Next
Retrogression:
Phillip Henderson - Time Machine Lecture 8 / Time Machine Lecture 10
Alexander Stevenson - Eigg Lectures / Eigg Lectures Version 2
Oliver Sutherland - Nothing for Chroma Key / Untitled
Every Other Possible Kind of Fruit
Ongoing
Elements MA
Previous
Robert Ashley - Perfect Lives
Green Man & Regular Fellows - Reactor
Consequence of Retrospect - Karin Kihlberg and Reuben Henry
Flash Bang - Elisa Pône, Katie Davies
The Perception Instruction - Richard Paul, David Sherry
Joseph Beuys
ROTTERDAM VHS FESTIVAL - Exhibition and Short Film Evening
Joseph Beuys Lecture
Mark Essen - Eternal Atlas
Ben Woodeson - Violations #10 and #15
Oliver Sutherland - Nothing for Chroma Key
Jemma Egan - Swiss Dogs
Tomas Chaffe - Sometimes Artists Work Here
Abigail Reynolds - Mount Fear
Sarah Doyle - Jackson, Maddonna, Prince
Phillip Henderson - Time Machine Lecture #7
Endless Supply
Artur Zmijewski - 'Them'
Parasitical Event
Next
Retrogression
Three artists have been commissioned to produce new artwork based on an existing piece of their own artwork. Each date during the Retrogression programme will consist a live performance or headline event from one of the artists, accompanied by earlier versions of the artworks from all the artists including documentation of the live performances at subsequent events.
The lecture, story teller, physical performance and presentation devices come under the spotlight in the artworks selected, each involving differing levels of reuse, repetition and retelling, that reconfigure meaning and images through documentation, abstraction, and translation.
To be completely retrogressive artistically is an impossible state to achieve - we are always moving forward through time, experience and so forth, and even if we are not moving fast the world is, and so the conceptual connections and associations change and regroup slowly but consistently. There is no reverse to an earlier state, just development to another state.
All of the artists in the exhibition have worked with Trade at some point in the past, so curatorially speaking the choices of artist are intentionally tinged with a sense of retrospection, and re-treading covered ground.
Informed by a sense of political and economic retrogression, the programme has provided an opportunity for artists to use this sense of retrogression as a starting point for artistic adventure and escapism.
Monday 27th February, 6.15pm 2012
Phillip Henderson
Time Machine Lecture 10
60 Minutes
As if caught in a large game of Chinese whispers, each of Phillip Henderson's Time Machine Lectures contain a modified version of one or more of the past lectures. Remodelled, and rearranged, the lectures are created to suit the physical environment in which they are positioned adding in Henderson's current relation to the theory of time and space.
Time Machine Lecture #10 seems to collapse in on itself, as if the lecture is a transparent film, layered on top of the previous lecture - parts of previous lectures can be seen and parts obscured - ultimately the subject of space and time starts to warp the form of each ensuing Lecture.
A limited number of free tickets available here -
http://www.broadway.org.uk/events/film_phillip_henderson_time_machine_lecture_10
£1.50 Booking fee can be avoided if booked at the Broadway booking office in person.
Image: Jaskirt Dhaliwal and The Event 2011
Monday 12th March, 6.15pm
Alexander Stevenson
Eigg Lectures Version 2
60 Minutes
In essence the Eigg Lectures are an anthropological study into an island without indigenous people. The development of the work was greatly affected by suspicion of the islands current residents of being studied, and Stevenson's recreation of his own activities on the island in subsequent visits.
The Eigg Lectures Version 2 is a musing on the creation and re-telling of history through mythology, iconography, dance, music, story telling and Academic structures.
Booking Information to follow.
Monday 30th April, 6.15pm
Oliver Sutherland
Untitled
and
Post-Programme discussion
Broadly speaking Oliver Sutherland's artwork focuses on visual presentation tools, working with over used or aging presentation devices, which prod at our indifference to computer generated and transformed images.
Sutherland will present a short film based loosely on his previous work 'Nothing For Chroma Key'.
The Post-Programme discussion will bring together the different strands of the programme - Speakers TBC.
Booking details to follow shortly.
Retrogression curated by Bruce Asbestos / Trade Commissioned by
Broadway
Every Other Possible Kind Of Fruit
Spring 2012
Every Other Possible Kind Of Fruit is a series of short solo and group exhibitions in Trade.
