Stanley Picker Gallery

Recipient of the Designers of the Future Award at Design Miami/Basel 2008, Julia Lohmann brings to the Faculty a highly imaginative approach to sustainable design. Her works explore the creative possibilities and materiality of natural and renewable sources and remind us of the processes that go unmentioned between the life of an animal or mineral and the point at which it is made into a design object. For her Stanley Picker Fellowship Lohmann will explore the luminosity, colour and structural strength of kelp as a natural alternative to man-made plastics and endangered woods. Considering also the adverse effects of collapsing fish stocks on fishing communities, Lohmann’s research will investigate the possibility of kelp farming as a viable alternative industry.

Taking samples of seaweed from around the world, including Iceland, Ireland and Japan, and exploring the distinct surfaces and textures created by each specimen, Lohmann has begun to discover some surprisingly innovative and alluring new design applications for this most abundant yet under-exploited natural material.

Juneau Projects were formed in 2001 in Birmingham as a collaborative practice by Ben Sadler and Philip Duckworth. Their work engages with people and folk histories, bringing together live work and installation in new interactive combinations.

In early performance works they used mobile phones, wood chippers, microphones and cd walkmans, often destroying them to make unexpected sounds. In their gallery shows their work has developed to encompass video, installation, sculpture and painting, featuring an array of natural imagery such as animals, birds and landscapes, which seek to express how we think and feel about nature in the 21st century.

Their first solo exhibition took place at the Showroom London in 2004, followed by exhibitions at fa projects, London, as well as a longstanding relationship with Grizedale Arts, Cumbria, which has lead to projects in the UK, USA and Japan. They were also included in the British Art Show 6 organised by the Hayward Gallery in 2006.

“Within our practice the instrument has most often been an element of a larger work or installation. We aim to use the period of research offered by the Fellowship to develop a body of work around this idea of the musical instrument sculpture. Our initial inspiration was the discovery of an anecdote concerning Leonardo Da Vinci in which he is said to have fashioned himself a silver lute in the shape of a horse’s skull. The near-mythical idea of this object resonated with us very strongly. It began our conception of the possibility of the musical instrument as an object democratically balancing form and function.”

Juneau Projects worked closely  with students at Kingston University to develop their Fellowship project. Their final  exhibition converted the Gallery itself  into a live gig-venue for the full eight-week run of the show – equipped with two stages, a green room and bar area all customised with  corrugated cardboard  decorations – during which time the students themselves were invited to stage their own live events programme of music, performance, quizzes, reading groups, etc.

“The subject matter of my work has often been derived from mythology, literature and theatre. I have explored these themes through the past few years in a body of work which has become the subject of my latest book “Sometimes I think, Sometimes I am”.

Now I would very much like to take on the challenge of dealing with these same subjects through different media covering new territories. In particular I am drawn to the potentials of certain techniques of photography and of the moving image.”

A is for a-n The Information Company (2002-2005). Guest commissioning editor for a-n, Smith worked with a number of scholars, artists and writers. Ten Two Zero Zero Five was an eclectic series of writings embedded in sites of specificity. Tales of Two Cities explored the dualities and distinctiveness of the major centres of art production in Brazil and South Africa. Inhabited Spaces a six part series incorporated new media, installation, politics and play. Artists’ Francis Upritchard, Ian Dawson and Jason E Bowman, amongst many, wrote their intimate and poetic Artist stories.

B is for Board Member. Smith is a Trustee of London Printworks, a centre for the innovation in printed material.

C is for Consequences of our actions (2005-). Smith is developing a work in progress for Angel Row Gallery.

D is for Deborah Smith. Smith is a curator working as a catalyst in the production and diffusion of contemporary art in a wide variety of contexts, exploring different strategies for collaboration and the presentation of cultural practices. This a-z presents an insight into the diversity and broad context of Smith’s curatorial practice. D is for Derbyshire Arts Development Group. Action research project in rural Derbyshire undertaken by Smith with Alice Angus (Proboscis), culminated in two exciting site specific commissions; Out of Curiosity by Lothar Goetz and Memories of the Little by Hannah Carvell.

E is for Earthly Paradise (2006-2009). Smith is always looking and listening to find a place to begin… Earthly Paradise, in association with Chapter, is at the start of its’ journey. The title Earthly Paradise is taken from William Morris’s 1871 book of voluminous poetry and prose, and subverts Morris’s premise for an earthy paradise, to explore material culture in its’ many disguises.

