Archive - 2012
MEANTIME occasionally publishes small print-runs of books and text arising out of projects which can be read online or purchased during events or by email/post. Available books here.
RESIDENCY: ELEVEN PLACES
December 3rd - January 6th 2012
Over a period of four weeks, Eleven Places Theatre Company conducted an interrogation of space at MEANTIME examining notions of belonging and the way space is reconstituted, distorted or transformed by actions moving through it. Investigating the relationship between story and space, and between practitioner, character and place, Eleven Places produced a piece of theatre for performance within the space. Photos here.
Eleven Places is a Theatre Company comprised of practitioners Lucy Tyler, Keely O’Shaughnessy, Luke Dean, and Claire Holland.
THE "END OF THE WORLD" QUIZ
Friday 7th December 2012
The annual fundraising extravaganza featuring missives from the edge courtesy of MEANTIME's very own Cultural Attaché, with a timely interrogation of the IMPENDING APOCALYPSE. Impressing everyone with their specialist knowledge and sculptural construction skills, the teams battled valiantly and everyone was a winner.
Many thanks to Mary Brazil for her inspirational Cubist art round, and to Edd Donovan for perfect musical harmony.
RESIDENCY: TNT
November 5th - 2nd December 2012
TNT is a collaboration between Midlands-based Nicole Mortiboys and Chris Hodson. Their arrival at MEANTIME heralded a return to the primal task of mark-making and image production, specifically large-scale paintings with a palette derived from the 1956 Looney Tunes cartoon Gee Whiz-z-z-z-z-z-z featuring Wile E. Coyote and Roadrunner.
The artists worked successively, producing a wall-graphic and canvas that represented the dissonance and harmony of a verbal conversation made visual. Combining the anecdotal and haphazard with situation and circumstance, much as Wile E. himself, the artists are compelled to ride the line between success and disaster, recognition and ambiguity until the final frame. Photos here.
POETRY EVENT: LEAD POETS ON TOUR
Friday 23rd November 2012
Readings from David Clarke, Sarah L Dixon, Myfanwy Fox, Angela France, Helen Gregory, Katie Hammond, Adam Horovitz, Sarah Collins, Nick Short.
MEANTIME: COMMUNICATING.
Open Discussion - Thursday 8th November 2012
MEANTIME proposed an open discussion to explore the practice of communication and its role in the production of meaning. The discussion looked at the ways in which a project such as MEANTIME projects itself – what is being communicated and how, either by design or accidentally, at the elements that contribute to the distribution of information and representation, such as digital platforms, print production, logos and design, and what it means to create a “brand” and undertake “marketing” in the context of a project or service with nothing to sell.
This discussion forms part of the Communicating project, which is funded by the Promoting Cheltenham Fund.
FILM SCREENING: GERHARD RICHTER PAINTING (Corinna Belz/2011)
Tuesday 6th November 2012
A documentary on the work of German artist Gerhard Richter. Shot over the course of three years, Corinna Belz's film charts the creative process of the artist in his studio as he works on a series of large abstract canvasses. Using archive and new footage, the painter reveals his thoughts on a career that has seen him at the forefront of his field for five decades.
RESIDENCY: PENNY DAVIS
Intrauterine Atelier
6th October - 4th November 2012
Play, and mess, were important elements in the constructive experimentation that saw Penny make and remake a series of improvised, site-specific sculptures during her month-long residency. Working with a wide orbit of combined materials both natural and synthetic, such as withy, bitumen and industrial paints, the structures evolved from one decision to the next, tensioned and anchored within the asymmetries of the space, in a process that echoed familial relations.
Read Penny's project proposal here. Photos from the project here.
RESIDENCY: Juliet MacDonald
Alpha #4
1st - 30th September 2012
At MEANTIME Juliet MacDonald continued her project tracking the available history of Alpha, a female chimpanzee test-subject born in the 1930s. Through reams of academic texts and behavioural reports, Juliet has unearthed many of the tests and examinations Alpha was subject to, with a particular interest in those involving drawing and compulsive mark-making, the condition of confinement, the quality of scientific objectivity and the possibility of subject-hood. Herself a test-subject within the confines of MEANTIME, Juliet became the particular animal drawing in a particular environment.
See Sarah B discussing the project here, photos here, and Juliet's blog at http://alphadrawing.wordpress.com/
FILM SCREENING AND LIVE MUSIC EVENT: Practical Electronica
Friday 31st August 2012
A MEANTIME special event, a screening of the acclaimed documentary Practical Electronica (Ian Helliwell/2011/61 mins), an experimental documentary on the life and work of electronics pioneer FC Judd (1914-1992), alongside live musical performance by the film's director Ian Helliwell, and interactive interludes with Kev Fox (Brickwerk).
RESIDENCY: JONATHAN KELHAM
The Leaders Of Men Town Hall Tour 2012
1st - 26th August 2012
MEANTIME became the HQ for the construction, dissemination and subsequent documentation of a month long tour by a ‘Blistering Band of Blue Barnacles’... the Leaders Of Men.