More Information to follow
Time Machine Lecture 10
Time Machine Lecture #10 seems to collapse in on itself, as if the lecture is a transparent film, layered on top of the previous lecture - parts of previous lectures can be seen and parts obscured - ultimately the subject of space and time starts to warp the form of each ensuing Lecture.
http://www.broadway.org.uk/events/film_phillip_henderson_time_machine_lecture_10
£1.50 Booking fee can be avoided if booked at the Broadway booking office in person.
Image: Jaskirt Dhaliwal and The Event 2011
Eigg Lectures Version 2
The Eigg Lectures Version 2 is a musing on the creation and re-telling of history through mythology, iconography, dance, music, story telling and Academic structures.
Untitled
Sutherland will present a short film based loosely on his previous work 'Nothing For Chroma Key'.
The Post-Programme discussion will bring together the different strands of the programme - Speakers TBC. Booking details to follow shortly.
Retrogression curated by Bruce Asbestos / Trade Commissioned by Broadway
More Information to follow
ON GOING
Elements MA
Invited parties are currently being asked to offer ideas, which will form the foundation for a Master of Arts Programme. In the preliminary stages participants have been asked not to restrict their ideas to financial, physical, cultural or economic restraints, and to consider the Elements MA as both a hypothetical proposal and practical plan for an MA.
Trade is seeking ideas which are not feasible within existing institutions, that fall outside of the traditional MA Fine Art set-up or focus on currently under explored or unexplored territory.
Under the working title of the 'Elements MA' the programme is intended to be an additional educational route for individuals, groups and networks engaged in the broad field of contemporary art production, mediation and interpretation.
To access the widest set of ideas Trade is inviting participants from a range of backgrounds and professions, including artists, curators, writers, architects, academics and individuals from existing institutions, to submit ideas.
The specifics of the programme will be adapted to the requirements and contents of the ideas/proposals submitted. For instance, it maybe relevant for the MA to be assessed and verified, in the conventional way, or it maybe relevant avoid verification all together and simply use MA as a titular description of a set of activities that together create an educational pathway.
The proposals will be collated into a publication and presented within exhibitions and events at Trade gallery, and on the Trade website.
PREVIOUS
Robert Ashley - Perfect Lives
An opera for television
Perfect Lives was produced over a period of six years from 1977 - 1983, these dates neatly envelop the launch of the US Music channel MTV in 1981. Ashley took the music-plus-video format in a different direction to that of MTV, opting for elongated, and rambling narrative structures, Ashley defines this epic body of work as an 'opera-for-television'.
Visually, the works share many similarities with the visual experimentations of American New-Wave bands such as Talking Heads - the use of multi-layered visuals, 'green screens' and computer generated graphics and edits. Thematically, Perfect Lives also reflects much of the rye ironic wit of the time, and ponders the seemingly pedestrian end of the American dream, where life of possibility and promise ends up as a multiplicity of loosely connected, but ultimately meaningless list of decisions and ideas.
Although at times a challenge to watch, Perfect Lives, is a rewarding multi-disciplinary experiment that sought to imagine a future of opera that was uniquely American in style, proudly designed for the public arena and relentlessly inventive in form.
Each of the seven episodes will be available at specific times during the day (please see gallery information for more details.)
Invited by the artist and producer of the project, Candice Jacobs, to work in tandem with the exhibition, ‘An action, event or other thing that occurs or happens again’, Perfect Lives echoes the main themes of the adjacent exhibition space - repetition, and the relationship between sounds and image in the creation of meaning and experience.
As an exhibition within an exhibition, Perfect Lives adds an additional perspective to the dialogue between audio and visuals presented within the larger multi-site exhibition, and the selection, made collaboratively, was also intended to mimic the repetitive, sampled theme - the artwork was selected from a pre-existing selection made by the artist.
An exhibition with the exhibition An action, event or other thing that occurs or happens again Curated by Candice Jacobs
One Thoresby Street, Trade Gallery & Bonington Gallery, Nottingham
Reactor
The Green Man & Regular Fellows
Friday 30 September 6 pm - 11 pm
Saturday 1 October 6 pm - 11 pm
Sunday 2 October 12:00 pm - 2:30 pm and 6:30 pm - 9:30 pm
www.thegreenman.vze.com
The Green Man & Regular Fellows is a newly commissioned, live artwork in the form of a pub,
complete with adjoining function room. Here Reactor's interest in the the nature of membership
as a social construct manifests itself in a series of temporary groups and levels of fellowship. The
structure of the work plays with the traditions and conventions of the 'public house' and 'private
members' clubs', producing unexpectedly dis lodged behaviours.