F is for Peter Fillingham (1998-2000). smith + fowle were pleased to present the 1st London solo exhibition of Peter Fillingham’s New Work with Justine Daf, Jealousie, at Cable Street Gallery.

G is for Glasgow 1999: UK City of Architecture and Design. In association with the architectural critic Rowan Moore, smith + fowle worked on the exhibition and publication of Vertigo: The Strange New World of the Contemporary City, exploring projects that exemplified the forces that shaped contemporary cities.

I is for independent. Smith is an independent curator working internationally in galleries and public sites.

K is for Kerry James Marshall (2003-2006). Smith is the curator of the 1st UK touring exhibition of the highly acclaimed American artist Kerry James Marshall. The survey featured collages, monoprints, drawings and epic large-scale paintings from the 1970s to the present. The exhibition Along the way was curated in collaboration with Camden Arts Centre, in association with BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art, The New Art Gallery Walsall and Modern Art Oxford.

L is for Liverpool Biennial 2002. The International seminar Metamorphosis examined the city as a cultural site exploring how social change and the built environment impact on artistic practice.

M is for Missing Alphabet letters in this a-z.

N is for Navigating History (2002-2005) www.navigating-history.net. Smith working with Alice Angus (Proboscis) invited 11 cultural practitioners to respond to the unique local history collections sited in East Sussex Record Office in Lewes, Folkestone Library & Museum and West Sussex Local Studies Collection in Worthing Library. Stephen Connolly, Neville Gabie, Andrew Hunter, Rob Kesseler, Rachel Murphy, Simon Pope, Mah Rana, Claudia Schenk, and Bob Roberta Smith, wove a maze of narratives from the unexpected to the peculiar, the tragic to the wondrous, revealing stories of ordinary people to those documenting momentous events.

O is for Optimistic Mood: a foundation for action (2004). The transatlantic partnership between Julie Deamer (Los Angeles), Eileen Sommerman (Toronto), and Smith (London), was about inspired thought, action and overpowering desire for change. Through drawings, photographs, film, performance, objects, the artists, Sonia Abián, Scoli Acosta, Chris Johanson, Karma Clarke-Davis, Hirsh Perlman, and Temporary Services, presented visions of their imaged present and future.

P is for Photographers’ Gallery (1997-1998). Smith curated the 1st UK solo exhibition of Rineke Dijkstra and the prestigious Citibank Private Bank Photography Prize of 1998, awarded to Andreas Gursky, in her role as Programme Organiser for The Photographers’ Gallery.

R is for Richard Wentworth (2000-2001). smith + fowle presented a comprehensive commission by the influential British artist Richard Wentworth in Winchester Cathedral as part of the Art in Sacred Spaces programme.

S is for smith + fowle (1996-2001) www.smithandfowle.org. Smith is the co-founder of the curatorial partnership smith + fowle (1996-2001). The partnership worked with artists and cultural organisations to develop projects that placed enquiry, research, experimentation and exchange at the heart of art practice. Operating in galleries and public sites across the UK, smith + fowle produced exhibitions and large-scale temporary commissions, as well as residencies, conferences and publications. S is for Shelf Life. smith + fowle collaboration with Gasworks Gallery (London), Spike Island (Bristol) and Bluecoat (Liverpool) and 13 international artists from Europe, North America, South America and South Africa. Artists embracing and challenging consumerism in their practice such as Robin Rhode, Dario Robleto and Kerry James Marshall, were presented in the galleries, studios and the surrounding urban area at all three locations.

T is for Three: Art Projects for Social Exchange (1999-2000). Commissioned by smith + fowle, three artists groups, Kathrin Böhm + Stefan Saffer, N55 and muf, who fuse the language of art, architecture and design developed new projects for social exchange in public spaces around Canterbury. T is for To be continued > (1998-2000). A programme of temporary and permanent commissions that took place during the construction of The New Art Gallery Walsall. Over 20 artists from the UK and abroad developed new work using their personal experiences of Walsall as a starting point. Artists’ interventions including Henrik Plenge Jacobsen, Catherine Yass, Fiona Banner, offered different ways of engaging with the built environment of Walsall town.

V is for Victoria & Albert (1999). smith + fowle conducted research into how young audiences navigate the 21st century galleries of Design, Fashion and Jewellery.

