"La Tina diu que el cel està dividit/Tina says that the sky's divided". Video installation by Job Ramos in We Used To Be Painters.




We Used To Be Painters took place from 24th April to the 11th May 2008, in Bristol's old Bridewell Police Station, home of Bristol based organization Plan9. The event involved a production residency by 3 European artists who created work especially for the space whilst in Bristol, and a series of screenings, talks and performances by 12 different artists. The project was written and organized by artist Nim-Jo Chung in conjunction with Plan9.
intro/ residency/ archive/ artists/ images

Finale of We Used To Be Painters:

Thursday 8th May. 6pm till late

Screenings, presentations and performances by:

Plan 9 residents Gisela Motta and Leandro Lima
Amy Feneck
Nim-Jo Chung
Joani Lemercier

more info below.

Finale of We Used To Be Painters: Thursday 8th May 2008 6pm – late

For the finale of  We Used To Be Painters Plan 9 will host screenings, performances and presentations by 4 artists:

This week:

Plan 9 residents Gisela Motta and Leandro Lima (www.aagua.netwill show video works and introduce their practice.

 Amy Feneck will screen a recent work developed during her residency in Skopje, Macedonia in 2007 with the independent organization Press To Exit Space. 

Curator of the exhibition, Nim-Jo Chung will show 3 video works and introduce his practice.

Joani Lemercier will realize a performance especially to suit the needs of all those who used to be painters.

 

About these artists:

 "Leandro Lima and Gisela Motta’s videos, photographs and performances maintain a certain kinship with different works in various media, such as Chris Cunningham’s Windowlicker, Björk’s songs from the Vespertine album or Don Delillo’s The Body Artist. These are works, which express the tension arising in the transition from physical to digital space and vice-versa.

The unresolvable clash of nature and artifice gives rise, in the work of Motta&Lima, to a body of images whose fascinating and disturbing oddity expresses new parameters of temporality and spatiality."

KIKI MAZZUCCHELLI*

FROM THE CATALOGUE OF THE EXHIBITION:

AU DELÀ DU COPAN, SUPERNATURAL URBANISM, ESPACE PAUL RICARD, PARIS, FR

* Kiki Mazzucchelli is an independent critic and curator.

New residents at Plan 9 Leandro Lima and Gisela Motta were born in São Paulo - Brazil in 1976, between 1996 and 1999 they studied Visual Arts at FAAP in São Paulo, and since then have been working in partnership.

Since 1998 they took part in several collective exhibitions in Brazil and since 2005 they have shown their work in some exhibitions abroad, like "Rencontres Parallèles" at the Centre d’art Contemporain of Basse-normandie, France. “Associaciones Debidas” at CAAM in Canary Island, and twice in Germany at “Aktuelle Video Kunst aus Brasilien” at KW in Berlin, Germany, and in “Interconnect @ between attention and immersion” at ZKM in Karlsruhe.

 In 2007 they took part in 1º Bienal Fin del Mundo, Ushuaia, Argentina. They have presented solo exhibitions at “Vivendo” at Galeria Vermelho in São Paulo in 2006 and also presented a solo exhibition at the project Room in Hiap, Helsinki, Finland, after having completed a three month residency.



Amy Feneck will screen a recent work developed during her residency in Skopje, Macedonia in 2007 with independent arts organisation Press To Exit Space.

The film continues her investigation into using the action of running as a mode of self-invention, allowing her to create a different position from which to view and negotiate the surrounding environment.

Triggered by a fascination with the changing political climate of Skopje, Feneck uses the running as an allegorical tool to reflect the transitory nature of a city in a state of flux, looking at its dominating architectural feats and its present use of public and private space.

Amy will talk about her previous collaborative work that has lead to the development of the film and her recent project in Glasgow at the Centre for Contemporary art; Running Formations (I like to feel that I am in possession of my city), which was made in part collaboration with women from a female only running club.

 

There is a particular economy, almost in the nature of a delicate ecological balance, in the video works of Nim-Jo Chung. Like an observant diarist, he encourages serendipitous encounters with the world and its occupants, merely by being out there and amongst them. He catches a bus or plays guitar, takes a ferry or chats to a casual acquaintance, often with the resulting verbal exchanges transcribed and displayed as subtitles. His subjects are diverse, but retain at their core communications between people and place; the artificial, the natural and the temporal. In negotiating their surroundings, the human players in his works display a variety of attitudes toward their present situation and how it relates to their varied states of being in-the-world.

