The Ghost Tide

THE GHOST TIDE
curated by Monika Bobinska and Sarah Sparkes


Thames-Side Studios Gallery, Thames-Side Studios, Harrington Way, Warspite Road, Woolwich, SE18 5NR. www.thames-sidestudios.co.uk

EXHIBITION DATES 20 October – 3 November
GALLERY OPENING HOURS Thurs-Sun 12pm – 5pm

OPENING PARTY Friday 19 October 6pm - 8.30pm
Gen Doy performance 7.30pm

The Ghost Tide - coinciding with the festivals of Hallowe'en, All Souls and the Day of the Dead - takes as its starting point the perspective that ghosts exist as an idea, or as part of a belief system, across cultures, across national borders and throughout recorded history. Most languages contain words to describe the ghost, spirit or immaterial part of a deceased person. Often, these words - like the type of ghost they describe - have traversed borders and been assimilated across cultures.

The exhibition, situated next to the Thames Barrier in South-East London, evokes ghosts as a migratory tide, washed up along the shore of the Thames their historical baggage in tow. It also explores the presence of artists in this part of London, as a migratory tide of creative flotsam and jetsam which ebbs and flows as the city gentrifies and develops.

Featured works include sculpture, installation, film, sound, performance and wall based works. The exhibition will include installations and outdoor interventions, as well as public events.
The Ghost Tide features works by over 30 UK and international artists.

Artists featured: Andrea G Artz, Chris Boyd, Davies, Monaghan & Klein, Gen Doy, Sarah Doyle, Graham Dunning, Diane Eagles, Andrew Ekins, Charlie Fox, Katie Goodwin, Kio Griffith, Miyuki Kasahara, Calum F Kerr, Rob La Frenais, David Leapman, Liane Lang, Toby MacLennan, Laura Marker, Joanna McCormick, Josie McCoy, Jane Millar, Output Arts, Miroslav Pomichal, Brothers Quay, Anne Robinson, Edwin Rostron, Matt Rowe, Sarah Sparkes, Charlotte Squire, Sara Trillo, Yun Ting Tsai, Kate Walters, Patrick White, Heidi Wigmore, Neale Willis, Mary Yacoob, Neda Zarfsaz.

About the Curators: Monika Bobinska is the director of CANAL, which organizes exhibitions and art projects in a variety of settings. She is the founder of the North Devon Artist Residency.
Sarah Sparkes is an artist and curator. She leads the visual arts and creative research project GHost (initiated in 2008), curating an on-going programme of exhibitions, performances and inter-disciplinary seminars interrogating the idea of the ghost.

CURATORS' TALK Saturday 20 October 3pm – 4pm

DAY OF THE DEAD CLOSING PARTY Saturday 3 November 2pm – 7.30pm

Papel Picado Workshop 2pm – 5pm   Make your own Day of the Dead 'cut - outs' with artist Sarah Doyle. Suitable for all ages, materials provided
Performances and Artist Led Walk 2pm – 5pm  Charlie Fox, Calum F Kerr, Joanna Mccormick, in and around the gallery
Day Of The Dead Feast  5pm – 6pm   Refreshments served
International Film Screening 6pm  Screening of short films in the gallery: Chris Boyd, Liane Lang, Brothers Quay, Yun Ting Tsai and Neda Zarfsaz

For more information, contact us on l 0786 606 3663 | 07900 208 711 |
theghosttide@gmail.com
www.ghosthostings.co.uk | www.canalprojects.info

Inspiral London Festival 2018

I was delighted to be one of the commissioned artists invited to develop new work in response to the Inspiral London Project.

There are two parts to my commission:

Still from the film, Inspiral Ghost Dance, Sarah Sparkes, an Inspiral London Commission, 2018

I have made a new film, Inspiral Ghost Dance which celebrates the Inspiral London collective. Please contact me if you would like to view it.

GHost Hostings 19, curated by Sarah Sparkes (GHost), an Inspiral London Commission, 2018

I curated GHost Hostings 19, an evening exploring night walking ghosts, for the opening night of the Inspiral London Festival. You can read more about it on the GHost website.


Inspiral London
Inspiral London is an artist devised walking trail, which anyone can follow. It leads from the centre of London and spirals outwards to Gravesend. It took three years for us to walk it. The 2018 Inspiral London Night Walking Festival is in part a celebration of the conclusion of this first phase of the project.

The Inspiral London festival of nocturnal walking, offers 4 days of curated walks, art, talks and exploration across North Kent starting at the end /beginning of the Inspiral Trail. By reimagining the long-distance night walks of Dickens – from central London to Gads Hill – Inspiral takes you on a journey of wild, ludic and untrammelled adventure..

Read more about Inspiral London Night Walking Festival.

