a chair inside a wooden box, in the dark, singing. An infra-red camera relays images of him to a monitor on top. He cannot see or interact with band or audience, though they can see him.

Last time around (at the Arthouse, for the Chorlton Arts Festival) Fliss and Janet ironed and pegged out pegged out bacon dressed as charladies. This time they’ll be wearing negligees and deep frying odd socks.

The Durds (AKA The Duds) have a CD album out on Orange County, California's Banazan Records.

"If I said there were a million ideas on this record I'd be underestimating by some margin...The Duds take a couple of hundred of those ideas and corral them into one coherent concept, one glorious whole, one 3-minute tune, one minor masterpiece. And then they do it again."- Robots and Electronic Brains zine

There are also (under various names) 3 7" singles and a 12" EP on Eeriephone Records.

“Socially leprous dolly-disco... a freshly chilling sphere of wholesale evil.”- Butterfly Crush zine

Daniel Cray- vocals Felicity Shillingford- visuals Janet Griffiths- visuals

www.myspace.com/thedurds www.myspace.com/flissuk www.myspace.com/janetgriffiths

www.myspace.com/researchbasedpop www.banazan.com

Phone: 07763 751 453 (Dan) Email: daniel_cray@yahoo.com

2008-02-11T05:26:00.000-08:00

Birdlife

Situated just south of the Trans Pennine Trail, right at the heart of the Dearne Valley is the Old Moor RSPB reserve. Wearing the bird spotting costume, allows you to totally immerse yourself in nature, as well as to tap into the primitive practice of anthropopsychism - projecting a human quality onto an animal which in turn is then projected back onto themselves. By internally representing the object of your vision, a resemblance or correspondence can occur between the object of your eye and your senses.

Get closer to the wonderful world of birdlife; here are some of the birds known to the area...

2008-02-10T03:13:00.000-08:00

'Hall of Memory'

The Hall of Memory - 1974-2008.
A work in twelve parts.

Left Panel
Eva Clarkson - died 14th March 1956
William Clarkson - died 20th May 1969

Centre Panel
Fred Beddows - died 21st November 1961
Elsie Beddows - died 8th September 1992

Right Panel
James Nuttall - died 3rd May 1956
Beatrice Nuttall - died 2nd January 1981

Southern Cemetery Crematorium.
Hall of Memory
Barlow Moor Road
Chorlton-cum-Hardy
Manchester
M21 7GL

Opening times:
9am-4.30pm

Stagecoach Buses from Manchester central.
111: Manchester Piccadilly - Southern Cemetery, every 12 mins.
46/47: Manchester Albert Sq - Southern Cemetery, every 30 mins.

2008-02-09T02:59:00.000-08:00

Daksha Patel will be running along the River Mersey until she can run no more. With heart pounding, lungs burning, skin flushed, she will stop and make a series of drawings.

2008-02-08T02:50:00.000-08:00

“We explore the presence of energy within ourselves, and the world around us, through a direct and conscious interaction between the two.”

5 Forms, 5 Sites, 5 Explorations

1. White Forms
Manchester City Center
Friday 13th June

2. Sheet
Some where off Junction 7, M65
Sunday 22nd june

3. 10 Rectangles
B6105, Pennine Way, The Pennines.
Friday 27th June

4. 10 Frames
Ecton Hill, Macclesfield
Friday 4th July

5. L Block
Parbold Hill, Parbold
Friday 11th July

Exhibition of documentation, Studio 302, Islington Mill, Salford, M3 5HW, Sunday 20th July, 11am - 4pm. All Welcome.

http://www.islingtonmill.com/wessandbaskeyfield
www://saatchi-gallery.co.uk/yourgallery/artist_profile/a/90070.html

2008-02-07T01:23:00.000-08:00

Above a Slide-show of Chris Clarke's project at the Cornerhouse Bookshop. For 'Untitled', Chris Clarke used the contents of a bookshop to create a site-specific installation. Throughout the day, Clarke wrapped all of the books in brown paper, obscuring their titles and covers in order to create a walk-in sculptural environment. While the shop (attempted to) function as normal, the materials inside gradually lost their individuality and were rendered indistinguishable.

2008-02-06T01:20:00.000-08:00

www.jemmaegan.com

2008-02-04T04:21:00.000-08:00

In 1998, I had the privilege of accompanying the playwright Brian McAvera on a tour around the Artranspennine exhibition. He had been commissioned to review this event for the magazines Artists Newsletter and Sculpture (USA).

For ATP08, with Brian’s permission, this text is republished for consideration 10 years after the initial event, together with some previously unpublished photographs.

This experience was eye-opening for me as I became acutely aware of just how much work was involved in a thorough investigation and evaluation. There were many meetings along the way, some in home in Liverpool, and in my studio in Manchester; others in cafes and bars, and on site. I was able to observe and occasionally contribute to an incredibly intense series of debates.

Some artists and organisations were enthusiastic to engage with us; others were keen to have their pre-prepared dialogue included in any review (this rarely happened). Many who were more critical wanted to maintain anonymity as they often worked for or with the organisations involved, and quite reasonably did not want their views to be seen as representative of their ‘employers’.

I was amazed to see how many doors could be opened for an art critic! At one point we were offered a 4 wheel drive Landrover and a guide to ‘tour’ a particular site when a member of staff realised the purpose of the visit. I doubt if I have been offered so much ‘hospitality’ over a period of six days, prior to or since.

Being unofficial organiser, driver and photographer for Brian McAvera, my name appeared in both published texts and I had accreditation for the images. For some time afterwards, although my contribution was tiny, I was either congratulated or berated by readers of these articles.

Both praised and damned by association… ATP98 was a journey of discovery.

Geoff Molyneux

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Life has moved rapidly for Brian McAvera in the post-Artranspennine period. His cycle of plays Picasso’s Women, after having been performed at the National Theatre, London and the Edinburgh Festival, are now translated into eleven languages and have been performed around the world. Other plays performed at the Edinburgh Festival since then are Yo! Picasso! And Kings of the Road, all of which have been published by Oberon Books, London .

In the visual arts, he continued to write for magazines and newspapers, producing over a million words of art criticism, including more than forty catalogues, and eight books on the visual arts. He is still a Contributing Editor to Sculpture (

USA

) and now writes for every issue of the quarterly Irish Arts Review. In his spare time he is the Creative Residency Director at Stranmillis University College .’

