fwd is a series of talks by artists and curators based in Yorkshire, selected by artists and curators in Yorkshire. During July S1 / projects will host fwd in the back room of the Lescar pub near Hunters Bar in Sheffield.

Bryan Davies & Laura Quarmby invited by Michelle Cotton, S1 curator
Wed 7 Jul, 3 - 5pm

Bryan Davies and Laura Quarmby moved to Leeds last year to launch Artist House, a two-year project hosting the production and exhibition of their current, collaborative work.

Artist House is located in a 19th century industrial area, recently redeveloped as part of Leeds’ new post-industrial economy. The space sits within a complex housing new media business, graphic designers, interior designers, telephone call centres, bars, cafes and restaurants. During their two-year residency they aim to relate their practice to other realms of society such as business, education and popular culture.

Many initiatives and possibilities in life go undeveloped and unimagined because of the reality and pace of the market. Art is perhaps one of the few places that these ‘surplus’ activities and thoughts are tolerated and it is accepted that they can be supported. We want to use this space of possibility to try to imagine things and systems in society otherwise. As well as simply communicating these new ideas through exhibition, we are trying to find a practical and expanded art that can also begin to make those imaginations really function in the city. (Davies & Quarmby 2003)

Earlier this year Davies and Quarmby took the cult American TV series ‘Sex and the City’ as a key cultural reference for the lifestyle choices and values prevalent in the city centre of Leeds. In a reconstructed set of the central character’s apartment they hosted an evening photo shoot and fashion parade for the local community and fans of the series as a practical investigation into the relationship between the TV phenomena and the values of the community that surrounds the gallery. Subsequent lectures analysed the attraction of the series, how it seduces the viewer through visuals and it’s use of celebratory high fashion promoting certain consumer and lifestyle choices that contribute to a buoyant UK economy.

Their current project, Arts & Business, has transformed Artist House into an experimental laboratory looking at the value of creativity with 9 companies and 20 employees.

For fwd the artists will talk about these recent projects and their relationship to their previous practice.

Bryan Davies graduated from Edinburgh College of Art in 1999, a former member of the proto academy and committee member for Collective Gallery solo projects include Alternative Strategies at Cork Municipal Art Gallery, Ireland, Mostyn Open 2000, Wales, and New Work Scotland Program 1, solo show, Collective Gallery, Edinburgh

Laura Quarmby graduated from Edinburgh College of Art in 2000, a former member of the proto academy, she exhibited with protoacademy in the 2002 Gwangju Biennial, Korea, and has had solo exhibitions at The Museum of Modern Art Oxford and New Work Scotland Programme at Collective Gallery, Edinburgh

www.artisthouse.org.uk
www.protoacademy.org

Dan Robinson invited by Bryan Davies & Laura Quarmby
Wed 14 Jul, 3 - 5pm

Dan Robinson’s interdisciplinary practice is concerned with site-specificity, process and dialogue. Individual objects become part of larger projects, spanning diverse media. Spaces and situations are set up to enable unfolding engagements with audiences, participants and collaborators.

Exploring relationships between document, site and fiction, he works with posters, text and sound leading to dialogues with people and places. His work explores the emergence of multiple fictions between elements of practice and its infrastructures, where context and administration become included in these fictions and questions of authorship are problematic.
 
‘These and other ‘problems’ or ambivalences of authorship, are where much of my work starts. So this moment or space, where practice is mediated into formats of spoken and written language has, for me, a fascinating tension that seems to have a momentum of its own… The term ‘site’ is ambiguous. It can be a physical space, a moment, a subject, or any combination of (or space within) these positions. The term ‘site-specific art’ usually refers to work made or exhibited beyond the gallery where a relation to site is perhaps more explicit, more theatrical. Yet signification is always in some sense site-specific. (extract from The Noise of Fiction: Site, Score, Document, a paper by Dan Robinson)

Recent projects include a pamphlet entitled The Parkinson Chimes, commemorating the 50th anniversary of  the Parkinson Tower on the University of Leeds campus. Layering archival history with personal memory, Robinson explores the technical background of the tower, its mechanism and specially composed bell chime sequence to consider its evolving signification over time. The Parkinson Chimes is part of a body of work that can be found within a fictional department established within the institution of Leeds University, The Department of Inbetween. The pamphlet and department website interrupts formal histories, agendas and minutes of the institution with subjective commentary.

Dan Robinson is an Associate Lecturer in Art & Design at Leeds College of Art & Design and Founder of the Centre for International Success.

www.leeds.ac.uk/inbetween/

Lucy Gibson invited by Dan Robinson
Wed 28 Jul 3 -5pm
 
Lucy Gibson has recently relocated to Leeds from Scotland where she studied and exhibited as an artist in Glasgow. Gibson is an artist, curator, writer, Co-Founder and Co-Director  of E m e r g e D, an international, artist led organisation that promotes and enables emerging artists across a range of media with a focus on site responsive, context-led work.

Earlier this year Gibson curated [shift], the first E m e r g e D project for Leeds. [shift] was an attempt to re-engage with the empty shop units of the Merrion Superstore, to re-ignite a sense of the present and the immediate and a sense of community and belonging. The first two weeks were structured as an experimental period,  ‘Process Lab’, an opportunity to learn, discuss and interact with the artwork. Gibson invited artists from Leeds and other UK cities to use the space as a site for research, production and discourse, to investigate rather than represent.  [shift] culminated in a week of performances and events in and around a site-specific exhibition at the Merrion superstore.

Other recent projects include participation in Testbed2, a series of short residencies at Leeds Metropolitan Gallery, and Left[...and left again]  an ongoing dialogue between Gibson and Ric Spencer, Perth, Western Australia using walking as a medium to explore the space around them.

Gibson will talk about her practice as an artist and curator, drawing from everyday experiences, the city and the role of stories and chance encounters in constructing this experience.

www.emerged.net
lucygibson.blogspot.com
leftandleftagain.blogspot.com
www.itchyfingers.org