This brief materialisation of The Green Man & Regular Fellows presents a set of mysteries,
inviting speculation about its symbols and purpose. Where did it come from, and who is it for?
The Green Man & Regular Fellows offers membership, invites you in for drinks and provides
a rich environment of song, laughter and games. As the Landlord calls upon the Regulars to lend
a hand and the more Irregular members burst out of the back rooms, the atmosphere increasingly
becomes more intense and behaviours more frenzied. It will soon become clear why our Regular
Fellows like to come back time and time again.
If membership is not for you, and you prefer not to participate, the Function Room will house
Reactor's new video installation, The Guild.
Whichever position you choose, you will receive a warm welcome.
Want to know more?
Just sign-up to receive our regular newsletter, and apply for membership at the 'The Green Man &
Regular Fellows' website www.thegreenman.vze.com
The Green Man & Regular Fellows is a 'members only' social pub for over 18s, early application
for membership is recommended to avoid disappointment. However, events in the Function
Room are open to non-members of any age.
Note to Editors:
Reactor is an art collective based in the UK. Reactor creates scenarios that assemble new
collective realities where audiences and those involved with the group co-participate. Through
ongoing research into belief systems and their place in collective action, Reactor explores the ways
in which culture and common beliefs hold together specific social groups. Seeking to transcend
the parameters of an exhibition; Reactor employ an extensive and lateral development of the
possibilities of what the artwork can be, encouraging it to spill out from its initial structure into an
expanded field of activity.
'The Green Man & Regular Fellows' is a new artwork created by a newly assembled Reactor,
including core members Niki Russell and Dan Williamson, guest member Stuart Tait and host
member Bruce Asbestos (Director of Trade Gallery).
Recent Reactor projects include:
Double Take Triple Give - MoBY (Israel); Big Lizards Big Idea - Donau Festival (Austria),
Wunderbar Festival (UK) and Schirn Kunsthalle (Germany); The Munkanon Centre - The Model
(Ireland) and The Knot (Germany); The Geodecity Project, Grizedale (UK) and SSW (UK); and The
Tetra Phase - Castlefield Gallery (UK).
www.reactorweb.com
Trade is an artist-run gallery based in Nottingham. Trade Gallery has been developed to provide
additional routes of engagement and criticism with contemporary art, through exhibitions, events,
articles and online interviews.
Recent exhibitions at Trade gallery include:
Karin Kihlberg & Reuben Henry - Consequence of Retrospect; Elisa Pône, Katie Davies - Flash
Bang; Richard Paul, David Sherry - The Perception Instruction; Artur Zmijewski - Them; Tomas
Chaffe - Sometimes Artists Work Here; Abigail Reynolds - Mount Fear; and Joseph Beuys, 'I like
America and America Likes Me'.
For further information, images or interviews please contact:
Bruce Asbestos
Trade Gallery
One Thoresby Street, (off Pennyfoot Street)
Nottingham
NG1 1AJ
www.tradegallery.org
+44(0)7970188769
post@tradegallery.org
This project is supported by Arts Council England
Consequence of Retrospect
Karin Kihlberg and Reuben Henry
07.05.2011 - 04.06.2011
07.05.2011 - 04.06.2011
Taking a selection of video artworks from the last seven years of collective practice the exhibition Karin Kihlberg & Reuben Henry : Consequence of retrospect; draws together a series of artworks that use cinematic devices, forms and structures as departure points for exploring relationships between the viewer and the (moving) image.
Specifically, in each piece of work in the exhibition, one or more crucial cinematic device is missing, replaced, or used within an unfamiliar context. With cinematic reality and imagination somewhat undone, the structure is laid bare, reminding us that the seductive power of cinema is reliant on the complete collaboration of all of its devices.
By their nature these works are consequences of retrospective activity, edited and arranged after the fact, to form some coherent, or intentionally incoherent sense in relation to familiar modes and forms of films.
It is within this seductive language that a number of different themes are smuggled; the reliability of documentary video, the intimidating power of high culture, the behavioural science of meeting new people and the condition of the film in the memory of the viewer, to name a few.
In all of these subjects lies a questioning of the formal and social norms of viewership, and what is expected both of the viewer and producer.