Brian McAvera { artranspennine98

'Making an art exhibition is not simply a matter of practicality, but of necessity and morality'. Robert Hopper. Co-curator, in artranspennine98, The Henry Moore Foundation Review, No 6, 1998.

artranspennine98 is variously referred to as 'a project', 'a fully curated exhibition', 'a true manifestation of public art', 'an international contemporary art exhibition', 'the largest contemporary art exhibition this country has ever seen', 'a new kind of exhibition', and even 'a dialogue between art, people and place'.

Most of these descriptions, all of which are taken from the official literature or from curatorial statements, seem to me to be in the realm of Alice in Wonderland, where words mean whatever the Red Queen wants them to mean, at any given time. The variousness of the descriptions, as well the scale of the project - roughly fifty artists, forty projects, and thirty sites (though the figures vary according to which piece of official literature you read) - indicate the nature of the problem : the 'exhibition' is 'all things to all men'; a mismash of different art practices, straddling disparate geographical areas, and so diffuse as to be almost impossible to write about with any degree of coherence.

As I journeyed around the world of artranspennine98, it became clear that the 'exhibition' had received, and was still receiving, a bad press (I asked officially for copies of reviews and articles so that I could report back accurately on this matter, but they never arrived. Art Review's 'talentless trash' is fairly representative of the coverage that I have seen). In practice, after a week's intensive travelling, viewing, and discussion, I realised that the 'exhibition' organisers were like Sisyphus, eternally rolling their enormous stone to the top of a mountain, only to have it promptly roll back down again. In place of ideological or artistic coherence, they supplied a rhetorical coherence which enmeshed the visible manifestations - the artworks - in a fantasy created by the curators.

For the viewer, Sisyphus also came to mind. On one particular day, with the benefit of a coach and driver from the Henry Moore Foundation, it took seven hours to cover four projects. The driver remarked on the inadequacy of the signage. The rest of us remarked on how much it would cost an individual, in terms of time, money, travelling expenses, B & B accomodation and sustenance, to see even a small percentage of the work.

We played a game while travelling around : spot the signage. We usually didn't. I'm told there are four signage elements to the Ruckheim for example. We spent an hour travelling around the area which leads to its Outwood Colliery site (which tells you something about the travel information provided in the guides). We found one sign : at the entrance to the colliery. Signage, as in information boards, was made to a uniform size and was frequently intrusive, and too large. Various artists complained that it was often inaccurate as well, and had to be sent back. (e.g. River Medlock Bridge project, Oxford Road, Manchester. When I saw this artwork, only a month before the exhibition closed, there was still no signage). According to the press office, everything was done in consultation with the artist. According to the artists I talked to, there was little consultation.

So who is the 'exhibition' for? Very few people will do what I did, which is to spend an intensive week travelling around the various sites - and I had the benefit of two organised coach tours, plus Geoff Molyneux, an artist friend, familiar with the region, who drove me around and helped me make contact with artists and organisations. If the point is that tourists would discover the region through the art, then all I can say is that few tourists, other than those who would already have been there, would ever discover that these events were happening. The only places where I ever found information about artstranpennine98 were galleries or museums. Why not produce leaflets for all tourist offices in which all the sites are listed?

The exhibition guide is not helpful in terms of guiding one around the diverse nature of the sites. Maps for out-of-city sites would have been sensible.

The 'information hubs' are mainly in art galleries or institutes. Therefore the only likely people to see the work are people who go to art galleries. They aren't especially useful anyway. The Tate in Liverpool for example, did not have information on the 3 Month Gallery and Benefit Agencies' artworks. It took us three days to find one leaflet in Liverpool.

If the work was for the people in the area, then the concept has clearly failed, to judge by local reactions. Even people in non-art establishments like the restaurant Mash & Air in Manchester knew next to nothing about the project. At one point we were directed to another exhibition in the building. In the Museum of Science and Industry, the staff couldn't even direct us to where the exhibition was taking place. The Gladstone Hotel in Liverpool where Tea had a video project, had the signage behind a potted plant and the video switched off (though the staff were very accomodating when help was requested). Unless you had unlimited time and an unlimited budget, this overall project stays firmly in the realm of an exhibition-in-the-mind. As a C.D. Rom linked to a virtual reality console, it might have worked. And if the point was that you were meant to dip in and out of the project, then how can you claim an 'overall coherence' for it?

This was supposed to be an 'exhibition' about getting new audiences, about establishing a dialogue with a public which is traditionally sceptical about contemporary art. In the broadest sense, it was, in theory, about educating the public. In galleries such as the Tate, schoolkids and art students are regularly taken around the work. What is one to make of the statements appended to the maquette for Chiezo's Super Lamb Banana which claim that this work is 'new and shocking', not to mention 'a valuable artistic asset to Liverpool'. This is language borrowed from the world of advertising. It has nothing to do with art. It does not tell the truth in any shape or form. New? Shocking? An artistic asset? Do the writers of this kind of garbage wish to distort educational development? Are they simply cynical? Do the curators believe in this kind of dishonesty? The work, better suited to a kid's theme park, is pure kitsch. No one that I talked to, whether artist, administrator, curator or member of the public had a good word to say for it. More importantly, the written context within which this work was placed, signally failed to argue its case.

In the case of the Kabokov, where guides took visitors around, the sum total of their briefing, according to the guides I talked to, was to 'give your own reactions to one of the 'rooms' in the work'. So much for any educational import...

The Ideology

There is no such thing as the transpennine region. The hills cut the region in two. People do not see themselves as part of a 'transpennine' culture or identity, and this is reflected historically in terms of literature, and travel-writing. As far as I know no sociologist, anthropologist or historical geographer has made a case for the transpennine region. Certainly, the curators carefully avoid any attempt to make a substantive case for the 'region'. It's a fiction, in the same way that Trollope or Hardy created regional fictions. According to the curators, this 'exhibition' will allow an 'awakening of identity' and establish the 'region' as 'a place undivided by history'. But how can you reveal an identity if there isn't one there in the first place? How can you remove the continuing legacies of history, and tradition, not to mention geography, and so be 'undivided by history'.This is unreal, irrelevant, and deeply insensitive to regional realities. It's the stuff of Fantasy Island.

According to the curators, projects 'should be rooted in some aspect of [the artstranpennine] region'. If we ignore the lunacy of revealing a non-existing region for a moment, and generously assume that what they mean is that any given artist must reveal an aspect of the immediate area within which he or she is working, then the blunt response has to be, that the majority of the 'works' in this 'exhibition' signally failed to do so. The Kabakov has nothing to do with Manchester, other than the fact that the artists wanted to have an exhibition in Manchester. The Ruckheim conspicuously ignores the fact that the site was a colliery.