W is for Will you walk into my parlour (2006-). Smith proposes for the Stanley Picker Fellowship 2006 an exhibition that takes it’s title from Mary Howlitt’s nineteenth century poem, The spider to the fly. The proposition Will you walk into my parlour? enters into the domestic sphere, its objects, spaces and relations, weaving intricate webs of deception, interrogation and curiosity.

Y is for You don’t know me but… (1996-1998). You don’t know me but…, a familiar opening gambit in a conversation, artists Jeremy Deller, Faisal Abdu’Allah, Lesley Hakim Dowek, Alistair Raphael and Mary Evans, were commissioned by smith and fowle to develop new work in relation to others’ experience and knowledge. The exhibition toured to De La Warr Pavilion (Bexhill), Winchester Gallery and Pitshanger Manor (London).

Z is for ………

public works is an art/architecture collective consisting of architects Sandra Denicke-Polcher, Torange Khonsari, Andreas Lang and artist Kathrin Böhm who have been collaborating in different constellations since 1998.

public works conceptual interest lies in the relationship between institutions who govern public space, and the users of those spaces. public works practice consists of implementing communication structures and physical structures that support and make use of existing local networks and resources, and at the same time offer, propose and stimulate new programmes and built structures.

Our projects run and refer to a variety of, scales from furniture (clear idea), public squares (matchmakers), Community centres (Picture High House) through to master planning (Geesthacht back to the river Elbe). Commissioners and clients include cultural institutions, individuals, local authorities and private developers. Integral to each project is a close engagement with the different user groups involved and participation on different levels is part in the overall processes.

We like to think of the project as prototypes. This can apply to the physical structure we conceive of or to the communicative or organisational mechanics of a project. They are prototypical in a sense that they set a new live reference that can be transferred to a number of similar situations.

Design is relevant on a number of occasions within a project and is always understood as aiding and supporting component to the overall process and ambition. Design to us is not only the shaping of the physical products that are being produced but also the way in which each project is set out, the processes it initiates and undergoes.

The tools we make for are deliberately ambiguous in their function and by no means are purely practical. We often describe them as ‘urban toys’ (Mobile Porch), suggesting that they are a tool that through play and informal engagement allows exploring and understanding of a public space or situation.

We are primarily interested in social spaces or the social potential of spaces and situations. In many cases our projects start on site, with us simply “hanging out”. Often we are equipped with tools developed by ourselves that position us on site, cause curiosity and help us get in contact in playful ways. We deliberately construct situations, which create an informal and often ambiguous interface between us and the people or user groups we are interested to meet. The acting on site on a 1:1 scale can manifest itself in many different ways and varies from project to project and from context to context. It is however not primarily a mechanism that enables encounters to happen. It is also a first testing ground for ideas. Small events or interventions that seamlessly blend into the everyday can test initial ideas and may serve as precedence later on in the process. Though in most cases the testing happens on a 1:1 immediate scale the situations very quickly reveal how issues are affected by larger scales and dynamics. (In turn they can also affect those scales). We believe that the informal everyday is integral to its surrounding formalised structure and therefore needs to be acknowledged as a shaping and transformative source)

Public works projects increasingly rely on a sustained on site engagement. This activity generates new networks and establishes or opens up social situations which in itself can be understood as a spatial construct. The acknowledgment of this idea is the base for our research proposal for the Stanley Picker Fellowship.

As a practice engaged in the public realm we are interested in the potential of everyday social structures and informal networks presented to us within different scales of public spaces. These networks and structures contribute to the diversity, richness and ephemeral conditions, which make public spaces key spaces within our cities. In order to work with the informal and everyday to reveal the hidden richness and complexity, our practice is continuously confronted with the need to document, visualise and represent them.

In current architectural practice these structures and networks are often neglected mainly because they are not immediately visible and don’t have a definite physicality. In our work we identified a real need to acknowledge these structures as intangible spaces and make their importance, part of the broader discussion on how we conceive designing of public spaces.

For the Stanley Picker Fellowship we want to concentrate on methods of representation and visualisation of informality, drawing out their spatial qualities and relations. We believe that within the current practice of architecture and public art it is important to think of social networks not only as means of communication but also as spatial relations, which construct a holistic design.

The fellowship research will allow us to conduct an in depth research into other practices from the field of architecture, art and design, who have developed techniques and mechanisms to map and represent spatial relations within informal structures ranging from cityscapes to neighbourhoods and private space. The examples can include a wide range of media, from drawing based notations, to video diaries, animation, time based maps, online data base, to spatial re-enactments.