They present personalised views of private as well as social histories. He gathers the specifics of his work by seeming to be an almost impassive voyager through the intricacies of quotidian experience, but always with the camera running on record. This approach necessarily throws up, or reveals, those magical moments where random events conspire to produce a choreography of the uncanny, by virtue of simply being observed and documented.

 

 

Joani Lemercier (VJ Crustea) has been working extensively in the UK since 2004. His fascination for mixing live, visual mapping techniques into the context of performance and installation, has led him to work outside of the standard frameworks usually explored by the VJing industry. Stereoscopy, holographic illusion, projection on volume, although not new as techniques, are incorporated as building layers into Lemercier’s pieces, to create performances and installations that are both sensorially ludic and visually seductive.

 He represents the AntiVJ visual label, initiated by European artists and has performed this year in many European festivals including clubtransmediale [berlin], Glade [UK], Printemps de Bourges [France], Mapping [Geneva], Electric picnic [Ireland]

His work can be seen at: http://vimeo.com/user216745/videos










Previous screening: Thursday 1st May 2008.


Continuing the theme of the exhibition, Plan 9 is hosting a series of artists

films.


This week:


*Esperança Cobo will show 2 videos: Territorial Borders and Locus Amoenus. Both films, realized in Bristol explore how the balance between sublime and romantic landscapes has been destroyed by the presence of inconvenient subjects and how their identities, within the authors non-fictitious paradise exist and are erased.


Esperança Cobo has exhibited and made work throughout the Catalan region of Spain. Her work, ranging from television documentary to photographic installation has been shown on national and local television networks and in many museums including the Reus Museum and the Antiga Audiencia of Tarragona. 


*Jack Southern will make a presentation and screen several video works.

Jack Southern works in a range of media, including film/video, photography and web works, often incorporating site-specific installation. Projects focus on specific cultural circumstances and their relationship to broader global, political and social sensibilities. Southern currently holds a studio residency at Acme studios, London where he is currently working on a body of work based on the changing identity of Bow, East London.


 *Juanan Eguiguren will make a presentation and screen several video works.  Eguigurren's work often results in a series of both open and closed narratives where the initial source material is compulsively collected - through the process of accumulation he attempts to ask questions about the medium, its availability and its subsequent use.

 For this screening Eguigurren presents El Juramento. A portrait of the authors relationship with the Spanish, television soap-opera industry.



www.plan9.org.uk
info@plan9.org.uk





Dates: Friday 25th April - Sunday 11th May 2008 12 – 6pm (Gallery open Thurs – Sun)

Associated events: Screenings/presentations on Thursday May 1st and Thursday May 8th
(please go to www.plan9.org.uk for further information)

Venue: Plan 9, Bridewell Island, Nelson Street (public entrance on Bridewell Street) Broadmead, Bristol

Artists: Amy Feneck, Kathleen Herbert, Nim-Jo Chung, Job Ramos, Esperança Cobo, Aikaterini Gegisian, Gisela Motta and Leandro Lima, Jack Southern, Juanan Eguiguren, Zigor Barayazarra and Ismael Iglesias.
Curated by: Nim-Jo Chung


We Used to be Painters– the title, a contemplative lament to a lost solidarity, a nostalgic slur heralding trophies and medals of prestige for those that pronounce it. We Used to be Painters underlines how artists have tried to assimilate rapid developments in the media available to them. By doing so the exhibition demonstrates changes in how we make, keep and view moving image.

This exhibition will examine how moving image based work has been affected by it’s own disposability. The selected artists approach this question in a number of different ways. Is urgency in artistic production necessary, when thousands of clips can be easily stored and accessed on a hard-drive? How does the overwhelming presence of visual mass on the net change present day attitudes toward making this type of work? Relegated in some extent to invisibility, does the artist in fact find certain advantages and strategies in the “ordinariness” encompassed by creating moving image?

In very different ways, Kate Herbert and Amy Feneck acutely assess the significance of the act of recording. Both desire that something special and unique remain intrinsic to the moment of capture, but both know that they are
creating fiction.
In her on-going project Runner, Amy Feneck explores the aesthetic, poetic and lyrical experience of different European cities through the act of running.
Kate Herbert’s films invoke subtle and enduring emotions - a nearly endless physical journey through a subterranean tunnel seen through the camera, accompanied by only the sound of the walkers’ footsteps. One is witness to how paralyzing the everyday action of filming alone can be.