According to Robert Hopper, Ruckheim was told that the original workings, including the natural wildnerness already there, would be left intact. The response to this might be as follows : 1) Was the site levelled and replanted without anyone being aware of it? 2) The essential Ruckheim elements bear considerable relation to pre-existing Ruckheims but no obvious relationship to a colliery. 3. Other critical comment suggests that I am not alone in this view.

If you want to see a brutally clear demonstration of gallery art versus social, political and cultural context, then look at Mark Dion's tasteless S.O.S. 1998 [shades of the Titanic movie?] in which a half-submerged boat [inaccurately described as a ship] with accompanying flotsam, is placed on the concrete gallery floor. Unfortunately for Dion, the view out of the gallery window into Albert Dock is much more interesting and relevant to social, politcal and cultural considerations than the giganticism and victorian-style spectacle of his artwork. Work like this doesn't engage with anything. It mimics, pumps up elements like a balloon, and like the trailer for Godzilla it informs us that SIZE MATTERS. It doesn't. The unfolding revelation of region may exist in the mind of the curators, but it certainly doesn't exist in the practice of most of their chosen artists.

Many of the works in this 'exhibition' pre-existed their showing in artranspennine. The Kabakov for example was developed by Artangel and first shown at the Roundhouse in London. Now I am aware that Kabokov was interested in showing in Manchester several years ago and Robert Hopper told me that Artranspennine were involved in developing the exhibition, but theKabokov catalogue makes no reference to them in the credits. Furthermore, exactly how is Kabokov's work 'rooted in aspects' of the Transpennine region?

According to the ideology, this 'exhibition ...is an alternative to the closed circuit of the artworld' yet in practice most of the exhibits are in art galleries and museums. In many of these places one is charged a fee to see the exhibition (in the Tate for example, and in the Science and Technology museum). If the exhibition is supposed to 'go beyond the commodification of art', and to help circumvent the presentation in museums worldwide of a relatively few artists, how come a large number of works in this 'exhibition' are for sale? And how come that the most promoted elements are precisely the usual signature-artist suspects?

It seemed to me that if you were already rich and/or famous, you acquired attention. The reverse was not necessarily so. For example, if the curators were seriously interested in working with indigeneous artists, or with communites, or even in steering the public into odd and interesting non-art areas where they might see interesting or unsual art practices, then how come Crystal State, an imaginative and intriguing project in which fifteen artists worked in 12 Benefit Offices, seems to have been so underfunded and so poorly publicised? The individual artists were paid only 180 pounds each (fee and materials). [The gallery and its two curators were given a total of 9000 - which was more than their annual gallery budget for a year. Their official fees were 3500 each. But out of that they had to fund the other others, make the video, organise the exhibition etc. On paper, for lottery funding, 2 'artists' get 3500 each. In practice, 12 artists get paid 180 pounds each, including their costs. You can call this 'finessing', 'being economical with the truth' or at the very least unpleasant manipulation of the truth.] Of course the 9000 allowed the gallery to get work done which otherwise would not have been done. Businessmen put each other in these kind of situations. It would seem that the arts are to be run in this fashion too. By comparison the Ruckheim, according to the local paper the Evening News, cost 400,000. Again I asked officially for details of what various elements had cost, but was told that these details were not available yet. Did no one have budgets?

The record of the exhibition in the 3 Month Gallery consisted of a series of photographs so small that even with the aid of a magnifying lens you couldn't figure out what was happening in many of them. The video, which featured artists talking about their work, only dealt with roughly half of the artists. None of their names are listed in the exhibition guide though the curators of the gallery are. When I asked the 3 Month Gallery curators why this was so, the response was that artranspennine had the names of all of the artists but chose to print only theirs. I wonder why..? When I finally found Crystal State's small brochure, the only information consisted of addresses and an outline map of the region - but they had had to print that themselves! According to one of the artists involved, Kate Wise, the Benefits Agency refused to co-operate in any way.

This is marginalisation. This is a project which is there for the accountancy books : we used fifteen local artists, didn't we?

You will have noticed by now that I keep putting the word 'exhibition' in inverted commas. This is because it's a concept rather than an exhibition. Perhaps it could be considered as a wide range of mini exhibitions, some of which function in normal exhibition terms - as with the top floor of the Tate in Liverpool - and seem independent of the surrounding brouhaha; some of which are local manifestations of specific kinds of art practice, as with TEA or the 3 Month Gallery artists; some of which are opportunistic smash-and-grab raids, as with the Ruckheim (it being the Irwell Sculpture Trail that approached artstranpennine, though the exhibition guide implies the reverse) - I could go on, but you get the picture.

I don't wish to downplay the huge practical, financial and administrative efforts that went into the attempted realisation of this conceptual curation, but I think it is legitimate to question the very bases of the project. The Liverpool Tate is on one side of the Pennines, the Henry Moore Institute on the other. So far as I can see, that is the only major 'artranspennine' connection in the concept.

We are told that 'if art is to have a collective meaning in a period of social and ideological fragmentation, the art must connect closely with place and with people', yet this concept conspicuously fails to do either. In an astonishing feat of linguistic casuistry we are informed that the concept is a 'true manifestation of public art', then told that there is no 'separate species or genre of art called 'public' ', and then told that the curators wish to bring public art practice 'closer to the word of galleries and museums' though the medium of 'a fully curated exhibition'. If public art doesn't exist, why label the concept as a 'true manifestation' of it? What is a fully curated exhibition? Whatever it is, it isn't this exhibition. Why should public art be brought closer to the world of galleries and museums? The problem with much of it is that it never left these worlds!

The only sense in which this concept is an 'exhibition' resides in the fact that most of the work shown is gallery art, complete with price tag, incremental manipulation of reputations [association with major institutions and large-scale finance equals rise in prestige and price of work], and studied aversion to the general public. The most worrying aspect of this kind of huge 'baggy monster' art concept is the rhetoric which is used to sell it. There is a world of artspeak out there (from artranspennine to the Tate to IMMA) in which the rhetoric is increasingly at odds with that which it purports to explain and promote. It's a world of spin-doctoring, a world in which serious argument is no longer addressed, and where any argument that does not toe the status quo is answered by way of evasion, disinformation, or marginalisation of the messenger.