The exhibition Karin Kihlberg & Reuben Henry : Consequence of retrospect will be the first solo exhibition to use all three public spaces in the building.
Karin Kihlberg & Reuben Henry have been collaborating since 2004. They live and work in London - Recent Exhibitions include: Artsway, Apeirophobia, Sway, New Forest, UK - ASPEX Gallery, Portsmouth, UK- Galleri BOX, Gothenburg, SE, Danielle Arnaud Contemporary Art, Abandon in Place, London, UK - VIVID, Inbindable Volume, Birmingham, UK
Trade is an artist-run gallery based in Nottingham. Trade Gallery has been developed to provide additional routes of engagement and criticism with contemporary art, through exhibitions, events, articles and online interviews. www.tradegallery.org
Recent exhibitions at Trade gallery include Elisa Pône, Katie Davies - Flash Bang, Richard Paul, David Sherry - The Perception Instruction,_ Artur Zmijewski - Them, Tomas Chaffe - Sometimes Artists Work Here and Abigail Rynolds - Mount Fear, Joseph Beuys, - I like America and America Likes Me.
Opening times:
Friday 11am - 6pm
Saturday 12pm - 5pm
To view the exhibition outside of these times please contact the gallery - post@tradegallery.org or call +44(0)7970188769
Trade Gallery
One Thoresby Street, (off Pennyfoot Street)
Nottingham
NG1 1AJ
www.tradegallery.org
+44(0)7970188769
Flash Bang - Elisa Pône, Katie Davies
15.04.2011 - 29.04.2011
Private View - 14th April 8pm - 10pm (Following on from Nottingham Contemporary's opening)
Flash Bang comprises two works - Elisa Pône's I'm looking for something to believe in, 2007 and Katie Davies' 38th Parallel, 2008.
In form at least, the structure of the exhibition is largely the same as the previous exhibition The Perception Instruction, it therefore seems appropriate to repeat a slightly modified version of the introductory paragraph:
Placing these two artworks together, at a very basic level, encourages us to look for patterns and similarities between the artworks, which appear both incidentally and intentionally. From the outset the works have little in common, aside from the fact that they are both video works, shown in the same space.
Some Assumptions
- The works may act as a counterbalance to one another.
- The calm but politically intense 38th Parallel might balance out the visually climatic, and audibly explosive I'm looking for something to believe in.
- The combination of both works in the gallery might lead the sense of one or other astray.
Additional information
- Katie Davies' 38th Parallel was filmed at the Demilitarized Zone on the border between North and South Korea, a boarder that has been in place since the Korean War ended in 1953, and is one of the most heavily militarized borders in the world.
Editors notes
Elisa Póne, lives and works in Paris - Recent Exhibitions include: Musique Plastique, Galerie du jour agnés, Paris - Ils chantent et ils jouent, les gens entrent, Maison des arts de Grand Quevilly, France - Decadence and Decay, Mol's Place, London- Bons baisers de Bialystok, Bialystok, Poland - Let's Dance, Musée d'Art Contemporain du Val-de-Marne, Vitry sur Seine, France -
Loading, PM galerie, Berlin, Germany
Katie Davies, lives and works in Bristol - Recent Exhibitions include: 15, S1 Artspace, Sheffield, UK - IDEAL #12, SAISON VIDEO, Espace Croisé, Roubaix, France - Spring Screen 2010, Spacex, Exeter, UK - Seriously..? University of Hertfordshire, Hatfield, UK - The Salon Video Art Prize, MRA Project Space, London UK
Trade is an artist-run gallery based in Nottingham. Trade Gallery has been developed to provide additional routes of engagement and criticism with contemporary art, through exhibitions, events, articles and online interviews. www.tradegallery.org
Recent exhibitions at Trade gallery include Richard Paul, David Sherry - The Perception Instruction, Artur Zmijewski - Them, Tomas Chaffe - Sometimes Artists Work Here and Abigail Rynolds - Mount Fear, Joseph Beuys, 'I like America and America Likes Me'.
Opening times:
Friday 11am - 6pm
Saturday 12pm - 5pm
To view the exhibition outside of these times please contact the gallery - post@tradegallery.org or +44(0)7970188769
Trade Gallery
One Thoresby Street, (off Pennyfoot Street)
Nottingham
NG1 1AJ
www.tradegallery.org
+44(0)7970188769
The Perception Instruction
Richard Paul, David Sherry
18.02.2011 - 05.03.2011
The Perception Instruction
Richard Paul, David Sherry
The Perception Instruction positions two artworks together: Richard Paul's The Stereo Realist 2011 and David Sherry's Open 2008.