The research aims to reveal the current degrees of understanding and acknowledgment of informal networks in contemporary discussions in the different design fields.

Historically the research will be located in 20th and 21st Century Art, Architecture and Design practice with a social ambition and a major concern surrounding the issue of the everyday.

“Black humour is a strain of comedy that uses the ever imminent tragedy of the human condition as a foil. The threat of failure or death is perhaps a surprising subject for jokes, but it has a long history nonetheless, from the effervescent physicality of slapstick to the bleak conceptualism of gallows humour. Elizabeth Price takes advantage of this fine balance between comedy and hopelessness, mischief and evil, and poises her work just this side of alarming.” Sally O’Reilly  (Exhibition Catalogue Jerwood Artist Platform Jan/Feb 2004)

Elizabeth Price is an artist who works both independently and collectively with other artists, organisations and institutions. Her works unfold over indefinite or protracted periods of time, during which new material is episodically generated and disseminated, through exhibitions, events and publications. Cumulatively these episodes come to generate detailed archives narrating transitory, defunct and imaginary art institutions or organisations.

Projects which exemplify this include Hearse attending…. (A Gallery Necrology): a series of photographs that document the visit of a funeral hearse to a contemporary art venue. In each case the venue commissions the production of the photograph, which is exhibited within the featured gallery. ‘Boulder…’ is a spherical sculpture made of wound packing tape. It is exhibited intermittently, but on each occasion it demonstrates an increase in size. A series of drawings of these exhibitions document the sculpture’s gradual expansion, as well as its passage through a series of transitory contexts/spaces.

These works employ a methodology established through conceptual art, borrowed from social & physical science, in which a rational measure or test is applied repeatedly to similar subjects. They also adopt the rhetoric of reflexivity, associated with such methodologies. Art institutions, whether public, independent or commercial are to some degree the subject of these works. By making the work through the process of exhibiting, this moment is reconfigured as an element of the works production, rather than its destination, and the object status of the art-work is expanded, in as much as the exhibited item is the prop or trigger for the production of some other thing.

In a recent series of projects, she employs the last instructions of three dead Men as the conceptual template to shape and place my artist activity. Since 1999 she has been fulfilling the 1927 Will of Alexander Chalmers, a resident of Stoke Newington who left a collection of art to the local Stoke Newington Library. The Will sets out 10 instructions for the use, promotion and development of the collection. The Bequest has been defunct since 1966, the collection itself was removed into permanent art storage in 1979 where it remains, and the remaining capital funds are inaccessible. As all the roles, bodies and institutions specified in the Will no longer exist, the instructions have been re-enacted by proxy, with artists, writers and council officers standing in for the original protagonists. This project is now reaching its conclusion, with the final clauses of the Will being currently re-enacted. The project will conclude with a film, which shapes the historical material of this epilogue to suggest a supernatural narrative.

These projects provide the context for a task which Price is developing for her Stanley Picker Fellowship, the creation of a film-work researched and made on location in the Stanley Picker House, on Kingston Hill, London. The house was designed and built in 1968 by architect Kenneth Wood and was commissioned by Picker to display a significant collection of 20th century art, including works by Henry Moore, Barbara Hepworth and Jacob Epstein.

Stanley Picker died in 1982. The house and collection are maintained exactly as they were at that time. Price is to produce a film that explores the legacy of The Stanley Picker Trust, his house and its collection, and unfold the story of its preservation 30 years after The Trust was first established.

Elizabeth Price was the  Turner Prize  Winner 2012

Internationally recognised as a directional and conceptual designer, Shelly Fox is one of a rare breed of modern designers renowned for her innovative use of materials, manipulation of fabric and the development of unorthodox pattern cutting. The resulting designs re-define how clothing can be worn, constantly questioning conventions of practice. Her work explores unusual and arresting themes, on both technical and conceptual levels. Scorched felted wool and burnt cotton bandaging, the use of laser beams and sound waves that strike the cloth with ‘invisible heat’, negative imagery printed onto fabric, the use of Braille markings on boiled wool and Morse Code communication are all examples of past work.

A key part of Fox’s work involves her significant collaborations with practitioners from other disciplines including the London based multi-design collective Tomato, the fashion multimedia workshop led by Nick Knight SHOWstudio, acclaimed sound artist Scanner and more recently the Michael Clark Dance Company.