The Leaders Of Men considers the subjectivity of utopian philosophy and the creation of alternative worlds, narratives, dialogues and spaces, concerned with a particular sense of intentionally constructed Englishness, and the mythologised portrayal of the melancholic outsider. This has previously manifested in series of drawings, animations and letter-writing featuring characters from Joe Orton to Harold Macmillan, Brian Clough to Kate Bush, fused with their probable cartoon counterparts. At MEANTIME the Leaders of Men drawing board produced new characters and letters between them, as they travel across the country through their fabled home towns. Photos here.
RAOUL'S FILM CLUB
Metallica - Some Kind of Monster (2004)
Tuesday 31st July 2012
A tragi-comic documentary about the power struggles, meltdowns and creative tensions within the band. This closing event of Raoul's film programme was accompanied by a rider of homemade bread, cheese and wine.
RESIDENCY: Emma Critchley
2nd - 29th July 2012
Emma Critchley’s practice draws on the experience of being immersed in water as a way of exploring notions of being. At MEANTIME Emma began a new series of video-works, filming with a freediver in Gloucestershire's wild waters. Dealing with less than ideal seasonal conditions, the resulting works are an exploratory reconnaissance of outdoor environments and of the thresholds where elements meet - mud, rock, water, air, sky. The cinematic tension is heightened by the ambiguous, dislocated presence of the underwater body represented only through its physiological sound.
During her concluding presentation Emma invited Adrian Harris to lead a Nature Connection Workshop by the River Chelt exploring our connection to nature through our senses. See photos from the event here.
OFFSITE EVENT: PITT STUDIO QUIZ
Friday 20th July 2012
Erstwhile winners of the MEANTIME Quiz, the Worcester contingent, organised a return match at Pitt Studio in Worcester. Team Mean triumphed, with some timely Wikipedia cramming on the motorway, though seemingly advantaged by expertise in the area of the quiz subject: FLAGS.
Chronicle of a Tape Recorded Over by Trinh Thi Nguyen
RESIDENCY: Kate Lepper
4th - 30th June 2012
Kate Lepper's project at MEANTIME considered the question: What is the relationship between imaginative space and political activism? To this end Kate made, remade and made again the statement 'There Is A Cure For Capitalism Inside Your Imagination That Wants To Get Out', derived from a line in a Charles Bukowski poem, in the form of a protest banner, with every part articulated and embellished in a perpetually unfinished process. The project provided an opportunity for the artist to closely attend to the statement, to think through its reading and meaning, and to consider the efficacy of an object-based practice in the transformation of society, interrogating personal and collective myths surrounding the legacy of psychedelic activism.
London-based New Zealander Kate Lepper introduced her residency project with a screening of Adam Curtis's four-part documentary series The Century of the Self (2002). Chie Konishi discusses Kate Lepper's project on the MEANTIME blog here. Photos from the residency here.
FILM SCREENING: Zelig (Woody Allen/1983)
Thursday 31st May 2012
Zelig is Woody Allen’s classic 1983 mockumentary exploring the life of the eponymous human chameleon.
MEANTIME OFFSITE @ SITE FESTIVAL
26th - 27th May 2012
A Preliminary Consultation for Tactile Love Propaganda
Kate Lepper prepared for her MEANTIME residency in June with a weekend satellite project at the Brunel Goods Shed in Stroud producing the template for a banner and engaging with visitors' responses to its proposition. Central to Kate's practice is a discursive enquiry into the function of art objects which will be explored further during her residency.
RESIDENCY: Suze Adams
1st - 26th May 2012
Suze Adams explores the interface between people and place, examining connections between an experience of landscape and the forces (human and non-human) that shape the environments we encounter, oscillating between the physical and psychological, documentation and poetry, fact and fiction. For the past five years, Suze's work has largely focused on locations in Gloucestershire and the Hebridean Isle of Mull, exploring her ancestral connections. Having accumulated a mass of natural material and familial artefacts during her research, Suze examined how these objects might become more widely accessible whilst retaining their specificity.
The Corpus project included an introductory presentation and screening of Women Without Men directed by Sherin Neshat, and a guided walk led by Suze Adams to Brackenbury Ditches - an Iron Age Hill Fort above Wotton-under-Edge. Many thanks to Victoria Walters from PLaCE Research Centre at UWE, for leading the final discussion event. Photos from the walk and event here.
GUIDED WALK: CHIe konishi
Centred for the Cotswolds: ‘England’s Most Complete Regency Town and Its Calorific Power’
Friday 18th May 2012
Cheltenham is caught between preserving the spectacle of its ‘respectable’ past and aspiring to a future of redevelopment. Taking the grand facades of ‘England’s most complete Regency Town’ as a starting point, this tour will take you on a discursive journey into the past, present and future of the town that never reaches completion.