Robert Hopper's response to my rather polite comments on what I had seen was a suave commentary of 'facts', followed by him sending me two Romanians who had a 'more positive' response to what they had seen. That's a spin doctor's approach. The publicity machine's approach was evasive (though I would hate to have their job). At one point I asked about the already-mentioned TEA project which connected four hotels in the region. A video was set up in each hotel lobby. I had suggested to the artists that it might have been logical to alert those passing through the hotel to the existence of the artwork, using for example, leaflets placed alongside other hotel literature. They agreed. They had previously asked to do this, but artstranspennine refused to allow them to do it! When I asked artstranpennine why this was so, the response was that every project would then have needed a leaflet. This is patent nonsense. I suggested that by not allowing the leaflet, the organisation was actively interfering in the creation of the artwork. No response.

Another aspect. I went to two artists' studio 'collectives' in Manchester. Neither had received any word about the application process for artranspennine. Robert Hopper said that it would have been too costly to contact every such studio before they had received Lottery funding, and besides they wouldn't know where all such studios were [I am not joking]. He also pointed out that it was advertised in the Artists Newsletter and a number of major newspapers, so artists had no excuse for not knowing about it. My response to that, is that Mr Hopper would seem to know very little about the ways that artists actually work [other that signature artists : did they apply to an ad?]. If you want to get a broadly-based artist's response, then you contact artists' organisations in any given region, and if organisations like the Tate or the Henry Moore Institute aren't capable of doing that, then there is something seriously wrong with their administrative support system. Of course, if you aren't really interested in artists from the 'regions'.......

'Making an art exhibition is not simply a matter of practicality, but of necessity and morality'. I entirely agree. But where is the necessity for this 'exhibition' ? Why have the practicalities been largely ignored? And what is the morality of 400,000 for a Ruckheim project and 180 pounds an artist for the Benefit offices project?

Each project, I gather, had a project manager. In the case of Tea, they went through three project managers, the last of whom they only talked to once, and that at their request. When asked if they had regular meetings with the curators, the response was that they had had two discussions, both of them about funding. The 3 Month Gallery had two discussions with curators, primarily about funding before being passed on to administrators.

Is this what is meant by 'a fully curated exhibition'?

Brian McAvera is a playwright, curator and art critic.

In researching this article, he spent 6 full days travelling around the majority of the artstrannpenine projects, and spoke to over seventy artists, curators, administrators, gallery owners, and members of the public.

2008-02-03T04:14:00.000-08:00

'Adventures in the Dark Peak'

On the weekend of the summer solstice, James Brady will be camping and walking in the Peak District. He is an environmental artist who enjoys the peace and quiet - a certain solace and wisdom that Dark Peak provides. The spirit of this landscape dwells deeply in his childhood memories and he believes that this place plays a powerful role in his identity.

The source of James’ inspiration and his impulse to create is comfortingly old-fashioned. Driven and excited by thoughts of the possible encounters he could have with The Great Outdoors, he prefers not to have any particular plan really. At heart he’s a bit of a Romantic – an explorer with a fascination for clouds, amongst other ephemeral things.

Equipped with his trusty mini DV camera, over the weekend James will fabricate esoteric picturesque views from high land - points on the OS map. During these potentially sublime encounters he also intends to make some small site-specific (interventions) earthworks from organic materials he finds en route. Maybe someone will find them a few days later? Or, maybe not…

Below are extracts from James' journal, including images from his adventure on the weekend of the summer solstice images of the work he made.

Notes from the Dark Peak…

Friday 20^th June

Route: (Eastern periphery of Kinder Scout) Ollerbrook Clough - Ringing Roger - Druid’s Stone - Crookstone Knoll - Blackden Edge - Nether Tor - Grinds Brook

Mid-afternoon. Bright sunshine pierced the fulsome clouds passing over above the land. As I walked across the Kinder plateaux I gazed eastwards. My eyes traced the graceful line of the ridge in the near distance. This ridge ends at the summit of Win Hill. For a few minutes I stood and admired the view across the valley. I recalled the words of Ebenezer Elliott, the Sheffield poet, who in 1876 dramatised the great Win Hill:

King of the Peak! Win Hill!

thou, throned and

crown’d,

That reign’st o’er many a

stream and many a vale!

Star-loved, and meteor-sought,

and tempest-found!

Proud centre of a mountain-circle,

hail!

Saturday 21^st June

Route: (Vale of Edale horseshoe) Harden Clough - Mam Tor - Rushup Edge - Brown Knoll - Swine’s Back - Wool Packs - Crowden Brook - Upper Booth - Barber Booth

A blanket of impenetrable whiteness hung low over the Vale of Edale. High land had vanished from view. The air, wet and dense, was intermittently broken by sudden heavy showers throughout the day. I walked for 12km, 6 hours.

Thick, moist mist made the moor an eerie place to be. With no rest I walked for hours, enveloped inside a white cloud. My boots felt heavy in the sticky black peat which greeted my every step. Sensing that I was near the summit of Brown Knoll, I stopped. Looking around me, in all directions the earth appeared the same, continuous. Apart from the heather quivering in the slight breeze, the moor was still and almost featureless. The identical horizon surrounding me was uncomfortably near. Indistinct and faintly distant sounds occasionally broke the white stillness I stood inside. My body was noisy and it felt almost alien in this strangely peaceful place. In body I was utterly alone, however in spirit I was in company…

leacha-alter stone

seam/route/trace (quartz)

[sheep wool & gritstone]

James Brady's website: http://www.gaia-project.wetpaint.com

2008-02-02T04:04:00.000-08:00

Mike Ferguson will make a by-pass for a section of stream located on the transpennine route; illustration above.

The piece will be documented using photography and will be constructed with objects found on-site (e.g. branches, stones, broken fencing etc). The piece mirrors Ferguson’s work in an exhibition in Leeds entitled Separations, opening on the 30th May, below is his proposal for Separations giving an insight into the similarities.

Further work can be seen at http://www.mikefergie.co.uk

Mike Ferguson’s Separations Proposal

‘I propose to make a site-specific installation that echoes the fact that the building’s roof has several leaks. I would use a pump and piping system to create an authentic looking leak, dropping from the ceiling. This drip would land onto objects such as car bumpers, old drainpipes and other objects that would be sourced from the wasteland opposite to the venue on Bath Road. The drip would be carefully controlled so that each object would re-direct the flow of the water, creating a journey, in, around and through the fabric of the space.’

2008-02-01T03:57:00.000-08:00

Rebecca McKnight will be creating photographic and cine film works in different locations along the Trans Pennine Route. The works will explore the idea of 'the unknown' and will involve a little boy, the woods and the dark, rock stars and dirt tracks.

http://www.rebecca-mcknight.co.uk

2008-01-30T04:49:00.000-08:00

It could be anywhere.