Inspiral London was supported using public funding by Arts Council England

GHost at Camberwell Free Film Festival 2018

GHost is back to host two nights of cult ghost and horror films for Camberwell Free Film Festival 2018.  
We return to our favourite venue, Jazz Live at the Crypt, located in the crypt of the Victorian gothic St Giles in Camberwell.  The bar is open throughout the screening.  This is a free screening, but seats are limited so arrive early to avoid disappointment.  

21 March, 8pm (doors open 7pm arrive early to be sure of a seat)
 The Woman in Black (1989), Cert 15, Dir: Herbert Wise, UK, 100 mins
JazzLive in the Crypt, St Giles Church Crypt, Camberwell Church Street, SE5 8RB

"The most terrifying programme I’ve ever seen" Reece Shearsmith

When a friendless old widow dies in the seaside town of Crythin, a young solicitor is sent by his firm to settle the estate. The lawyer finds the townspeople reluctant to talk about or go near the woman's dreary home and no one will explain or even acknowledge the menacing woman in black he keeps seeing.

Ignoring the towns-people's cryptic warnings, he goes to the house where he discovers its horrible history and becomes ensnared in its even more horrible legacy.

This Central Television production of The Woman In Black, adapted for TV by Nigel Neale from Susan Hill's classic horror novella was broadcast on Christmas Eve in 1989 and repeated only once in 1994. However, the film is often held up as one of the most potent, paralysingly spooky screen adaptations of a ghost story ever made.The film has been described by Reece Shearsmith (League of Gentleman) as “the most terrifying programme I’ve ever seen”. Without giving away any spoilers, there are some shocking moments in this TV adaptation which will linger in the memory of anyone who sees it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KwtFRXWIGK8

22 March 9pm (doors open 8pm arrive early to be sure of a seat)
Hausu (House) - Cert 15 - Dir: Nobuhiko Obayashi, Japan (1977) 88 mins

'One of the Weirdest Horror Films ever Made' - Taryn McCabe Little White Lies.

An unforgettable mixture of bubblegum teen melodrama and grisly phantasmagoria, Obayashi’s deranged fairy tale Hausu (House) is one of Japanese cinema’s wildest supernatural ventures and a truly startling debut feature. Adapted from an idea from Obayashi's young daughter, the film looks like a psychedelic, nightmare version of a children's ghost hunting adventure, but there are sophisticated undercurrents that hint at the dislocation in Japanese culture pre and post second world war.

Distressed by her widowed father’s plans to remarry, Angel sets off with six of her schoolgirl friends in tow for a summer getaway in her aunt’s isolated mansion. But all is not well – in this house of dormant secrets and cobwebbed interiors long-held emotional traumas have terrifyingly physical embodiment and the girls will have to use all their individual talents if any are to survive.
A roller-coaster ride without brakes, House is by turns sinister, hilarious and curiously touching, with ceaseless cinematic invention and a satirical, full-blooded approach to the horror genre
(from Eureka Masters of Cinema Series)

Trailer https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R6BMehj59co

GHost News - Reproductions and GHost Comrades

Two pieces of exciting news from my visual arts and research project GHost:

 Firstly Hostings 10 - A Haunted Reproduction...

After years tied to the University of London, GHost is now wandering the earth and may turn up anywhere!
First up we'll be at  Domobaal gallery - not too far from our old home - with a special Hostings for Sharon Kivland's wonderful exhibition Reproductions II

GHost presents: Hostings 10 - A Haunted Reproduction

February 16^th, 5.30 – 7.00pm

DOMOBAAL

3 JOHN STREET  LONDON WC1N 2ES 

T +442072429604 M +447801703871

DOMOBAAL.COM  

Between 5.30-7.00pm, in response to Sharon Kivland's exhibition, Sarah Sparkes of GHost invites Birgitta Hosea, Peter Suchin and Sarah Wood to interrogate ideas pertaining to 'haunting' in both Kivland's work and the gallery space itself. This evening's Hosting will initiate an apocryphal archiving of Reproductions II – an immaterial revenant to haunt the invited guests.

Birgitta Hosea is a digital artist, and Research Leader for Performance and Course Director of M.A. Character Animation at CSM. Her current work investigates photographic manipulation and theatricality in Victorian Spirit Photography and mediumistic performances.

Peter Suchin is an artist and critic, contributing to Art Monthly, Frieze, The Guardian, and many other journals.

Sarah Sparkes is an artist, curator and researcher.  She leads the GHost project. Initiated in 2008, GHost provides a supporting platform enabling invited guests to visually and conceptually manifest and interrogate the idea of the ghost.

Sarah Wood is Senior Lecturer at The School of English, University of Kent. She is Managing Editor of The Oxford Literary Review and a founder of Angelaki: Journal of the Theoretical Humanities.