STUDENT PROJECT: PRISM//
27th - 29th April 2012
PRISM is a collaboration of four Cheltenham-based photographers from the University of Gloucestershire who share an interest in raw and authentic imagery. The group work together to challenge and push forward their ideas, and to create an engaging space that reflects their commitment to the medium. Photographers: Georgia Yiapanis, Matt Moran, James Beattie, Sam Clifford-Harding
CHELTENHAM POETRY FESTIVAL EVENTS @ MEANTIME
19th - 21st April 2012
Including The Sound of Tragedy - Cheltenham Improvisers Orchestra performed an epic of poetry, film and sound.
Raoul's Film Club presents...
Incendies (Denis Villeneuve/2010)
Tuesday 17th April 2012
Based on a play by Wajdi Mouawad, this French-Canadian drama will make you understand the scars of a land destroyed by war as we follow the journey of twins to discover their mother's past in the Lebanon.
RESIDENCY: Neil Chapman/David Stent
WRITING AS OCCUPATION
26th March - 15th April 2012
Taking as its starting point the discovery of a ‘contaminated’ room, J-Spur, on Reading University campus, Neil Chapman and David Stent’s project considered the possibility of realising a location that provokes the proliferation of writing. An ad hoc programme of events was assembled including film screenings, broadcasts, transmissions and publications, and a bunker constructed for the final showdown. Residency text here. See the MEANTIME blog for Martin Wooster's response to the project here. Photos from the event here.
Introductory project presentation, and screening of Night of the Living Dead (George A. Romero/1968/96mn); Screening of Woman of the Dunes (Hiroshi Teshigahara/1964/123mn); 'Godard' Writing Day: a silent screening of the entirety of Jean-Luc Godard's Histoire(s) du Cinema, and public writing in response. Visitors were free to view or participate in text; Radio and web broadcasting: texts written during the residency read and broadcast from MEANTIME space; Reading/Performance: live readings from the bunker - writing projections, broadcasts and barricades...
RESIDENCY: JEMMA APPLEBY
27th February - 25th March 2012
Jemma Appleby's work is an investigation into the complex relationship between architecture and landscape, using large-format photography and computer-aided design to produce charcoal drawings that describe natural and constructed forms through sectioning and intersection, planes and edges.
At MEANTIME, Jemma expanded on and experimented with the implied physicality of her work, constructing an immersive environment of large-scale charcoal drawings, exploring an idea of the landscape ‘becoming’ architecture that propelled the hypothetical shapes and structures in her drawings into 3-dimensions. Photos here.
In association with the Open West 2012 and Cheltenham Art Gallery & Museum
Raoul's Film Club presents...
Of Time and the City (Terence Davis/2008)
Wednesday 29th February 2012
With a magnificent talent, Terence Davies tells the story of his hometown, Liverpool. A poetical film created with beautiful archive footage; a masterpiece. Included an introduction to the work of MEANTIME artist-in-residence Jemma Appleby.
RESIDENCY: ALICE & JOE WOODHOUSE
11th - 24th February 2012
Alice and Joe Woodhouse developed and produced Red Fence, an installation of sculptures and video during their short residency at MEANTIME. Formerly based around sculptural drawings and prints, and models for possible monuments, their practice has scaled-up: producing work that engaged with the interior structure of the gallery using forms that alluded to both minimalist sculpture and exhibitional displays.
These works continued the artist’s research into collective relationships to form and structure, and used fragments of shared visual histories through collected objects and newly devised constructions that in turn drew attention to the processes of collaboration. Photos here.
MT FIELD TRIP: BIRMINGHAM
Thursday 16th February 2012
A self-organised convoy of people and vehicles temporarily left town to investigate all that Birmingham has to offer, taking in exhibitions at Ikon and the city Museum & Art Gallery, too late for artist-led space Grand Union, and culminated with a panel discussion at Eastside Projects.
PROJECT: STONE MUSIC
1st - 8th February 2012
Mike Adcock presented an opportunity to inhabit the extraordinary sound world of musical stone with an installation of tuned roof-slates from Mike's collection of over 200 tiles, which were played, in conjunction with other stone instruments, in performance and workshops for children and adults. Photos from events here.
Alongside the installation, artists including Bruce Allan, Su Billington, Sue Chudley, Sheila Farrell, John Forster, Lou Spira and Jacki Storey, responded to the project producing series of postcard-sized works hewn from materials such as heavy metals, oil paint and ring-binders.
RESIDENCY: JOANNE MASDING
13th - 29th January 2012
Birmingham-based artist, and member of the Lombard Method, Joanne Masding's practice enquires into the human drive to mark existence, and the acquisition of space and matter, that is a predominant cultural concern. With small-scale, simple gestures, Joanne attempts to reclaim a sense of proportion to the universe, constructing assemblages that account for themselves in simple terms. Seemingly insignificant occurances are recorded and presented as a way of discussing the consequences of filtering experience through a lens and using documentation as a means of validation.
At MEANTIME Jo's practice moved beyond the confines of interior architectural spaces to consider the location of the residency in the centre of Cheltenham, and her position as a visitor to the town. Photos from the residency event here. Introductory project presentation included a screening of Searching for the Wrong-Eyed Jesus (2003)
Read Chie Konishi's discussion of Joanne Masding's work here.