Placing these two artworks together, at a very basic level, encourages us to look for patterns and similarities between the artworks, which may appear incidentally or intentionally. From the outset the works have little in common, aside from the fact that they are both video works.
The Perception Instruction is (or will be) created out of accidental and intentional connections exclusive to the pairing of these particular artworks. Between the two artworks we might see an erratic dialogue, a complementary dialogue or any shade of grey in between.
Awareness, patterns, similarities and connections between the artworks can be heightened and modified as the work is transmuted into a gallery's press release. For example, this press release was written weeks before the work is installed in the gallery, so the exhibition outlined here is an approximation of future events. In other words, the press release about the exhibition is based on a hypothetical, imagined exhibition, which this press release will later come to describe.
Furthermore, the press release cannot respond - as it is already written - to any events, or observations that arise at the time of the exhibition, and so it is limited in scope to talk about the experience of the work beyond that of a preconceived and imagined conditions of the (future) exhibition.
As the perception of the work within this setup has a focus on physical experience of the artworks in the gallery, the press release will not describe the artworks any further only to give some additional information and some assumptions which may be useful when in the gallery.
Additional information
The quotes in Richard Paul's The Stereo Realist are based on Henri Bergson's Matter and Memory and Dave Hickey's views on the difference between 16th C and 17th C painting.
Some assumptions
The dual images within Richard Paul's The Stereo Realist may mirror the relationship between the two artworks in the Trade gallery space, in that, at moments the works may look like they do relate to each other, but probably only because of their proximity - that they are in the same room.
Editors notes
Richard Paul, lives and works in London - Recent Exhibitions include: Richard Paul, Theodore Art, New York - Make, Believe, Blank Gallery, Brighton, UK - Cabin Fever,, On Gallery , Oslo , Norway - In Substantiality, Theodore:Art New York, USA - Indoor Life, Walden Affairs , Den Haag , Netherlands - I Was A Teenage Hand Model Too, Seventeen, London
David Sherry, lives and works in Glasgow - Recent Exhibitions include: Mothers tankstation, Dublin, Royal Standard, Liverpool Biennial, UK, One fine morning in May, GAK, Bremen, I am not here, De Appel boys school, Amsterdam, Singing Yoghurt, Log Gallery. Bergamo, Italy
Trade is an artist-run gallery based in Nottingham. Trade Gallery has been developed to provide additional routes of engagement and criticism with contemporary art, through exhibitions, events, articles and online interviews. www.tradegallery.org
Recent exhibitions at Trade gallery include Artur Zmijewski - Them, Tomas Chaffe - Sometimes Artists work here and Abigail Rynolds - Mount Fear, Joseph Beuys, 'I like America and America Likes Me'.
Bruce Asbestos is an artist and curator and the director of Trade gallery. Bruce was previously a director of Moot Gallery, and Stand Assembly Studios, Nottingham www.bruceasbestos.info.
Opening times
Friday 9am - 6pm
Saturday 12pm - 5pm
To view the exhibition outside of these times please contact the gallery - post@tradegallery.org
Trade Gallery
One Thoresby Street, (off Pennyfoot Street)
Nottingham
NG1 1AJ
www.tradegallery.org
+44(0)7970188769
Joseph Beuys
I like America and America likes me
22.10.2010 - 18.12.2010
36 years ago in May 1974, Beuys spent three days in a gallery in New York with a coyote.
After arriving at the airport he was swathed in felt and loaded into an ambulance, and driven directly to the Rene Block Gallery. Beuys spent the next few days with the coyote - its behaviour shifting from cautious to aggressive, indifferent to companionable reacting to Beuys's shepherd like actions, and the fifty new copies of the Wall Street Journal delivered each day. At the end of the three days, Beuys was again wrapped in felt and returned to the airport without having once touched American soil.
The work 'I like America and America likes me' connects together some of the vital strands of Beuys's practice; performance, political debate and his trademark use of felt and animals (often in the form of animal fat).
Beuys is said to have seen the coyote as a symbol of native Americans and the debasement of the coyote as symbolic both of the damage done by white men to the American continent and its native cultures, and on the Vietnamese people during Vietnam war - which eventually ended a year after the action took place on April 30, 1975.
