The Infinity Show at NN Contemporary

• The Infinity Show

  
  
  
  I'm showing my work, 'You Are Here' 2006 at The Infinity Show. The work features a coffin built to fit me, resting on two trestle legs and with a peep hole in the coffins foot, offering a glimpse into an illusory infinite space.
  NN Contemporary
  Number Nine
  Guildhall Road
  Northampton
  NN1 1DP, UK
• Date: 
  19 July–1 September 2013

Taha Belal, Lesley Halliwell, Felippe Moraes, Stefan Saffer, Alexander Small, Sarah Sparkes, Jorinde Voigt, Justin Washtell.

NN Contemporary's Artistic Director is Catherine Hemelryk

The Infinity Show on NN Website

Full of contradiction and paradox, The Infinity Show starts but does not end with 8 artists and every visitor of the exhibition. The exhibition is the beginnings of an idea of art as a momentary resting point for ideas, forms and the potential, yet impossible, iterations of everything.

The show brings together artists from the UK, Brazil, Egypt, Germany and beyond, working in film, drawing, print, sculpture, Spirograph, text and online media. Using self-imposed rules the artists investigate endless possibilities within geometry, philosophy, the cosmos and more. The falsehood of the infinite imbues everything with each decision both opening up and shutting down a thousand potential routes.

Starting with the end, an infinite coffin by Sarah Sparkes greets the visitor. Monoprints by Taha Belal are rendered from mass-produced newspaper photographs; all the more pertinent now as the Cairo-based artist is working in a country rewriting itself through revolution. Felippe Moraes captures the cosmos in his ink drawing, whilst Justin Washtell invites anyone and everyone to contribute to the writing of a story. Time and distance fold and expand in works by Jorinde Voigt and Alexander Small. Jorinde Voigt uses the Fibonacci sequence in her logarithmic drawing series 2 People Kissing, with each page becoming ever more densely covered. Small captures a marching band in an eternal loop, forever turning the corner. Spirals are the base component of Lesley Halliwell’s expansive Spirograph drawings and Oggo a sculpture by Stefan Saffer, extrapolated from a Danish Church painting, will be spiralling out into the world visiting a host of offsite locations.

Events

Opening night & Infinite Print
18 July 2013, 6pm
Join us to celebrate the opening of The Infinity Show and make your own print with artists Pauline Wood & Alexander Small and their press.

Infinite Print workshop with Pauline Wood & Alexander Small
3 August 2013, 2–4pm
Drop in to NN to work with the artists to create your own piece of infinite print. Wear old clothes and be prepared to get inky! All ages and abilities welcome! Children must be accompanied by an adult.

Crit Group
6 August 2013, 7pm
NN hosts the Crit Group for artists at all stages of their career to come together to discuss their work in progress, run by Kate Harrison & Peter Slack.

Drawing performance by Lesley Halliwell
9–10 August 2013
Lesley Halliwell will be drawing live at NN to make a counterpart to her work Fanatic. See first hand the growth of a new work using mathematics, pattern and graft, with the chance to talk to the artist as she works.

Dance: I Infinite, Tom Dale Company
31 August 2013
As part of the closing weekend of The Infinity Show, Tom Dale Company presents an extract from I Infinite, an interactive multi-media dance installation inspired by the digital world’s quest to re-create life. The graphic imagery and dance draw you within centimetres of the performer who moves between robotic isolation and liquid fluidity.

Performances will begin on the hour and at 20 minute intervals with an hour break for lunch at 1pm.

I Love you Because at A Side B Side Gallery

I'll be showing 'Love Me Tender' at the group show curated by Harry Pye 'I  love You Because'

Love Me Tender, Sarah Sparkes 2013, Print and collage 

A-side B-side Gallery presents: 

I Love You Because
Curated by Chloe Mortimer & Harry Pye

Private View: Thursday 18th July 6-9pm

SHOW DATES: 

The exhibition will run from 18th July – 15th August
Opening times: Thurs – Sun 12 – 6pm & by appointment

All the works in the show are about Elvis.
There is also a free special edition Rebel Magazine on Elvis, in which this image is reproduced and in which I have contributed a few lines of writing.
My work 'Love Me Tender' is ink jet print and collage.  The collage materials are taken from my old bedroom wall paper and the wallpaper that was on the kitchen in my childhood home.  Both wallpapers were on the walls of the house when Elvis died.  I frequently use wallpaper in my work and quite often use this blue flowery bedroom wall paper especially.

Here's what I wrote about Elvis in the Rebel magazine: 

'I grew up with Elvis in the house; his music playing on the record player, his films on the TV, biographies on the shelves and a collection of domestic objects decorated with his image. I love Elvis because my mum loves Elvis and my sister loves Elvis - you could say that it's a hereditary condition.'

http://therebelmagazine.blogspot.co.uk/2013/01/elvis-i-love-you-because-at-a-side-b.html

When A-side B-side Gallery discovered that this Summer marked the 60th anniversary of

Elvis Presley going into Sun Studios and making his first ever recording they said:

“Let’s have a party!”

30 artistic Elvis fans have contributed a painting, photo or drawing of The King and 30 others

have written a personal tribute. The show was curated by Chloe Mortimer and Harry Pye.

