A major new group exhibition presenting commissions by early-career artists working in collaborative and collective practices based across the UK.
Coinciding with Frieze London 2019, Collaborate! responds to research about the challenges faced by early-career artists working in collaboration and provides a dedicated high-profile opportunity that supports and promotes this method of artistic practice. It will present four new commissions alongside an accompanying events programme, contributing to critical dialogues about collaborative and collective practices in the visual arts sector. The exhibition is curated by Harriet Cooper, Head of Visual Arts.
Jerwood Arts invited 12 curators from across the UK to nominate artist collectives and collaborations who they think are making outstanding work and would benefit from support at a pivotal point in their career. The final selection was made by a panel comprised of Kelly Best, artist; Antonio Roberts, artist and curator; Harriet Cooper, Head of Visual Arts, Jerwood Arts and Lilli Geissendorfer, Director, Jerwood Arts (Chair).
The selected artist collectives are: Array Collective, Keiken + George Jasper Stone, Languid Hands and Shy Bairns.
Array is a collective based in Belfast which creates collaborative actions in response to socio-political issues affecting Northern Ireland. The group comprises of artists: Sighle Bhreatnach-Cashell, Sinéad Bhreatnach-Cashell, Alessia Cargnelli, Emma Campbell, Mitch Conlon, Clodagh Lavelle, Laura O’Connor, Grace McMurray, Stephen Millar and Thomas Wells. Their new installation, As Others See Us, is centred on three fictional characters drawn from the pre-Christian myths and folklore of ancient Ireland: ‘The Sacred Cow’, ‘The Long Shadow’ and ‘The Morrigan’. These characters have shape-shifted through crowds at Belfast Pride and the banks of the River Thames in London and have been documented through film, performance, sculpture and textiles. In December Array Collective host a symposium at Jerwood Arts, opening the discussion around activist work in Northern Ireland to like-minded artists and activists from different generations to directly respond to the issues raised in the work, exploring tensions and possible resolutions.
Keiken + George Jasper Stone is a collaboration between Keiken, founded in 2016 by artists Tanya Cruz, Hana Omori and Isabel Ramos, and CGI artist and content designer George Jasper Stone. Their new CGI film, Feel My Metaverse, is about a hyper-fictional future staged in an immersive installation. The transauthorial narrative – a story made by multiple people – explores the daily lives of three characters ‘Pando’, ‘O’ and ‘C’, and how they cope with multiple bodies in various virtual and physical realities. Through a fictional space, they create ways to use technology as an emancipatory tool, relearning sensory understanding, ableness, and enabling a fluidity of expression.
Keiken + George Jasper Stone are also supported by Arts Council England.
Languid Hands is a London-based artistic and curatorial collaboration between DJ, filmmaker and programmer Rabz Lansiquot, and writer, facilitator and live art practitioner Imani Robinson. Their new single screen moving image work, Towards a Black Testimony: Prayer, Protest, Peace, considers the ontological status of Black people as objects, commodities, and as raw material. Referencing seminal black texts and artefacts alongside instances of contemporary anti-black violence, this work examines testimony as obscured, ignored and undermined.
Shy Bairns is the collective practice of artists, designers and curators Izzy Kroese, George Gibson, Eleanor Haswell and Erin Blamire based in Manchester. Their new work, Shy Bairns Fill The Void: Developing Our Creative Practice, looks at the often hidden process of artistic progression and makes it visible within the exhibition itself. The installation is centred around a new publication which documents the process of the group working together on various small development projects including learning new skills from each other, peers, and fellow practitioners across the UK.
The twelve nominators are: John Eng Kiet Bloomfield, Curator at Wysing Arts Centre; Seán Elder, Researcher at Grand Union; Cicely Farrer, Programme Manager at Hospitalfield and Freelance Curator; Cédric Fauq, Curator at Nottingham Contemporary; Vickie Fear, Curator at Aspex Gallery and Independent Curator; Louise Hobson, Independent Curator and Producer; Elinor Morgan, Senior Curator at Middlesbrough Institute of Modern Art (MIMA); Jane Morrow, Independent Curator and PhD Researcher; Mother Tongue (Tiffany Boyle & Jessica Carden), Independent Curators; Hannah Rose, Curator at The Gallery, Plymouth College of Art; Amanprit Sandhu, former Programme Curator: Residencies and Public Programme at Camden Arts Centre; and Zoe Watson, Curator of the Holden Gallery.
