BEYOND is an opportunity for people to explore spirituality through a variety of creative approaches. The aims of BEYOND are:
To help people to a deeper understanding of spirituality through the arts and other creative activities.
To explore non-traditional ways of being Christian.
To be a resource for church people who wish to further explore their relationship with God.
Using art, poetry, philosophy and theology, BEYOND curates provocative spaces in order to inspire and stimulate discussion.The installations and events create environments for questions and grappling with ideas about God without signing up to an established line of dogmatic thought.
6th May sees the launch of their ART FROM THE EDGE exhibition as part of the Brighton Artists Open House festival. The sub-title to this evening event is 'a spiritual private view', and it will be a chance to view the art along with some reflections and meditations inspired by this work and the situations of the artists involved.
ART FROM THE EDGE is an exhibition featuring work from and about the marginalised of society. St Luke's Prestonville hosts drop-ins for homeless and various recovery groups and the artworks on display will be work created by people from these groups or by artists working with them. This exhibition will be an eclectic mix of styles and formats and will give a glimpse into the world of those in our society who are often seen as being excluded or unable to contribute.
The image above is a pointillist sketch in ballpoint pen created by Richard Fletcher which will be on display with other examples of his work.
This weekend (6 - 8 April), however, the associate film Dry Room is being displayed at Tate Modern in Inside Job, which presents works by 135 employees from Tate Britain, Tate Modern, Tate Liverpool and Tate St Ives, including painting, photography and sculptures. Tonight I was at the PV with Director & Co-Designer, Zi Ling, and Story writer & Producer, Eldarin Yeong.
Inspired by Surrealism art and the Story Stem technique - used by psychologists to study children's inner world, the story of Dry Room follows three adopted children who are the survivors of childhood trauma. Natalie, a victim of child neglect and sexual abuse; Christopher lost his parents in an accident; Jack suffered domestic violence from his alcoholic parents. To escape from their haunting experiences, they embark on a journey of self-discovery and encounter many demons of the past.
Set in a Magritte-styled room, this performance installation gives an intriguing cinematic perspective to a narrative dance, by combining live music and conceptual art. Dry Room is directed and co-designed by Ling and the emerging designer Tong Zhao (Royal Shakespeare Company, Harper's Bazaar 150th Anniversary exhibition, Paris Fashion Week). Live music is played by the talented Spanish experimental cellist Carolina Bartumeu (Royal Albert Hall, Wigmore Hall, Berlin Philharmoniker). Dry Room features Italian minimalist composer Giovanni Sollima's heartbreaking cello solo, Alone, and improvised music by Carolina Bartumeu.
A series of delicate veils fill the central atrium of Fabrica’s building, a former church: rising from floor to ceiling, diffusing the light, obscuring the way forward. Two narrow passages, carefully pierced through the veined walls, invite us in. At the centre of the work one clear viewpoint toward the filtered light from the main window is revealed, an experience the artist compares to the flash of light reportedly observed when close to death.
Fragility, like much of the artist’s work over the past decade, re-appropriates animal viscera. In this instance caul fat, a membrane that holds the vital organs together, is transformed from a perishable waste product of the pork industry into a sublimely beautiful translucent material via a lengthy chemical process akin to embalming.
Beyond its sensory impact, much of the pleasure in the work lies in understanding its inherent contradictions: the disconnect between the initial state of the material and its aesthetically pleasing result; the artist’s need to witness decay and her effort to halt it, and her desire to bury the viewer in a corporeal labyrinth whilst all the time suggesting a dimension beyond the physical."
"Hadzi-Vasileva works site-specifically across sculpture, installation, video and sound, photography and architectural intervention. Central to her practice is a response to the particularities of place: its history, locale, environment and communities and the materials she chooses to work with are determined by the particularities of the commission she is undertaking."
"She has exhibited extensively and realised numerous commissions nationally and internationally, in gallery spaces, museums and within the public realm. Past sites and commissions include Pied à Terre London, Gloucester Cathedral Gloucester, Towner Gallery Eastbourne, Southgate Bath, L’H du Siège France, Kilmainham Gaol Museum Ireland, 51st Venice Biennale and Public Room Skopje."
She has exhibited previously at Fabrica when for re/sort, she "devised a delicate ‘altar screen’ of fish bones as a new site specific installation for Fabrica’s church interior." In addition, she "re-created epidermis, a whirlpool of salmon skins suspended on shimmering threads."
Her major new work Haruspex is currently presented at the Pavilion of the Holy See at the 56th Venice Biennale, until 22 November 2015. Haruspex is a site specific installation responding to the theme In the Beginning … the Word became flesh and further inspired by Van Eyck's The Adoration of the Mystic Lamb. This "monumental architectural installation, whose “fabric” is almost a skin, a mantle, welcomes visitors both in a physical and symbolic dimension at the same time. Realized with organic waste materials in a way which leads from the ready-made to the re-made, the artist creates a cloth that is both an embroidery and surface skin, physical presence and transparency, an instrument of suggestion and surprise."
"Fragility generates many questions concerning our attitudes to decay and finitude. It is the second of three artist works connected to the theme of death and dying that Fabrica is producing until 2017 as part of the Into That Good Night exhibition and events programme. Each of these commissions explores an aspect of mortality or morbidity via the artist’s work and through discussions and other events in the gallery programme. Visit the blog for more information."
The Craft Market at the St Peter's Flower Festival includes a stall selling books of local history by Ron Jeffries plus designer items from local success story Emily Dupen-Hopkins. Aldborough Hatch: The Village in the Suburbs is a lively, often amusing and sometimes revealing journey across the centuries – from the time when the forest of Essex covered much of Fairlop Plain to the present day when the traffic on the A12 on its southern boundary roars past on its way into mainland Europe and far beyond - while Just an Essex Lad takes a largely humorous approach to Ron's own life. His latest volume is entitled 'A slice of this and a bit of that'. It includes chapters about
‘Health and safety fanatics’, ’Moonlight skating in 1917’, ‘The day the
Olympic Torch came to Redbridge’, ‘KIPPERS!’, ‘The day God did not come to the
Park’, ‘When Sainsbury’s gave me something for nothing’, ‘The Olympic
experience’, ‘I have been robbed in Nigeria’, ‘Of Fairlop Fair revived’, ‘Too
expensive for Ilford’, and a series of ‘Fables for the Twenty-first
Century’. Ron Jeffries is a local community activist and historian, and is a member of St Peter's Aldborough Hatch. By contrast Brighton-based Emily Dupen-Hopkins has moved away from the area to establish Dupenny, her successful designer-ware business which produces exquisite wallpaper, beautiful homewares and fine ceramics with a cheeky twist. Despite the awards her designs have won, it is great that her products can still be found among the offerings at this Craft Market in her home area. -----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Florence and the Machine - Breath Of Life.