Chloe says: “Elvis Presley was strikingly handsome and his singing touched the hearts of millions.

For some, the Elvis story may have ended in 1977 but for me it goes on. He was always there for

me and I find that even now he’s always on my mind.”

Catherine & Tinsel: “A-side B-side Gallery is proud to be the host of a show dedicated to the

‘King of Rock and Roll’. For 6 decades Elvis has inspired many artists including Peter Blake (who

has made 6 shrines to Elvis) and Andy Warhol (whose double Elvis work recently sold for 37

million dollars). The contributors to “I Love You Because” are from all over the world, we hope we

can squeeze everyone in and look forward to seeing you there!”

The first 500 visitors to the gallery will receive a free copy of “The Rebel magazine’s Elvis Special”

sponsored by Immprint. www.therebelmagazine.blogspot.co.uk

In alphabetical order the 30 artists in the show are:

Harry Adams, Simeon Banner, Julie Bennett, Emma Coleman, Anka Dabrowska, Tinsel Edwards, Rebecca Fontaine-Wolf, Elena Garcia de la Fuente, Mikey Georgeson, Paul Hamilton,

Peter Harris, Cathy Lomax, Bob London, Lee Maelzer, Catherine Magnani, Stephanie Moran,

Karen Morden, Chloe Mortimer, Liam Newnham, Gavin Nolan, Horace Panter, Andrew Petrie,

Rachael Robb, Alli Sharma, Sarah Sparkes, Team Beswick & Pye, Twinkle Troughton,

Sandra Turnbull, Jessica Voorsanger, Julian Wakeling, Chris Webster, Nicole Willis, Carlo Zenone   

Heckler Symposium: the Disembodied Heckler

The Disembodied Heckler at the Heckler Symposium

I'm going to be putting the case for poltergeists as 'disembodied hecklers' at Lee Campbell and Mel Jordans' Heckler Symposium 13th July 

HECKLER
TRADE Gallery,
 1 Thoresby Street, Nottingham, United Kingdom, NG1 1AJ.
Saturday 13 July 2013
12.30 - 18.30
http://www.tradegallery.org/gallery.html#heckler

A symposium of performative presentations and provocations entitled organised by Loughborough University School of the Arts Lee Campbell and Mel Jordan in association with Trade, Nottingham.

Keynote speakers:
Daniel Z. Kadar, Professor of English Language and Linguistics, Director, Centre for Intercultural Politeness Research, University of Huddersfield. Provisional paper title: The heckler's 'impoliteness': A mimetic-relational perspective.
Peter Bond (Senior Lecturer, Performance theory and practice, Central Saint Martins College of Art & Design). Provisional paper title: Off-side.
Dr. Ian Bruff (Political Scientist, Lecturer in International Relations at Loughborough University’s Department for Politics, History and International Relations).

with invited speakers: Robin Bale, Andrew Brown, Claire Makhlouf Carter, Corinne Felgate, Ben Fitton, Mel Jordan, Kypros Kyprianou, David Mabb, Tim Miles, Sarah Sparkes

Abstract:
The Disembodied Heckler
'As it was 3am we decided to finish, so I said, “Go and vanish Gef” to which a voice replied, “I 
mean to throw a brick at you at night when you are asleep”'
Harry Price & R.S.Lambert The Haunting of Cashen' s Gap: A Modern Miracle explained
Methuen & Co. Ltd (1936) p.106.

In 1931 several national newspapers covered the story of 'The Talking Weasel' an alleged poltergeist emanating from an isolated farmhouse on the Isle of Man occupied by the Irvin family. All three members of the family claimed to have heard, felt and, in the teenage daughter Voiree's case, seen a manifestation taking the form of a talking mongoose called 'Gef'. Gef taunted the family and their visitors from behind the house's wood panels, interrupting 'respectable' conversation with insults and comic songs. When psychical researcher Harry Price sent Captain MacDonald to investigate the 'haunting' Gef mocked his authority with derisory personal comments and threats – see above quote. Poltergeist is a compound of the German 'poltern' meaning to make a noise, rattle, knock about, scold or bellow and 'geist' meaning ghost. Historically poltergeists infest domestic places where there is a teenage family member, usually female, residing. Poltergeists disrupt routine and order in a domestic arena with insulting retorts, 
the use of domestic objects as missiles and the occasional possession of a family member. . Poltergeists subvert the family dynamics, with child becoming the intermediary of outside forces and unpleasant behaviour rewarded with notoriety. At their most successful they will come under the scrutiny of a much wider, even global, public audience via media coverage. Drawing on a number of case studies from the Harry Price Library of Magical Literature, this presentation will put the case for poltergeists as 'disembodied hecklers'. 

read all the Speaker Abstracts

The symposium will explore the potential of the heckler as a speaker that can offer a revised understanding of social exchanges within contemporary debates on participation, linguistics, ethics and communication. Artists Campbell and Jordan argue that the heckler, a person who disrupts performances, speeches and public addresses should be considered as a metaphorical figurehead of impoliteness.

At any rate the heckler should appear on the menu of communicative speech acts and as a tactic for understanding the performers relationship to an audience. Furthermore the notion of the heckler enables a review of the troublesome divisions presented in the dichotomies inherent in the coupling of speaker and listener, performer and audience, official speaker and unauthorised respondent.