Animals in Motion, the photographic examination of animal movement by Eadweard Muybridge, contains a female tigress sequentially captured in plate136. According to the anatomical details, the tigress is walking for .075 second, one-half stride in 9 phases. The minute action shown over twelve images evokes predatory sensibilities. Her motion is dissected for acute analysis, both revealing and disarming her, for scientific purposes.
Read MoreLet me share with you my experience of a recent performance by the artist Kathryn Ashill. I had arrived at the crowded basement gallery space some time before, and was waiting for an opportunity to get into a separate tented area, set out to resemble a fairground fortune teller’s tent.
Read MoreSocially engaged practice was originally intended to operate outside of the boundaries of the art establishment and of established art practice. It was an attempt to democratise arts practice (which was/is seen as elitist) and in many cases to restore and reinvigorate communities that were ravaged by the after effects of the Second World War and economic decline. Socially engaged projects generally contain an activist edge and are motivated to address a particular issue or achieve a particular end. It seems however that artists have painted themselves into a corner with current attempts by government to achieve measurable benefit-outcomes for the arts.
Read MoreEntering the upstairs gallery at Meantime Project Space we are suddenly propelled into two identical landscapes. An installation comprising two looped 16mm film projections, Figure in Landscape consists of two scenes projected almost floor to ceiling, side by side. On the right a solitary, eerie landscape – a small copse; on the left, within the same landscape, a jittering ghost-like figure, barely distinguishable, disappearing at times, dwarfed by nature, running along the copse’s edge, falling, struggling to find a way to enter it.
Read MoreIt started with a word on a map. One of those places you hear of but never visit: Purgatory. We’d read about it, seen it in pictures, in art galleries, in the movies, though it had never been real. But there it was, just up the hill from our studio, marked on the OS map in that fine roman script. We don’t know why it is there, and we don’t want to know. We prefer to make up our own story, to imagine the stories that lie behind it.
Read MoreAlpha #4 is part of a continuing project to investigate and retrace a drawing experiment. Hunched over a desk, studying publications gathered from the ‘withdrawn’ stock of libraries, the artist/researcher delves into the history of comparative psychology. The aim is to unearth the records of one particular test subject, a female chimpanzee named Alpha, born in the 1930s.
Read More‘Art is not, in the first instance, political because of the message and sentiments it conveys concerning the state of the world […] (It is political) because of the type of space and time that it institutes, and the manner in which it frames its time and people in space’
Read MoreThe glass in the windows is frosted but enough light gets through to reveal that this is a workshop. There are tools hung on hooks, and there are benches. The colours and smells make of the place one surface, our presence a danger to its integrity. True, we can be seen as hostiles for more obvious reasons given that we have broken in. But already we consider ourselves guardians, even against those who might yet come to commence their instrument-making.
Read MoreMeantime welcomes Neil Chapman and David Stent and their proposed project of writing, eloquently set out in their initial statement, this project will take place over the next three weeks that takes up their residency and has been entitled ‘Writing as Occupation’.
Read MoreAs a part of the introduction of her works to new audiences in Cheltenham, Joanne Masding, the artist-in-residence at Meantime during January 2012, was asked to choose a film to screen. Searching For The Wrong-Eyed Jesus, directed by Andrew Douglas, follows musician Jim White on a road-trip across the American Deep South. In the trunk of his car is a statue of Jesus. Throughout the trip, White meets people and listens to their life stories, travelling from churches to prison, coalmines to juke joints
Read More‘Constructed Reality’ is a body of work made in response to the exploration of what it means to archive; do we lose even more authenticity through secondary representation? My main line of focus for this exploration will be specifically on the documentation of short-lived or temporary art.
Read MoreHelen –
Since you asked me to write something about your work at Meantime I’ve been trying to think back specifically to the conversation we had about ‘HH TE…’, but it’s increasingly hard to recall. And I (mis)remember subsequent conversations, and previous ones, words get dropped and never found again. Anyhow, here’s my attempt at recovering them... It’s great you realised this work at Meantime; the space exists to create that work.
Sarahb x
Read MoreSlavoj Zizek is without doubt the star philosopher and cultural critic hailing from Slovenia and the University of Ljubljana. His nervous mannerisms and sharp wit, allied to a prodigious grasp of contemporary culture, make him nothing less than compelling whether on the written page or in the lecture hall.
Read MoreWe were led into a large room with a very high ceiling – it seemed to be an old industrial building. The place was unused, but still in fairly good condition. The floor was herring bone parquet; the kind you see in many church halls. Arranged in the centre of the room was a long trestle table with tablecloths on, and a large boiler at the end. A cheerful man with a beard was wearing an apron and serving tea and cakes, for which there were fifteen or so takers. There were little festoons of flags and bunting around the walls.
Read MoreIt would seem today, that the more we want things to change the more they stay the same. For Godard the world cannot really change or improve if film itself does not improve. The world seemingly unfolds as a bad script, it is to film that we have the opportunity to change this fact. But as Godard makes clear in this film, cinema has so often misunderstood its own historicity.
Read MoreMay ’68 swept down on France like an avalanche, and no sooner had it appeared then it disappeared, mysteriously, practically without a trace. It seemed to implode in on itself like a black hole swallowing everything into it. Where had all the energy gone? For Jean Baudrillard May ’68 was the first event that corresponded to this inertial point of the political scene. For this reason it marks a point of interruption.
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