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Holiday Camp

13th November 2021

I've wondered a lot why class is the hill I am willing to die on. I feel so glad when I think about prisons and private schools closing. I found out recently that the prison I visited my Dad in was declared by a judge in court as like a holiday camp.

I get pissed off with people saying “They have TV you know.” Firstly, how oblivious. What holiday camps do you know where people and sometimes babies die of neglect?

As a kid my dad would write to me from prison, telling me the food was better than at home and how nice this or that was. I guess he didn’t want me to worry.

Obviously holiday performativity is one way of blagging your way though so you can't be hurt by reality. I used to do this sort of thing at shit jobs i've worked.

But when people who know nothing about prison say this it doesn’t mean the same thing at all. People are complaining a lot about the lockdown and I’m thinking? You got an xbox?

Performativity is a great way to muster dignity for the tough bits of life. My gender gives me a little something nice I can't explain that makes life feel doable. And I’m leaning on being on holiday hard to get though today. I've got the heating on too high, I've got bad sunglasses on and I’m listening to Holiday by Madonna.

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Categories: Artist, Collaborative Residencies, Dudley, Uncategorised
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02 Jul

Exhibition -52 Cameras in 52 Weeks by Tony Kemplen

Artist: Tony Kemplen Exhibition Launch: Friday 25 June 2021, 5-8pm Exhibition Dates: 25 June – July 17 2021 Opening Times: Monday – Saturday, 11am-5pm   About the Exhibition Tony Kemplen has been collecting cameras for over 50 years and in 2010 he decided to use them. For a decade, he has used a different film camera each week of the year – 522 cameras in 10 years. 52 Cameras in 52 Weeks comprises a selection of these photographs and the corresponding cameras used to make them. The collection represents a wide range of cameras, techniques and subjects, and Kemplen’s approach to image-making is every bit as important as the technical aspects of the project. The cameras range in age from 10 to 100 years and in size from a large format Thornton Pickard Reflex down to a Minox sub-miniature spy camera. There are well known models which many visitors will have used as well as some esoteric cameras which they are unlikely to have seen before. Since 2011, Kemplen has also written a monthly column about the project for Amateur Photographer Magazine and a selection of these periodicals will be available to read in the space. Overall, this exhibition aims to bridge the gap between contemporary art and amateur photography.   About the Artist – Tony Kemplen Tony Kemplen has exhibited work in Babel at Ikon Gallery in 1999; Encyclopaedia Mundi in 2003 – an ambitious touring project shown in Leeds, Derby and Lancaster, which came to QUAD’s predecessor Q Arts; created work for Futuresonic, the
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7th June 2021
Cabin Fever Artist Residency Nicki Dennett A Reflection   I think it was the first day of the residency, everything was ‘colourful’. It was a sunny day, for once, the outside of the cabin had been sprayed with a multitude of coloured phrases by Dan Webber, it was open and there were people mingling around the cabin collecting their ‘Derby Witness’ books. Sitting alone in the cabin I sometimes felt I was on show to the passer-by, people would read the words around the cabin and look through the windows just out of curiosity. Fortunately, days soon became filled with bookings for the workshops.  All the participants who offered to create in the cabin and take part in my project stayed and made for at least two hours, often creating many pieces to choose from. A little display was soon up on the wall. As the lockdown eased cafes and bars opened up, creating a lively atmosphere around the cabin. It was exciting that so many people were happy sharing their story and creating artwork for my project. I am so grateful to all of you because without you there would be no project. so thankyou.   I would also like to thank the designers and staff at Artcore for all the help and support in putting the work together. Below is also a link to the book I created, with the help of artcore, displaying participants art they made in and for the cabin along with their stories. Nicki Dennett Artist Book https://artcoregallery.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/Nicola-Dennett-Artist-Book.pdf Some of my own lockdown experience
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A visit, recounted

21st April 2021

the pigeon’s cüüüs curdle in my ear

their wings flap the warm, too warm, musty-aroma of the space in my direction

and it fills my mouth

                       

I SIT on a bench and conduct a little audit of the space’s usages

MAN SORTS ‘VIDEO CARDS’  (looks like football or pokemon cards but he tells me when i ask that they are, ‘video cards’)

MAN WATCHES VIDEO ON SMARTPHONE, HEADPHONES IN, KNEES SPREAD, PHONE BETWEEN KNEES, HUNCHED IN (but not quite falling in) WITH INTENT

MAN EATS SANDWICH THEN SITS FOR HOURS IN WHAT COULD BE DESCRIBED AS CONTEMPLATION: HIS EYES WASH OVER THE BUILDINGS, THE LINES, CURVATURES OF THE BUILDING. DOES HE TAKE PLEASURE FROM THIS?