Developing a strong following of international admirers, her work has featured in many prestigious exhibitions at venues including the Victoria and Albert Museum, Crafts Council, Design Museum an Barbican Art Gallery, Modemuseum, Antwerp Landed 2001, FIT in New York, and British Council touring exhibitions traveling to Frankfurt, Bordeaux, Belgium, Poland, Lithuania, Prague, Copenhagen, Utrecht, Moscow, Berlin, Stockholm and Tokyo. Her recent collection Negative was shown at the Friday Late at the Victoria and Albert Museum in April 2005, accumulating in 4 shows in one evening, joint sponsored by Arts Council England and the V&A. Most recently her clothing designs featured in the exhibition Touch Me at the V&A and in the world premier of Random Dance Company’s latest production at Sadlers Wells, London.

Fox was awarded both the Jerwood Fashion Prize and The Peugeot Design Award for Textiles in 1999, the Crafts Council Development Award and is a Senior Research Fellow at Central St Martins College of Art and Design as well as the Stanley Picker Fellowship for Design 2005/6 here at the Faculty of Art, Design & Architecture, Kingston University.

Mark Beasley’s multidisciplinary career was germinated during the late 1980s as a member of various bands signed to local Birmingham labels. Now with an established international reputation as an artist-curator, he has worked on a number of diverse individual and collaborative projects as well as being founder-member of the collective FlatPack001. Beasley’s recent projects include Beasley St. with Steve Beasley at Camden Arts Centre, London; The Thinking with John Russell as part of Romantic Detachment at PS1/MoMA, New York; co-curating Electric Earth: film and video from Britain an international touring show for The British Council; and guest-curating Infra thin Projects a series of book/performance event with artists Lawrence Weiner, Tilo Schulz, Mark Titchner, Bonnie Camplin and Mark Leckey for Book Works, London.

His Stanley Picker Fellowship project Hey, Hey Glossolalia: Puff, Puff and Hatchet (Volume one) involves researching and developing a film project fusing his diverse interests in contemporary music, the visual arts and critical discourse, culminating in an exhibition, a national touring project and a special edition DVD.

Stanley Picker Design Fellows El Ultimo Grito (“all the rage”) were founded in 1997 by Spanish-born Rosario Hurtado and her partner Roberto Feo. They established themselves at the forefront of new British design winning three years running The Blueprint Design Award (100% Design, London). Nominated in 2004 for the prestigious Jerwood Applied Arts Prize in Furniture they will be producing their first ever book project to accompany an installation of new work at the gallery, to be researched and developed over the coming months.

In spring 2005 El Ultimo Grito undertook a series of collaborative interdisciplinary workshops with students from the Faculty of Art, Design & Architecture. Using pen and paper as both a two and three dimensional medium, the group developed the research themes of Make Believe to feed the results into the objects Rosario and Roberto were preparing for their exhibition at the gallery.

Drawing forms an essential part of El Ultimo Grito’s design process, as both a way of developing ideas between them and a tool for describing those ideas to others. During their Stanley Picker Fellowship, they were invited to make a personal selection of drawings by graduating students from across the Faculty’s disciplines for the exhibition Lines of Investigation, which took place to coincide with the 2005 Degree Shows at Kingston University.

Andrew Carnie (b.1957) studied chemistry and painting at Warren Wilson College, North Carolina (USA) then zoology and psychology at Durham University (UK) before completing a Degree in Fine Art at Goldsmiths College and a Masters in Painting at the Royal College of Art, London. Since graduating Andrew has combined his studio based practice with ventures such as the Carnie Chapel Gallery (1986-88) and the Tram Depot Gallery (1994-96), working on various collaborative arts projects, as a consultant for Greater London Arts and a teacher at Winchester School of Art (UK).

Projects include: 451 (2004) Winchester Art Gallery; Head On (2002) Science Museum/Wellcome Foundation, London – working with neuroscientists at the Medical Research Centre for Developmental Neurology, Kings College London; Alight at Royal Victoria Dock (2002) – a 50m long multi-media video work, as part of the group No Limits; Embark (2002) Millais Gallery, Southampton – a solo-show of large paintings and travel-works; Disperse (2002) – a work, produced for the School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine London, looking at how the body might be physically dispersed at the point of death and rendered back into atomic particles; Complex Brain: Spreading Arbor (2003) – a joint project looking at the migration of neurones in the human brain, with neurologists Dr Richard Wingate (Kings College London) and Nick Didovsky (Rocafella University New York) and funded by the Wellcome Trust.