The exhibition of 'I like America, and America likes me' at Trade Gallery provides a rare opportunity to see the documentation of Beuys's most famous action in isolation. It will also provide a chance to engage and reconsider the importance of the artwork in relation to the current social, political and artistic climate - and that of the work of contemporary artists in the British Art Show and Sideshow which the exhibition at Trade co-insides with.
Private View - 22.10.2010 - from 11pm (Special late opening to coincide with the launch of the British Art Show 7 and Sideshow in Nottingham)
Joseph Beuys
I like America and America likes me - Lecture and Panel Discussion
13.11.2010
Lecture, Broadway Cinema 12:45pm - 2:30pm
Curator of Trade, Bruce Asbestos, will give a context to the artwork 'I like America and America likes me' by Joseph Beuys including a panel discussion by Frank Abbott and John Plowman
Free tickets can be booked at the Broadway box office (1.50 booking fee applies if purchased over the phone or online) http://www.broadway.org.uk/
Download the lecture here
Rotterdam VHS Festival
13.11.2010 Screening
13.11.2010 - 18.11.2010 Exhibition
Screening from 7pm
Exhibition open 12-4pm daily and by appointment runs until 18th November
Trade is working with The Rotterdam VHS Festival to present a group exhibition by Dutch and Central European artists in the Attic accompanied by an evening of short experimental film.
The Rotterdam VHS festival takes place in the artist run space, "Kunst "&" Complex", and is currently located in a former factory building on the edge of Rotterdam's city centre. Rotterdam VHS festival is organised by Niels Post, Jeroen Bosch, Jeroen Kuster, Han Hoogerbrugge and Leon Duenk.
The Rotterdam VHS Festival will feature artwork by;
Abner Preis, Aeneas Wilder, Anja Masling, Ate M Hes, Bryan Fu, Casandra Tytler, Daniele Pario Perra, Danny Plotnik, Dennis Madalone, Deven Green, Egill Saebjornsson, Ellen Lake, Flimfilm, Franzis Wiese, Han Hoogerbrugge, Hope Tucker, Jasper van Es, Jeroen Kuster, Joe Kisser, Johannes Maier, JR, Leon Duenk, Maxime Tymenko, De Hondekoekjesfabriek, Mendel Hardeman, Niels Post, Poh Wang, Rik de Boe, Sietske Tjallingii, Tomas Schats, Winkel "&" Koperl, B.A.M.B.I., Niels Post, Ate M Hes, Gummbah "&" Chantal Rens,Matthias Wermke "&" Mischa Leinkauf, Erik Olofson, and 10 years of VHS opening/closing credits.
Entrance is free - reserve your place by emailing post@tradegallery.org
See event on Facebook
Mark Essen
02.10.2010 - 16.10.2010
Opening 04.09.2010 7pm - 9pm
Trade is pleased to present a solo exhibition by Mark Essen.
Essen's artwork has previously included record exchanges, morris men and ambiguous film work.
To coincide with the show is a new text about the work by Tyler Woolcott (see below)
Recent exhibitions include - Meanwhile in Birmingham, Rougue Studios, Manchester, Children of the Reservation - Central Reservation, Bristol, VIDEO PROGETTO-
26cc, Rome, Mark Essen record exchange and celebration - Testing Ground, 176 / Zabludowicz Collection, London
See event on Facebook
Eternal Atlas - Text by Tyler Woolcott
If the luminous figure of Atlas first reentered the popular imagination with Ayn Rand's 1957 novel Atlas Shrugged, as an embodiment of the earnest rationalism necessary for modern capitalism, then the famous Titan's Reagan-era incarnation on the cover of Van Halen's 1986 album 5150, with the equally timeless hit 'Why Can't This Be Love,' seems to eerily epitomize the Atlas-in-an-age-of-excess prefigured by Rand a generation earlier.
Weaving together visual topoi from the myth of Atlas circulating throughout popular culture and classical literature such as these, Mark Essen's Eternal Atlas, 2008, explores the myth's shifting modes of representation through time and different media. Eternal Atlas playfully subverts these representations by adding antagonistic new layers to the Greek god's increasingly Frankensteinlike identity.