I live in a city. I will use it as an excuse to visit the sea. I will use it as a reason to go to the coast.

I will take a train to Southport collecting narratives.

The collected narratives will be documented and imaged.

The images will be displayed in a landlocked mill in Manchester.

I will take a train to Hornsea collecting narratives.

The collected narratives will be documented and imaged.

The images will be displayed in a landlocked mill in Manchester

Dip my toe in two seas, a gesture…a ritual. There’s not enough water here, but there’s enough rain.

I collect and take narrations to the coast, image them and bring them back to the city.

I’m just rearranging things.

The Last Loft, provisional open days (11-4pm):

Saturdays 12^th,19^th, 26^th July ‘08

For details and to arrange alternative visiting times please contact:

mail@becgarland.com

www.becgarland.com

2008-01-29T08:24:00.000-08:00

Laurence Lane performed 'The Ballad of Ben' (The Song of The Shovel) at the junction of Victoria Road and Whalley Grove in Whalley Range, Manchester on Sunday July 6th.'The Ballad of Ben' is a tale written in reference to mythologising songs such as Stagerlee and Frankie and Johnny. Unlike these classic songs there is no murder, this is the celebration of a regular life and all it's regular complications. Laurence accompanied himself on a hand crafted, three stringed instrument made from a workman's shovel.

2008-01-29T08:05:00.000-08:00

The Brass Necked Interloper is an exhibition of three London based artists exhibiting in Bradford for the first time the show is curated by James Alderson.

For more information follow this link

2008-01-28T08:00:00.000-08:00

Killing Castlefield

The Transpennine Railway built in the 1860’s was the last element in the economic and industrial infrastructure that gave the region its world importance in the 19th Century. The Castlefield basin in Manchester connected the Leeds - Liverpool canal to this new ‘superhighway’, making the region one of the most densely populated and urbanised places in the world.

EP Niblock will be participating in artranspennine08 with ‘Killing Castlefield’*, an examination of this granddaddy of urban renaissance, success story of the nineties and triumphantly designated ‘Britain’s first Urban Heritage Park’, exploring narratives of the city past and present and interrogating accepted orthodoxies surrounding dominant models of urban renewal. Now once again faced with neglect, dereliction and an uncertain future as developers close in and for sale signs proliferate, the shortcomings of other similarly hailed flagship developments is put under the microscope, symptomatic of prevailing policies of urban regeneration and the increasing ‘branding’ of our cities, effectively taking the ‘cityscape’ out of the public sphere and into a privatised realm.

Euphemia Pubert Niblock, adventurer, archaeologist, intrepid explorer and flaneuse is an archetypal antiquarian and bluestocking epitomising the spirit of the Edwardian age. EP Niblock is an ongoing research project, a call to arms for the forgotten contribution of the dilettante, the amateur, the polymath, a vehicle with which to articulate a response to the contemporaneous through an interdisciplinary lens, creating an ongoing ‘artwork’ and ‘archaeology of us’, influenced by Shank’s notion of the archaeological imagination and Irit Rogoff’s ‘curious’ eye. An intersection on the ven diagram of theoretical archaeology and visual culture studies, the construction of Miss Niblock provides a promising methodology with which to re-examine issues and current debates on location, memory, public space, citizenship and social relationships.

Biographical note: As the 20th century dawned, Niblock’s daring exploits, expeditions across the territories of the ancient near east, Ottoman and Byzantine empires, involvement in the notorious great game and fearless personality were the talk of society: in her day as celebrated as contemporaries Gertrude Bell and Freya Stark, her notorious rivalry with Agatha Christie over the excavations at Mesopotamia was ultimately her downfall. Upon her return to England after the Great War she bequeathed much of her library, excavation findings and site reports to the Owens university museum at Manchester and dedicated herself to cataloguing and researching her vast collection. In later years something of a recluse, her gradual disappearance barely raised an eyebrow and she soon became forgotten, a mere footnote in history. But that wasn’t to be the end of this redoubtable spinster.

Upon stumbling out of the bowels of the new Manchester Museum extension in 2003 where she had been accidentally incarcerated since its 1920’s refurbishments and into the brand new 21st century, Niblock has begun making something of a name for herself once more, taking up residency with an unlikely assortment of artists, curators and writers in Brunswick off the Oxford Rd corridor, an unlikely survivor and relic constantly bewildered by her unexpected navigations into the contemporary cultural landscape. The development of her journal ‘Diary of a Bluestocking’ into an ongoing blog and her engagement with new media such as her facebook profile have provided her with a whole new audience and raison d’etre, focusing her anachronistic gaze on the city, the built environment, contemporary art practices and the dialogues made possible by examining various experimentations and collaborations across disciplines.

EP Niblock’s perambulations across the city can be read at http://diaryofabluestocking.blogspot.com/

*taken from an article by Phil Griffin in ‘Manchester Confidential’ on the dereliction of a favourite and vital bit of Manchester - http://www.manchesterconfidential.co.uk/index.asp?Sessionx=IpqiNwImNwErJlP6IHqjNwB6IA

2008-01-27T07:44:00.000-08:00

(to see the video in the context of Google Map click here)

'First Person Rambler'

http://www.youtube.com/conferencereport

2008-01-25T03:58:00.000-08:00

One of A.D.Jacobson's Icebergs placed outside The International3 at the launch of Artranspennineo8.

"One if by land, two if by sea." or "The icebergs are melting, the icebergs are melting."'

A. D. Jacobson will be leaving icebergs around Manchester and watching them melt.

http://www.adjacobson.wordpress.com

2008-01-24T07:39:00.000-08:00

Becky Bowley – Transmerge

www.beckybowley.com

http://www.julianhughesphotography.blogspot.com/

2008-01-24T03:22:00.000-08:00

'Trans-Informer, (Visualising all the works of the first Artranspennine)' Throughout the duration of Artranspennine08 Mike Chavez-Dawson will be trekking to various peaks on the Pennines seeking various man-made objects, he will stand or sit in the location and visualise an artwork from the first Artranspennine and leave a museum plaque at the location at the end of each performance, this will be digitally documented, so they can be uploaded with a small piece of supportive text.

2008-01-23T05:25:00.000-08:00

Title: ‘Exemplar’ [detail of work in progress]

Medium: Wax on paper

There is a residue of intense labour that lingers over the Pennines. A loss in transmission of power. I don’t know how to weave, spin, or dye.

