We will be back!

With our day jobs (running the Shop & Gallery at the Old Fire Station and Sanders of Oxford, Rare Prints & Maps) consuming a lot more of our time, alongside a wedding to organise, we have decided to take a break from organising exhibitions.

We will be back, but in the meantime keep an eye out on our blog, twitter and facebook pages for updates on our arty adventures as well as current creative activity across the city.

Spike Island

Couple of cracking shows just coming to an end at Spike Island in Bristol:

Dewar & Gicquel, Crêpe Suzette.

Daniel Dewar and Grégory Gicquel have been working collaboratively since 1998, and Crêpe Suzette is their first solo exhibition in the UK. The pair’s work resists much that has become commonplace in contemporary sculptural practice, such as the use of readymade objects and the outsourcing of production to fabricators. They instead favour a physical reengagement with materials and processes. That this appropriation of the handmade and the crafted is a critical, rather than reactionary response, is made evident by the artists’ knowingly absurd pop- and folk-inflected artworks.

The Artists' Postcard Show

The Artists’ Postcard Show is a selective survey of the postcard as a distinctive artistic medium from the mid-twentieth century to present day. All of the works have been produced with the idea, if not always the function, of the postcard in mind.d.

AUDIOSCOPE THIS SATURDAY!

AUDIOSCOPE
Saturday 19th May (7.30 - 10.30pm)
The Old Boot Factory, 102-104 St Mary's Road, Oxford, OX4 1QD

AUDIOSCOPE Annual Oxford music festival. AUDIOSCOPE has teamed up with Launch Collaborative to present a ‘quiet’ show in The Old Boot Factory as part of The Natural Course of Things. All proceeds from the show will go directly to national homelessness and bad housing charity Shelter, for whom Audioscope have raised more than £23,000 since 2001. Oxfordshire Artweeks sponsor, Zip Cars, will provide lifts home to the people who have travelled the furthest to attend the show. Line up: The Scholars, Rome Pays Off, Richard Walters, Phil McMinn. Tickets will be on sale from Thursday 5th April for just £5 fromwww.wegottickets.com/audioscope. 

Natural Course of Things Exhibition Preview THIS FRIDAY!

Exhibition Preview 
Friday 11th May (6.30 - 8.30pm)
The Old Boot Factory, 102-104 St Mary's Road, Oxford, OX4 1QD

Come and join artists Sarah Mayhew and Joseph Fairweather Hole (Jon Barker will be there in spirit - he's not dead, just abroad!) at the preview of their exhibition, The Natural Course of Things. Entry is free and drinks will be available at the bar.

Oxfordshire Artweeks in East Oxford - Launch Party

Oxfordshire Artweeks in East Oxford - Launch Party
Tuesday 8th May (6 - 9pm)
The Old Boot Factory, 102-104 St Mary's Road, Oxford, OX4 1QD

View artists' work, browse portfolios & have a drink or two at the launch party of Oxfordshire Artweeks in East Oxford. This is a free event and networking night that will present the opportunity to meet artists exhibiting in East Oxford as part of Oxfordshire Artweeks (there's over 20 in total)... and have a few drinks! 

Natural Course of Things

Natural Course of Things 
Jon Barker 
Joseph Fairweather 
Sarah Mayhew 
12 - 20 May. 12 - 6pm
The Old Boot Factory, 102-104 St Mary's Road, Oxford, OX4 1QD

The Natural Course of Things is a set of three stand-alone installations created by three independent artists, and takes its’ name from Sarah Mayhew’s immersive installation that, not unlike Jon Barker’s or Joseph Fairweather Hole’s work, explores the psychology of space through subconscious languages and landmarks

Sarah Mayhew studied Fine Art, and later Spatial Design; she has worked as a curator, and continues to work in cultural event production and promotion, and also as an art critic. Through her creative practice Mayhew explores ideas concerning the personalised nature of decision making, of pathways in art and life, and the way that one’s environment can dictate direction. Frequently drawing on adages or aphorisms when entitling her works she reinforces the sense of familiarity, or lack of, between viewer and experience. Captivated by the idea that our own personal histories have built up idiosyncratic languages that are generally only known to us on a subconscious level, Mayhew invites the viewer to navigate unknown waters. Landmarks are placed in front of the viewer that enable them to charter their journey as they so wish, dependent upon their ability to read the language of the landmarks, and their confidence in taking on such a journey. 

Jon Barker is a Lighting Designer who works mostly with rock and roll bands touring at an international level. For the animation festival ANIMATE Kingston 2012 Barker was commissioned to create an installation that explores the relationship between people and the space around them through the use of interactive sound, lighting and video projections. For The Natural Course of Things Barker will transform an area at the rear of The Old Boot Factory into an interactive visual and sonic experience in which viewers can immerse themselves.

Splitting his time between London and Oxford Joseph Fairweather Hole is a Scenographer, Illustrator and Artist. Installed in an unassuming side-room that forms part of The Old Boot Factory, Chimney is an imposing monolithic concrete structure that marks and commands physical space, whilst the movement of light within it depicts the passage of time. Chimney draws its reference from similarly shaped structures that have stood throughout history, and continue to stand, to mark ritual or symbols across civilizations, like a standing stone, lighthouse, or chimney.

arting about in Norwich

Over bank holiday weekend we managed to sneak a couple of days away in Norwich, while there we checked out a couple of galleries we have been following for a few years now but have never managed to visit in person. First up was Stew Gallery:

Founded over 3 years ago by a group of NSAD Fine Art and Visual Studies graduates, students and lecturers, Stew is a not-for-profit, volunteer-run organisation. The name is derived from the shared ideal of food playing a central role in the space and analogous to the diverse pratices within the building. The earliest board meetings were based around cooking and discussion/decision making.


Stew is meant to be inclusive in the best possible sense. Rents are as low as possible for studios and costs for hiring out the gallery and flexible workspace equally as affordable while being able to maintain the building. As a not-for-profit organisation they reinvest all surplus cash into materials, projects and improvements for the gallery, workspace and studios and of course food funds.
Stew is currently home to a group of thriving, open-plan studio spaces, a bustling hireable gallery space and the first ever publicly accessible screen printing rooms in the city.

On display during our visit was W.E.L.C.O.M.E the first exhibition by a collective who provide  new and innovative space for young upcoming artists to showcase and sell print editions of their work. The exhibition featured new work from Adam Batchelor who created a set of drawings and an accompanying painting, new paintings by Christopher Joyner and Stephen Mellor and a selection of illustrations by Natsuki Otani. There was also a sculptural frame work  dedicated to prints which  included work by Illustrator Joel Benjamin and designer Suzanne Antonelli. 

Next up was Outpost a fantastic artist run space that has been running since 2004. The current exhibition by Paris based artist Morag Keil was an immersive sound installation made up of looping audio recordings, from environmental or textural recordings such as that of a roller-coaster to edited snippets from the computer game Tekken.  As a whole the work was bewildering, as you were assaulted by a wall of confusing sounds, however the individual audio from each speaker was cleverly directed using bowls to channel the sounds into localised areas below each speaker. Strung above the viewer at head height and following the architectural lines of the building, the hanging speaker pods invited you in one at a time to discover their audio content, leading you on a journey with no particular start or end.