What began as an oral tale passed down through generations is transformed into a digital visual experience void of its original mode of transmission - sound and the spoken word. A sense of longing for the past however is kept in check by the artist's lighthearted embrace and appropriation of contemporary visual symbols and references. By substituting the burden of Atlas' heavenly sphere for a large glittering ball, updating the backdrop of the ancient cosmos with a digitally rendered image taken by the Hubble telescope, and putting a sleek professional black bodybuilder in the starring role, Essen's Eternal Atlas is a comment not only on the myth's enduring legacy, but also the slippery conventions that it presents us with. The idiom of male fortitude or issues of race, for example, or the worldly concepts, such as Rand's, that the Titan has been called upon to represent and uphold.
Spinning without end atop an invisible pivot, Eternal Atlas stands not only as a nod to the timeless human drive for collective storytelling, but also points to how our culture has come to identify itself through the myths of the past, and from out of which new ones are continually created.
Ben Woodeson
Violations #10 and #15
04.09.2010 - 19.09.2010
04.09 - 19.09.2010
Opening 04.09.2010 6pm - 8pm
Both artworks featured in Ben Woodeson's exhibition at Trade are aesthetic repercussions of designing machines that flout health and safety rules, which govern space, movement and intention.
The motion activated vacuum pump of Violation #10 removes the atmosphere from the sealed gallery, literally, but subtly, modifying the physics of the space. This artwork is complemented by Violation #15 a visually seductive contorting, black noose-like form that whips and rubs the gallery walls and floor.
Like sawing through a branch on which you are sat, the works invite us to consider the inevitability of their own Tom and Jerry style demise. Whether the gallery would eventually implode or be stroked to death, taking the works with them, is actually of little consequence - what the artworks offer is a very human trait - to be the masters of their own downfall.
Recent exhibitions include: The Tomorrow People, Elevator Gallery, London - Die Panke, Berlin - The Electric Return of Revenge, LoBe, Berlin - Scary stupid spinning thing, The Tank Room, London - Chemical Spill, Space (Foyer), London - Me love you long time (AKA Five in Five), Basement 43, London - Twisted (Selected Works), Electrohype, Skanes Konstforenings, Malmo, Sweden.
See www.woodeson.co.uk for further information.
Oliver Sutherland
Nothing for Chroma Key
04.08.2010 - 19.08.2010
Image - Nothing for Chroma Key installed in the attic of One Thoresby Street
04.08 - 19.08.2010
Opening 04.08.2010 6pm - 8pm
Commonly used in televised weather reports, Chroma keying is a technique for compositing two separate film scenes together. Typically, a colour is removed from one of the digitally layered scenes so that the film underneath is revealed. This technique often fails if a presenter accidentally wears or reflects similar colour as the Chroma Key.
In Sutherland's setup in 'Nothing For Chroma Key' a slender man dressed head to toe in a bright, unnaturally green bodysuit is felling a Norwegian Spruce. The unknown motive of the character's primitive like actions, and the fetish look of the synthetic bodysuit riddles the scene with conflicting, ambiguous symbols. The work prods at our indifference to computer generated and transformed images.
Recent exhibitions include - Acid House "&" Water Colours, The Exchange Gallery - Gloria, Bash, London - Tischtennis, Rhys "&" Hannah Present..., Bristol - Can We Stay Over Tonight? Plan9, Bristol - Journey to the Centre of the Earth, Newyn Art Gallery, Cornwall
Jemma Egan
Swiss Dogs
04.08.2010 - 19.08.2010
04.08 - 19.08.2010
Opening 04.08.2010 6pm - 8pm
Famed for its legendary mountain rescues, the St. Bernard dog's name originates from a travellers' hospice on the often-treacherous St. Bernard Pass in the Western Alps between Switzerland and Italy. The pass, the lodge, and the dogs are all named after Bernard of Menthon, the 11th century monk who established the station.
Although not trapped on a mountain in any dramatic film-worthy way, Egan, was by all accounts culturally stranded during her stay in Switzerland; she knows enough German to ask, but not enough French to understand. And so, Egan remained in a one-way call for help throughout her stay.
The repetitious interpretations of the image of the St. Bernard's dog illustrates her unfulfilled desire to engage in dialogue with Swiss culture and her ad hoc strategy to keep sane, whilst stranded.
Recent exhibitions include - Global Studio, The Bluecoat Liverpool - No Soul For Sale, Tate Modern London - Miscellany, Outlet Gallery Manchester - All Change, Rogue Project Space Manchester.