Exemplar – An ideal model marking part three of ‘Wide Sargasso Sea’ by Jean Rhys, sereptiously placed in copies owned by public libraries along the trans Pennine route between Leeds and Manchester during July.

Liadin Cooke ‘08

2008-01-22T05:03:00.000-08:00

Objects for a Studio

Jessica Longmore will be undertaking a series of 1 day residencies in artist studios across Manchester and the surrounding area. Each residency will culminate in a single photograph to document the work created. The work may vary considerably depending on the relationship she has with the artist, whose studio she will occupy and the nature of the space in which they choose to work.

The idea for the project came out of a series of works that Longmore has recently been working on entitled Objects for a Shared Studio which have been created in the studio in Hope Mill which she shares with Sarah Sanders.

She will open her studio to the public in June to present work from this project. More details to follow.

Jessica would like to thank the following Artists for taking part in
the project,

Pavel Buchler, Craig Bullock, Nina Chua, Julie Del'Hopital, Bec
Garland, Hilary Jack, G. Leddington, Andrew Lim and the 100th Monkey
Collective, Carolyn Curtis Magri, Daksha Patel, Ian Rawlinson, Joe
Richardson and the UHC Collective, Sarah Sanders and Mandy Tolley.

Jessica will be opening her own studio on Friday 8th August 6-8pm to
present the results of the project. If you would like to attend this
event please email her on contact@jessicalongmore.com for further
information.

www.jessicalongmore.com

2008-01-21T04:50:00.000-08:00

2008-01-20T02:08:00.000-08:00

Stuart Edmundson is going to make a series of new proposals to be printed in poster form for artranspennine 08 each poster will invite the viewer to create a piece of work through following the instructions. The posters will be placed in each city along the M62 Liverpool to Hull. There will be a number of limited edition posters of each proposal left in institutions of the cities used. To collect them all you must travel the Transpennine way Liverpool to Hull or vice versa.
Stuarts' posters have begun to appear around Manchester and are available free to collect at Castlefield Gallery, Hewitt St, Knott MIll, Manchester from the 26th June.
www.castlefieldgallery.co.uk

2008-01-19T02:05:00.000-08:00

I have always collected fragments of stuff from everyday situations (all kinds kind of stuff - objects or pictures or sounds or words) so I can put them back together again in a new order to tell a new story. Thinking about what I might make for Artranspennine08 while crossing America by train and hearing fragmentary stories from my fellow passengers, I decided to use another coast-to-coast train journey, albeit the less dramatic one from Hull to Liverpool, crossing the Pennines between Leeds and Manchester. Lots of people use other people’s lives in their newspapers. The free Metro paper that many of them pick up at their local station seemed like a good place to make some transpennine art. And the motion of the train seemed, at least in part, to be a good thing to make it with.

So, on Tuesday 15 July, I made a round trip using Transpennine Express trains from Leeds to Hull to Manchester to Liverpool and back to Leeds again. At each stop on the way I bought that day’s local newspaper, so I came back with the Metro, the Hull Daily Mail, the Manchester Evening News, the Liverpool Echo and the Yorkshire Evening Post.

Transpennine Anastasi Drawing 2

Throughout the six hours or so of my journey on the train I also made three drawings. To do this I restaged a method first used by William Anastasi in the 70’s in his ‘Subway Drawings’ while travelling across New York on regular trips to play chess with John Cage. These ‘automatic’ drawings are a physical trace of my movement in a train seat travelling the transpennine corridor from coast to coast and back again.

I selected some stories from the local papers I had collected and extracted a few words and phrases from them. Using a combination of randomising computer software and arbitrary decision-making of my own, this raw material was reconstructed into a poem. To return the work to its starting point in an attempt to catch the momentary attention of transpennine commuters reading their Metro newspaper, the poem and one of the drawings was inserted (by purchasing advertising space) in the Metro on Wednesday 13 August.

Transpennine Anastasi Drawing 1

2008-01-18T01:56:00.000-08:00

For Artranspennine 2008 Louise Adkins will present the film of a live striptease dance performance entitled ‘The Windmills Of Your Mind’. This will be screened in a converted Victorian wearhouse at the junction of Portland and Princess Street in the centre of Manchester. It is an area of fast food takeaways, late nightclubs, karaoke and down at heel hotel rooms. In this transient urban landscape Adkins’ film uses surveillance and night vision technologies to explore the role of the spectator when watching an erotic performance.

'Windmills of your mind' was screened on Friday 20th June at 6.30 at Flat 15, 103a Portland House, Portland Street in Manchester. It was a fabulous venue for the first screening of Louise's new work, an image of which you can see above.

2008-01-17T05:34:00.000-08:00

Tired Light

Images, televised and transmitted constantly escape orbit and continue to move through space.

Taking the form of a televisual instillation somewhere in Manchester, Tired Light will act as a hypothetical convergence point for these signals. A bubble where the conditions are such that images intermittently break through the static; interrupting and inflecting each other at random.

The installation will take archival footage that at one time or another has been broadcast and treat it in a similar manner to sound and light as found in the Doppler Effect and Redshift phenomenon; where by sound and light are shifted in pitch and hue respectively according to distance and time traveled.

In dealing directly with historical information that has been ‘travelling’ for a relative period of time, Tired Light is concerned with the potential that the ever increasing distance between the present and an event in the past could have a similar effect on the information surrounding that event. The continual movement into pastness could stretch and shift the information into a different version of itself.

Coherent images shifted into abstraction; historical fact shifted into fiction.

2008-01-16T07:45:00.000-08:00

'Up The Hill Backwards'

David Price will be making a very discreet 'land art' piece, directly referencing Richard Long. “I will probably just move some stones, or walk in a line through the grass, so it wouldn't really be intrusive on the place I did it (a hill somewhere)”.

More details will follow soon.

2008-01-14T07:30:00.000-08:00

The Artranspennine98 Reading Room

Curator: Lewis Biggs

Currently installed at Apartment - view by appointment

2008-01-13T05:35:00.001-08:00

http://vistawiki.wikispaces.com/

Sundays: 29th June 11-4pm, 6th July 11-4pm and 13th July 11-4pm.

Vista is a Camera Obscura in the form of a mobile tent. Over 3 Sundays in June and July 2008, the tent will be pitched in 3 different rural locations across the Pennine Way. The selected locations are all well marked viewpoints, with good views over the surrounding urban landscape.