                    Throughout the day i love to spot micro twinning efforts in and around the square-not-square: A perfectly placed farm foods, in sight from the square, waves the german flag in red-yellow-black, thank you very much an ornate doomed corner building over looking the square takes me to Bavaria. Munich perhaps. The arriva bus company’s internet, DB sponsored (the one perhaps deliberate effort in my noticings, a corporate result of the twinning town initiative), that doesn't let me connect as the bus moves ON The B1 bus stop sign that looks uncannily like the U5 line Old-kent-road-brown Blocky-font Neglected feel. Berlin, not Osnabrück, but I’ll take it. Ryan joins in my game when we buy our picnic later in the day from germany’s
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Categories: Katy Hawkins, Uncategorised
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A New Kind of Guardian

6th April 2021
Carrying on from my last post – I started looking at collaborative ways of making artworks that relate to Derby's public spaces. After scouring the web for inspo and coming up with nothing, I remembered a childhood game called Consequences. You might’ve played it with your nan. The aim of this game is to assemble a sentence together. It’s usually done on paper, with each player completing and then folding over their section to hide it from the next. This means you’re only allowed to see the last word written down. It's a kind of older, more PG version of Cards Against Humanity. There’s also a set of rules to stop it from being completely wild. For example, one set of rules could be: The-adjective-noun-adverb-verb-the-adjective-noun. AKA The-anxious-artist-swiftly-scribbled-the-dreadful-doodle. Although created way back when, as a parlor game for posh Europeans - it also just happens that this game is closely tied to The Surrealists™. An artistic movement I referenced last week, which gives me at least ten art points. Their method wasn’t called Consequences, it held a more morbid name - The Exquisite Corpse. This edgier version doesn't focus solely on words like Consequences does – but images too. Following a similar set of rules, players would draw a different section of the image. Often times this assemblage ends up being some kind of figurative work, with somebody responsible for the limbs, head, torso etc. A kind of Frankenstein’s monster. This led me to think about monsters and hybrids - particularly
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Hardscape

29th March 2021
So, I begin my residency from just down the road in Nottingham. The pandemic has left me unable to visit Derby – which is obviously an interesting challenge for a site-specific project. So, I have no choice than to leap-frog into the city through all available portals. I’m resigned to the clunky websites of local history enthusiasts, maps provided by the all-seeing eye of Google and good old fashioned human conversation - albeit through the Zoomiverse. Since the dawn of land ownership in Britain, common land has been a contentious topic.  This last year public land and property has been a huge part of the post-pandemic zeitgeist – which comes as no surprise. Who gets to use certain spaces? What can and can’t you do in them? I applied for this opportunity with the word ‘Psychogeography’ plastered all over my application. So, in order for you to follow my train of thought – I’ll start there. What is psychogeography? This is the clear part, simply put it’s the way a place can influence one’s psyche. It does what it says on the etymological tin. Psychogeography was originally developed in the early 1950s. A gang of pan-European mavericks who would later be known as 'The Situationists' conjured up the field. With a penchant for red wine drinking and Marxist thinking, these flaneurs produced a number of books, exercises and visual art forms used to highlight the role of the built environment in our minds. As with the situationists and Marxist thinkers of their time, modern
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Categories: Ryan Heath, Uncategorised, Visions of an Unmade City
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Week 1

15th January 2020
I have been thinking about turning the way I view my own work from previous projects on its head – instead of intuitively looking at composition, progression I am taking a step back from what I feel is the final outcome, changing my perspective on my primary collages and sketches and planning to weave them into a projection, or into the filmed documentation showing the progression and transition of an idea. David has also given very solid advice to not go with what you feel or what your normal stages of work would be, but to refresh my approach and try something that is out of my creative box, allowing me to grow as an artist. The notion of my sketches and collages as a projection would be quite minimal as I often feel like I have shown my methods and documentation with but separate to the final outcome, stopping once the physical object is completed. It would be interesting to take the sculptural interpretation of the collages and continue to make the physical work, but for the final outcome to be a visual experience rather that a physical sculpture, and this would be broadening my creative intention towards my practice. Reading peter Eisenman’s ‘Diagram Diaries’ I came across these two quotes: the first is about the technical aspects of lines and dimensions and the process through which shapes become diagrams; “Technical preconditions that would allow modern architecture to refound itself... on the twin bases
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Categories: Sinead Kerr, Uncategorised
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Feeling positive and inspired.

14th December 2019
“Winter narratives “ Is my first residency ever, and I was actually quite anxious about it. But when I reached the location, and met up with all of these lovely artists, I was feeling comfortable right away. The location of the program, i.e. Highness farm, sits by the ravines of the Mahi river, and is a habitat for various beautiful insects and birds, which is quite different from the location of my studio, which sits in the middle of a concrete jungle. This change is beautiful, I sketch and paint, and when I get bored, I just go for a stroll around the property and often spot some migratory birds and cute insects. The fact about this residency, which includes a varied set of artists of all ages and different kind of knowledge, makes an amazing ground for exchanging powerful thoughts. I am finally feeling fresh and positive, and maybe, also got some lead to my future body.
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