The video works of Catalan artist Job Ramos present oneiric fragments of sound and image from stories told through an internal logic understood by an author, who has at his disposal an endless accumulation of images.

Ismael Iglesias, the only painter to be included, will install a temporal work in response to his two week residency at Plan 9 prior to the exhibition. In a recent exhibition in Sala Rekalde, Bilbao, Ismael presented Garage Social Club, a life size re-representation of an underground car-park using oil paint. Using traditional medium, the artist conveys romantic sentiments of futility and seduction reflecting imagery taken directly from the fonts of new technology.



(ENDS)




Notes for Editors

The event is both a series of screenings over 3 weeks and an exhibition of installation-based works. Three of the selected artists (Zigor Barayazarra, Ismael Iglesias and Job Ramos) have been invited to create moving-image based installations working directly with the dynamics of the space. The other artists’ work will be shown at the evening screenings during the exhibition. Visitors during the day will also be able to select (with the help of the invigilator), films/videos from any of the named artists to view – exerting some degree of control over their consumption of the exhibition.

Notes on the artists

Job Ramos: Born Olot, Spain, has exhibited internationally including the Sonar Festival (1999), AARA(Bangkok, 2005) Matocana 100(Santiago Chile, 2007) Konsthall C (Stockholm, 2007), Yeans (Gothenberg, 2006), Barcelona OVNI independent Video Show(CCCB, Barcelona 1999 and 2000), Arco Electronico(Madrid, 1999), and Sala Montcada, Fundació La Caixa(Barcelona, 2005)
Ismael Iglesias: Based in Bilbao, has shown throughout Spain including the ARCO 06, Madrid, and
Sala Rekalde, Bilbao and also features in various national collections such as the Ministerio de Cultura Español
Zigor Barayazarra: Has presented projects in the Basque region and Spain such as Artium Museum for Contemporary Art (Vitoria), Sala Rekalde (Bilbao), Círculo de Bellas Artes (Madrid) and his work has been in many group exhibitions worldwide including the Railway Cultural Building (Taiwan), ISCP (New York), and HWW (Rotterdam)
Aikaterini Gegisian: MA Fine Art, Chelsea. Has exhibited internationally at the 5th International Biennial, Armenia, 1st Thessaloniki Biennial and is represented by Kalfayan Galleries, Athens.
Jack Southern: MA Fine Art Media, Slade. Has exhibited and screened work nationally and internationally including the CCA Glasgow, The Courtauld Institute of Fine Art History London and Muu Gallery Helsinki.
Kathleen Herbert: MA Fine Art, Goldsmiths. Has produced several high profile exhibitions/residencies including Stable at Gloucester Cathedral and Thinking of the Outside, and large-scale off-site commission in Bristol.
Amy Feneck: Based in London, has exhibited/screened work nationally including the Leeds International Film Festival and completed residencies at the CCA Glasgow and Skopje, Macedonia.
Nim–Jo Chung: Based in Bristol, has exhibited nationally and internationally including Bergen and Oslo, Norway, completed a residency at HIAP Helsinki, Finland and is curator of this project

1st International Residency - Plan 9 are proud to announce that Brazilian artists Gisela Motta and Leandro Lima will be our first Artists-in-Residence from May - June 2008 with support from the Artist Links initiative through the British Council. They will be working in our residency space and will also be exhibiting work within the context of this show. They will also be presenting their practice through an event to be scheduled in early June – see the website for further details. For more information on Artist Links go to: http://www.artistlinks.org.uk/index.asp?idcat=15&idnot=40


* Plan 9

Established in 2005, Plan 9 is an independent contemporary arts organisation co-ordinated by artists, curators, and writers. The group have recently moved to their new home - the Old Bridewell Police Station in Bristol’s city centre. The 1920’s Grade II listed building (complete with cells) has been turned into a project space, gallery and residency space, the building also provides studio space for Plan 9 artists. In this new space, Plan 9 will focus on an ambitious programme of exhibitions, talks, screenings and projects curated by Plan 9 members, as well as residencies and exchanges with artists in Brazil, Finland, Portugal and Holland.

Plan 9 are Chris Barr, Nim-Jo Chung, Julian Claxton, Karen Di Franco, Anton Goldenstein, Tash, Mark Harris, Toby Huddlestone, Tom Johnson, Sophie Mellor, Jerry Walton, Lucie Wilkins, Zoë Williams

Plan 9’s new home at Bridewell Island has been made possible by Urban Splash.