The Vista Camera Obscura has been created in a tent in order to be familiar with the landscape in which is to be installed. Traditionally camera obscura's were fun and magical ways of covertly viewing our urban environment, they were permanently located on high points in cities, with some still existing, such as the Clifton Observatory in Bristol. As we have become the most surveilled nation in the world within our cities, this project aims to reverse the roles, and make the watched the watcher, but also reverse the negativity associated with watching, and re-introduce an element of magic.

The lack of technology required for a camera obscura to create stunning imagery is minimal. The projection produced by a camera obscura is entirely natural, and is based on an optical law of nature. Camera obscura's work in the same way as pinhole camera's, they utilise pinhole apertures (small holes) to let light in, which is then reflected onto a white surface. The image appears upside down, as the light waves cross over through the small pinhole aperture, reversing the image.

The project is open to all members of the public and welcomes anyone who wants to experience the project first hand. Visitors will be able to enter the tent, and sit or lie down in the darkened space and observe the view projected onto the inside of the tent through the pinhole.

The images and comments posted to this Wiki aim to open out the project to those who may not be able to get to the locations, or are just interested.

Please post your images and comments of the piece, perhaps some information about where you were walking the day you came to see the project, and/or how you came across it. Please don't post general images to the Wiki, just ones you have taken of the artwork itself.

The 3 locations are mapped on the Wiki with Google Maps, and the GPS coordinates provided.

Enjoy.

Karen Gaskill

2008-01-13T05:35:00.000-08:00

Karen Gaskill plans to install a blacked out tent at a viewpoint somewhere on the transpennine way (location to be confirmed). The tent will be a camera obscura, where passers by can lie down inside and watch the view.

I will run a blog site and encourage people to post images, film
clips etc that they have taken on the site.

More details will follow soon.

2008-01-12T02:42:00.000-08:00

Hungarian based artist Beata Veszely is installing a flag at a location along the transpennine route the flag was previously used for a performance, which involved the artist sitting on a horse in front of a gallery in

Hungary

. The flag depicts an old image of a deer with a horse archer on its back. The idea is to “send a little bit of

Hungary

England

, a Hun nomadic motive without a horse to the Celts”

2008-01-11T10:06:00.000-08:00

53*43'14.42"N 2*08'43.88"W - Flower Scar

‘Flower Scar’ is a ‘stone circle’ placed around the contour line of the summit of Flower Scar Hill, Todmorden Moor. The circle is made up of 200 paddle stones and slate shards inscribed with the common names and Latin names of all of the plant species found in this area.

The site for this artwork was chosen from an Ordnance Survey map, chosen because of the unusual name ‘Flower Scar’. ‘Scar’ conjures associations of an ugly mark that will remain forever and contrasts with ‘Flower’ – a thing of beauty and impermanence.

A Wildlife Survey of Todmorden Moor, undertaken by Charles Flynn in 2005, identifies 33 species of plants including the appropriately named ‘Self-Heal’, alongside Velvet-Bent, Soft-Rush, and Purple Moor Grass. The names of all 33 species found here have been recorded on the stones in permanent white ink. The placed stones are a subtle intervention into the landscape that anyone walking on the hill may find. They may make the link between the inscription and the surroundings and may pick up a stone to keep.

The hill summit is accessed from Flower Scar Road which cuts round the side of Flower Scar Hill before rejoining the main road. The road is an ancient highway that has been used as an East West route across the Pennines for over 2000 years. At its summit the hill reaches 435 meters and is a designated Urban Common.

The circle was created on Sunday June 15th 2008 and the artist will visit the site sporadically to see how long it remains.

2008-01-10T09:54:00.000-08:00

'Wicker Man'

Duncan Higgins and Chloë Brown will produce 50 drawings and a limited edition artist’s book that records 50 cinemas sited in various locations in and around Sheffield during May 2008. Each cinema will be constructed using a single screen and will have a viewing time of 60 minutes.

'Cinema for oncoming train Bambi'
Chloë and Duncan will be exhibiting their drawings in 50 cinemas at the Show room Cinema Sheffield. All are welcome to join them to celebrate the opening of this exhibition on Sunday July 13th at 7pm in the foyer and bar.

2008-01-09T09:25:00.000-08:00

The ‘evolution’ of the whale through the cow

“Penem intrantem feminam mammis lactantem”

My art practice is not meant to elude answers, the work is restless. In this particular project, the starting point of the work comes from drawing to photocopy with the obsession of two animals, the cow and the whale; it is the process of my thoughts with these two magnificent mammals

http://www.juliedelhopital.blogspot.com

2008-01-08T09:20:00.000-08:00

HONK (dates and venues tbc)

Citroën Relay 1100 HDi 2.0l diesel SWB 2004 5 door
White body work, panel body
Blue carpeted interior
2 front passenger seats, 2 front facing back passenger seats
Remote central locking, electric windows
5 speed manual gearbox
90,000 miles on the clock
Ideal for touring art exhibitions

http://www.contentsmayvary.org/

2008-01-07T09:13:00.000-08:00

Temporary Art Show 

(Alice Bradshaw of Contents May Vary)

Bates Mill 2nd Floor Exhibition Space
Queens Street South, Huddersfield, HD1 3DX
(off Queensgate / A62, near The University of Huddersfield)

Preview: Friday 16th May 2008, 5-9pm FREE BEER
Saturday 17th May 10am – 5pm & Sunday 18th May 11am – 4pm

Participating artists links are:

Kevin & Georgia Boniface

Alice Bradshaw
Milk, Two Sugars

Batesmill

2008-01-07T07:47:00.000-08:00

Würstungritz National Historic Trail: Source of the Mersey

Cartwright & Jordan will be embarking on a journey to the source of the River Mersey. Their voyage will take them to the confluence of the Goyt & Tame rivers, in Stockport, where they will document and signpost the beginning of this historic, mighty waterway. Together they will chart its geographic, ecological and cultural significance, from principal tributaries to brackish headwaters.

This marks the beginning of the Würstungritz National Historic Trail; a guide to sites of sporadic interest across the Transpennine region.

www.nickjordan.info

2008-01-06T07:45:00.000-08:00

Tenneson and Dale will translate voting patterns across the transpennine region into a sculpture, titled 'Poll to Poll'. We would like to thank the citizens of the following sites for their assistance: Altrincham, Barnsley, Chesterfield, Doncaster, Leeds, Liverpool, Manchester, Rotherham, Sale, Selby, Sheffield, Southport, Stockport, Wakefield, Warrington, Wythenshawe and York.

2008-01-05T07:44:00.000-08:00

In Memoriam

Between 11^th November 1995 and 3^rd February 1996 he was employed as an invigilator for the British Art Show 4.

