Feb 18-19: The creative exchange and art festival/exhibition is underway.
UK artist presentations, funding research and early stage, project meetings.
 |
| Rondo Sztuki, Katowice, Poland. Image courtesy w-a.pl |
The central meeting point, the Rondo Sztuki (Roundabout Gallery) in the heart of Katowice, Poland. For further updates please visit the collective’s website
Connect – February
(project begins), November 2016 (Phase 1 intro show), June 2017 (Phase 2 public art festival).
British
artists:
Paul Abbott, Marilyn Collins, Sarah Faulkner, Kelise Franclemont, Joseph Lichy,
Regan O’Callaghan, Shadi Mahsa, Alex Roberts, Jonathan Slaughter, Laura
Solomons, Louise Wheeler, Michael Williams and Adam Zoltowski.
Polish
artists:
to be announced following the initial presentation of the British artists’ works
and subsequent pairing with their British counterparts, March-April 2016.
Curators: Oxana Smirnova and Fabian
Strobel alongside Pawel Mendrek’s support.
Using the
wide-ranging, fluctuating topics and experiences offered by the initial, Housed,
UK concept as a
starting point, which seeks to explore the interplay between
the artist, the viewer and the location setting.
The Connect project’s aim is to create a
discourse between the artist, the space and the audience, and survey the
balance between what is outwardly-facing and what we keep to ourselves via a
British-Polish exchange, collaboration and display, involving two British-based
and a Polish curators’ intercession.
A series
of 1-2-1 artist partnerships will be established, starting with the
presentation of the thirteen British artists’ work by the curators (February
2016). Soon to be, Polish colleagues will
individually propose to work with one of the British artists put forward, in
turn making a similar demonstration. During
March 2016, the British-Polish curating team will digest the possible
connections and match the group of 26 individuals.
April
2016 will witness the beginning of the pairings and all parties of the project being
given the opportunity to question the foundational role of perception in
understanding their own worlds and the worlds of others.
The
experimental nature of the project is aimed to reflect the interconnection of
the roles of artists and curators coming from very different backgrounds. Removing
the British-based artists’ dialogues and practices to a completely new
environment, sharing their private worlds with Katowice art students, who will
be asked to do exactly the same, but in their familiar environment. This
experience will allow the artists to see their works through the perception of
people coming from different cultures, and find out how their private/public
worlds can evolve.
Following
the 6-8 month linkage period of artist meetings, conversations and building of
connections/work, with the guidance of the British-Polish curating company, the first phase of discoveries will come together as an introduction art exhibition (November 2016), with the second phase culminating as an public art festival (June 2017), that will be displayed throughout Katowice, with the Rondo Gallery existing as the epi-centre. Rondo acting as a nucleus for the satellite
of site-specific art installations and combined artworks throughout the city; sharing
possible further connections to the wider community.
More to follow…
