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Site Platform creates a space for artists to develop new work in the gallery setting whilst also allowing audiences to engage with the process. Each of the four artists will be given up to two weeks in the gallery to develop ideas and processes which embrace experimental, explorative or cumulative practice. The projects change and develop during this time, or incorporate events or performances, giving visitors the opportunity to return at different stages of the project to view or participate.

Simon Blackmore
14 – 24 November, Weds – Sat
‘Web Stream Boat’

‘Web Stream Boat’ is a low-fi interactive system for navigating through live internet radio stations. The physical locations of international radio web streams are mapped on to a virtual landscape, and users can control a physical boat rudder to navigate their way through the streams. The style of the rudder interface and movement of sound was informed by a number of boat trips taken along and around the Amazon river in Colombia. Visitors will be able to interact with the work by navigating within it and suggesting additional stations to add.

Simon Blackmore works primarily with sound and custom-built technology; the result is a range of sculptures and installations that have a lo-fi aesthetic drawing on influences such as woodworking, hobby style electronics and open source software. Recent projects include ‘Weather Guitar’, shown at Ikon, Birmingham, 2005, and ongoing projects with the artist group Owl Project. He studied at the University of Wales, Cardiff (1996-99) and Salford University (2000-2001).

Jerome Harrington
28th November 1 December
‘A Conference for The Glass Archive’

The Glass Archive is a collection of over eighty novels containing the word ‘glass’ in the title. For A Conference for The Glass Archive, five individuals including artists George Henry Longly, Kate Allen & Chris Henry Clarke, freelance writer Anna Taylor and materials scientist Dr Mark Miodownik have been invited to investigate and make personal responses to the content of the archive.

Taking place over four days, A Conference for the Glass Archive will provide daily public access to The Glass Archive, daily one-hour readings (from four novels over four days) and culminate in the delivery of five presentations on Saturday 1st December at 2pm. The event will be chaired by artist Dan Robinson.

A Conference for The Glass Archive encourages a shift of focus in our understanding of this material. The project sits within a wider context of material investigation, in which sculptors and artists explore emotional and intellectual connections to physical materials.

Jerome Harrington has a background in craft, material and making forming the foundation for an increasingly broad approach to making work. He studied in the glass departments of Edinburgh college of Art (1995 – 1998) and the Gerrit Rietveld Academie in Amsterdam (2001 – 2004). Recent exhibitions include; The Good Life, Surface Gallery, Nottingham; Bloc Assembly (TEXT), Bloc Space, Sheffield; The End is Nigh, Urban Glass, New York, The Glass House, Birmingham.

Elizabeth Price
5-15th December, Weds – Sat
Welcome to the New, Ruined Institute

For the duration of this Site Platform project the Gallery will become the location for the gradual construction of a tableau: a detailed film-set intended to render the interior of a fictional institute of art. The set will include props to stand in for all the usual artefacts to be found in a gallery, including artworks, furniture and signage. However, whilst these props may constitute a convincing gallery scenario, it will not be an entirely realistic one. Rather the intention is to create a parallel, allegorical world.

This project is the first episode in a long-term work by Price, in which she proposes to ‘build’ a fictional institution of art room by room, to establish an entire institution, collection and building. Constructed in parts, the completed whole will be formulated in video. Viewers will be able to witness the first evidence of this unfolding process, via a projection installed in the adjacent gallery.

Elizabeth Price’s work incorporates diverse mediums and strategies, but a consistent characteristic is that work is produced incrementally by ongoing activities, often over many years. Recent and forthcoming exhibitions include: ‘At the House of Mr X’ Stanley Picker Gallery, Kingston Upon Thames; ‘A Public Lecture & Exhumation’, Studio Voltaire, London; ‘ The Affirmation, Chelsea Space, London; and White Room 1, White Columns, New York. Elizabeth Price studied at the Ruskin School of Art (1985-88), the Royal College of Art (1989-1991) and University of Leeds (1995-1998)

Brigid Mc Leer
19-22 December and 9-12 January
Vexations

Vexations is an artwork in which processes of learning become intimately connected to processes of production, through a durational work in which artist, Brigid Mc Leer, will try to relearn how to play the piano. Conceived around Erik Satie’s 1893 musical composition ‘Vexations’ – in which he writes the shortest of scores and suggests it is played successively 840 times – the project involves the artist working continually in the gallery for 20 days, learning how to play Satie’s enigmatic piece. Simultaneously, Mc Leer will develop a large wall-based, annotated drawing of the score reflecting her experience of the relearning process. This changing drawing will be photographed daily throughout the residency at regular 10 minute intervals, producing 840 images which will gradually fill up the walls of the space. Becoming a vast new visual score, these images will form the basis of a live musical improvisation on the final day of the residency.

Brigid Mc Leer is an Irish artist based in London. Her work uses various media and processes and has included visual projects, work for the web and critical and hybrid writing. She trained in Fine Art at University of Ulster, Belfast (1988-91) and The Slade school of Art, London (1991-93). Recent exhibitions include ‘L’Isola Di’ at San Servolo Servizi, Venice, ‘Spatial Imagination’, Domo Baal Gallery, London and various live exhibitions in the UK and Ireland of her ongoing collaborative project In Place of the Page with architect Katie Lloyd Thomas.

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