On display were three artworks, 10ms-1 and Hysterical by Douglas Gordon and Light Switch by Ceal Floyer.

He and two other invigilators worked a shift pattern.

Each worked a morning shift, then an afternoon shift the next day and had the day after off.

The gallery was open 7 days a week.

At the start of the day the invigilator working the morning shift would switch the gallery lights on.

They would then switch the two video projectors for Gordon’s work and the slide projector for Floyer’s work on.

They then switched the gallery lights off.

At the end of the day the invigilator working the afternoon shift would switch the gallery lights on.

They would then switch the two video projectors and the slide projector off.

Then they would switch the gallery lights off.

Sometimes the invigilators swapped shifts to accommodate other commitments.

On the 17^th December 1995 he worked an afternoon shift, followed by the morning shift on the 18^th December.

Upon entering the gallery on the 18^th he noticed that the gallery lights had been left on.

On the 8^th February 2007 he realised that after he had turned Light Switch off he must have left, leaving the gallery lights on.

2008-01-04T07:40:00.000-08:00

'Out of the Ground' is a series of art works that can be physically
engaged with by the public.
Scattered along the Artranspennine route, in more rural settings,
around Leeds, the objects invite the viewer, via stenciled text, "to
play on , pass or return". (An address is painted on the work).
Minsky says of this work,
"I wanted to make a small intervention that would tempt people to
touch, move, handle, throw, kick or return the object. Something
surprising to come across if you were out walking in the countryside,
that might engage you in a different activity for a few minutes, and
then is repositioned by the public" "Where it ends up is out of my
control".
The title refers both to the original home of the objects and their
current location.
Jason Minsky is currently artist in residence at Leeds Rugby,
Headingley.

For more information e-mail Jason Minsky at: art@jasonminsky.com

2008-01-03T07:38:00.000-08:00

725, watercolour on A2 paper, 2008.

Sarah Sanders has made a series of drawings using watercolour on A2 paper. This work tries to breakdown the way language is used in relation to the media. Words have been cut out from headlines taken from local newspaper and gently blowing on them to scatter the letters. These interventions are an attempt to transform the consumption of the media into non-determined outcomes.

2008-01-02T07:30:00.000-08:00

St Lukes Art Project and SLAP-DASH publishing opens its doors to Art Transpenine with an exhibition of publications by participants in “have you got a book inside” funded by ACENW, an open studio and a chance to contribute to the Slap-Dash-Your-Trans-Penine fanzine

Further details:

Artists: Alison Kershaw, Rae Story and participants at St Lukes Art Project

Title: SLAP-DASH-YOUR-TRANS-PENINE

At:The St Lukes Art Project Studio / Slap-Dash Publishing

Guidepost Square, Longsight, Manchester. M139EA

Alison Kershaw has been running an open access art studio based in this 1970s church and neighbourhood centre in Longsight, Manchester for over 10 years.

Visit this unusual art space, see the ever-changing installation that is the studio, have a cup of tea with some of the artists and add your own contribution to a fanzine-style artwork entitled Slap-Dash-Your-Trans-Pennine,

Slap-Dash publishing, coordinated by Rae Story is St Lukes Art Project’s own on-line publishing project. We will be exhibiting the 10 books created by individuals who took part in “Have You Got a Book Inside You?” in 2007-8 (funded by ACE NW).

The project will be open on Mondays, Tuesdays and Thursdays 1.30 – 4.00

And at other times by arrangement 07767356302

www.lulu.com/stlukesartproject

www.stlukesartproject.org

2008-01-01T07:28:00.000-08:00

Andrew Bracey will be visiting pubs along the Artranspennine trail over the summer, from Liverpool to Hull, via York and everywhere else in between. He will be surreptitiously placing beer mats back onto tables, which he has painted back in his studio. Each painting uses the existing composition on the beer mat and then expands from this to create a unique painting. So keep your eyes peeled and you may be able to swindle away an original artwork. An artist's book will be produced to record the project after the end of Artranspennine 08.

The next beer mats will be left in Leeds at The Grove on Monday July 7th around lunchtime; you may also find some in Bradford, Hebdon Bridge and Huddersfield on the same day if you're lucky!

www.andrewbracey.com

2007-12-25T05:23:00.000-08:00

Paul Harfleet and Hilary Jack

artranspennine 08

2007-12-11T04:51:00.001-08:00

Artranspennine was launched in 1998 as a large scale cross-regional exhibition with a £3 million budget including artists from a variety of disciplines. “It occupied a specific territory, bounded by Liverpool to the west and Hull to the east and traversed by the M62 motorway. Artranspennine98 aimed to foster a new sense of pride in this territory (diverse as it is, encompassing Yorkshire and Lancashire) through the proposition that it should be considered a region”. In 2003 artists Nick Crowe and Ian Rawlinson decided to re-launch the exhibition ‘brand’ that had been left fallow for the previous five years. They chose to create a similarly ambitious cross regional exhibition but with a fraction of the budget; £553. Five years after that successful second artranspennine Nick Crowe and Ian Rawlinson have passed the baton to a new generation to reinterpret the brand from their own cultural perspective. Paul Harfleet and Hilary Jack of Apartment are taking on artranspennine 08 and are currently finalising their ideas, come back here soon for more information and for any inquiries on how to take part please e-mail the address below:

atp08@hotmail.co.uk

2007-04-22T08:06:00.000-07:00

What is the deadline for submission?

June 12th, 2008! (We have recently extended the submission deadline, though please send any submissions as soon as possible to ensure your inclusion on the blog)

How do I submit a proposal?

Simply select an image that reprersents your work, then send us about 100 words to outline your project, with when and where it is planned to take place. Please e-mail to atp08@hotmail.co.uk

When is artranspennine08?

We will be launched June 13th at International3 with an open day the next day. The exhibition will run until August 15th.

Is their a budget?

No!

Where will the work be?

The work is wherever the artist decides, a home, a shed, a warehouse or in the garden in any location across the transpennine route.

Where is the transpennine route?

The image below shows the transpennine route as described by the Trans Pennine Trail website, though we are happy for this to be interpreted however an artist chooses.

Is there a venue?

We do not have a venue, all the work will be placed in the location the artist selects, though we will be having an opening event on June 13th at International 3 with an open day on the 14th of June. Artists will be able to bring ephemera from their projects, meet fellow exhibitors and socialise and celebrate artranspennine 08.

Where are the toilets?

There are many facilities located across the penine route.

For any other questions and to make sure your work is included on this blog then please e-mail:

atp08@hotmail.co.uk