Tomas Chaffe
Sometimes Artists Work Here
10.07.2010 - 31.07.2010
Opening 10.07.2010 6pm - 8pm
Tomas Chaffe will present Sometimes Artists Work Here a new artwork, commissioned by Trade gallery.
The work comprises a vinyl banner, often seen on temporary shops and businesses (of which there are many in the area), a photograph and postcard all containing the same slogan. The temporary and make-do feel of the banner neatly complements the building's uncertain future.
Reflecting on both the physical location of the gallery, on a busy main road in the heart of a redevelopment zone and the site of the gallery within a cultural complex of artists studios - Sometimes Artists Work Here is an unforgiving take on the state of affairs of the gallery and building.
Recent exhibitions include - Saturday, Sunday art fair, Berlin - A Strangers Window, Nottingham Castle Museum and Art Gallery - Gallery, Galerie, Galleria, Norma Mangione, Turin and Present Future, Artissima 16, Turin
Abigail Reynolds
Mount Fear (East London Police Statistics for violent crimes 2002-3)
19.06.2010 - 03.07.2010
Attic, One Thoresby Street
Visualising the frequency and position of crimes in East London, Mount Fear's troubled terrain of peaks and troughs gives massive physical form to hard numerical data. Central to the work is the dramatic contrast between the sedate forms of the cardboard vista and that of the violence that the mountainous forms represent; areas with the highest recorded violent crimes have the highest peaks.
Huge swathes of data, including that used in Mount Fear are deployed within the public domain to shape our perception and fear of crime in every day life. Mount Fear could be interpreted as a metaphor for an anxious society fixated on numerical justification and accountability.
Recent exhibitions include - Seventeen Gallery London, Voges Gallery Frankfurt, Ceri Hand Liverpool, Villa Arson Nice, Gimpel Fils London, Nettie Horn London, Leicester City Gallery.
Sarah Doyle
Jackson, Madonna, Prince
19.06.2010 - 03.07.2010
Trade Gallery, One Thoresby Street
Sarah Doyle's lively series of drawings are created on the pages of a colouring book - of which the printed, bubbly outlines of monkeys, houses, gardens, jolly looking people and so forth are still visible. Printed images like these are approximations of reality, and at early age form the foundations of our ability to read, recognise and participate with images, icons and symbols.
Doyle's felt tip pen drawings respond to the call of the book, to colour in, but the response uses a completely different set of imagery, that of iconic pop stars. In spite of what we know about the subject matter - Michael Jackson, Prince, Madonna - Doyle's multifarious representations manage to carve out a space that avoids a kind of pop art nausea caused by an over-familiarity with the subject, and the interpretation of the subject in art.
In short her deployment of two sets of imagery, the book's, and the pop stars' complicates our reading of the work and creating a deeply peculiar and idiosyncratic set of drawings.
Trade will present a selection of artworks from Doyle's series of 100 Michael Jacksons, 100 Madonnas, 100 Princes, in the main gallery space.
Recent exhibitions include - 'The Nexus Treatment', Space Station Sixty-Five Gallery and 'Celebrated Sobriquets', The Surgery London. Group Exhibitions include - Transition Gallery, London, Primo Alonso, London The Portman Gallery, , London and Elevator Gallery, London. Doyle's work also includes collaborations with
Elle magazine, Tatty Devine, Upset! The Rhythm, Surface 2 Air.
Phillip Henderson
Time Machine Lecture #7
Time Machine Lecture #7
play ( quicktime .mov)
Time Machine Lecture #6
play
Phillip Henderson will demonstrate the machine at 20:45 BST (GMT+1) on Thursday 15th April 2010 at Trade, One Thoresby Street, Nottingham.
The Time Machine Lecture #7 will refer to the primordial chief's invisible book The Primordial Phrase - a cochlean exposition of cacophonics. Previously unheard readings from the warhorse appendix will occur, followed by a demonstration of the machine.
Doors at 8:30pm for 8:45pm. Free admission.
Trade
1 Thoresby Street
Nottingham
NG1 1AJ
Image: time machine lecture #6
Endless Supply #10
- Guest curated by Trade
Including work by, Butje (Berndnaut Smilde, Vincent Bruijn and Jeroen Brouwer)
Russell Herron, Brian Kennon, Alexander Stevenson, Heidi Vogels
and Richard Paul.
The magazine was launched at The Reading Room to coincide with the opening of Trade Gallery.
Downloadable PDF available here
Artur Zmijewski
Them
20th February - 13th March 2010