'GHost Hostings 10:  A Haunted Reproduction' will be part of a day of closing events on Saturday 16th February for Sharons Kivland's exhibition Reproductions II.  Places are limited and must be reserved in advance.  Please email the gallery if you wish to attend:  INFO@DOMOBAAL.COM

On the final afternoon of Sharon Kivland’s exhibition Reproductions II

We cordially invite you to an afternoon of select walking tours, discussions, book presentations and hauntings,

these events are all free however numbers are strictly limited and places must be reserved on a first come basis: 

please contact the gallery. INFO@DOMOBAAL.COM 

Secondly, a new call for two new Hostings GHost is moving in a new direction, the GHosts of the past can take us into the future as a unifying force - ghost comrades!!

GHost-dance: ghosts as cultural and political movement

GHost Hostings 11 and 12 a call for submissions

Call for papers, presentations, performance and dance for an interdisciplinary seminar and performance event – the so-called 'GHost Hostings'.   Hostings 11 and 12 take the GHost project's research in a new direction. 

Deadline for submissions – March 16th

The Hostings are supported by the Centre for Performance at CSM, University of the Arts.

Venue:  CSM, University of the Arts, Granary Building, 1 Granary Square, London, N1C 4AA

Dates:        17th April, 6pm - 9pm – LVMH Lecture Theatre

                   21st May, 6pm – 9pm – Studio Theatre (dance and performance space)

“Standing on the hill where so many people were buried in a common grave, standing there in that cold darkness under the stars, I felt tears running down my face. I can’t describe what I felt.  I heard the voices of the long-dead ghost dancers crying out to us.”

(Leonard Crow Dog, during the American Indian Movement’s occupation of Wounded Knee, 1973).

In the last decades of the nineteenth century, self proclaimed prophet Wovoka, of the Paiute people, became the figure-head for the Ghost Dance - a religious movement adopted by a significant number of the Native American Nations. Central to this belief was a communal ritualised dance, inducing a trance state, in which it was believed the souls of the dead and living would be reunited and their land returned to them. In the 1970s the Ghost Dance was revived as part of the Red Power Movement, with the activists group AIM (American Indian Movement) at its forefront, fighting for Native American civil rights. The ghost in the Ghost Dance was a revitalising force for a people whose land and loved ones had been taken from them and who were facing cultural genocide.

The Spiritualist movement in nineteenth century U.S.A provided a forum in which women, whose role in society was very much surpressed, could give voice to their opinions in a public arena. Appeals for women’s emancipation and the abolition of slavery could be expressed under the guise of a ghost voice, allegedly channelled through the medium.

At the same time in Europe, in the opening sentences of Marx and Engle’s Communist Manifesto, “A Spectre is haunting Europe – the spectre of Communism.” Communism could be said to have been conceptualised as a powerful ghostly presence, waiting to materialise and take shape within the living as a force for revolutionary change.

GHost is seeking proposals for thirty minute papers, performances, performative presentations, contemporary or traditional dance and ritual performance encompassing all disciplines and fields of interest.

Submissions may address, but not be restricted to, one or more of the following:

·Ghosts as a political or cultural voice within marginalised or disenfranchised communities.

·The embodying of ghosts within ritual and performance to instigate socio-cultural or political change.

·Ghosts as a healing and unifying presence within marginalised cultural groups or genders.

·The appropriation of the ghost-dance, and other forms of spirit–possession, within contemporary art.

·The ghost narrative as a political device within rhetoric, writing, film, visual art or popular culture (fiction and non-fiction).

Please send a (working) title and an abstract of approximately 300 - 400 words, a brief biography and, if applicable, a couple of photographs or links to film clips documenting your performance or dance.

Please send submissions to Sarah Sparkes and Aldworth Howard at:

ghost.hostings@gmail.com

www.ghosthostings.co.uk

www.host-a-ghost.blogspot.com

Talk at NN Contemporary Art

NN Presents: Talk by Sarah Sparkes, at The University of Northampton, Avenue Campus

NN presents a talk by researcher, artist and curator Sarah Sparkes, to coincide with their current exhibition Guests and Hosts. Sparkes will be presenting her research project, GHostings, which aims to address the various roles ghosts play in contemporary culture.

Researcher, artist and curator Sarah Sparkes has been presenting GHostings since 2008. GHost aims to address the various roles ghosts play in contemporary culture by bringing artists, writers, curators, researchers and others together. TheGHostings have taken place in ‘haunted’ locations including Senate House, St John on Bethnal Green and more. Sarah will be talking about her research project and answering questions from the audience.

Date: 30 January 2013
Start time: 2pm
Admission: FREE (No booking required)
Venue: The University of Northampton, Avenue Campus, Saint George's Avenue, Northampton, NN2 6JD.

T: 01604 638944 (NN)
E: catherine@nncontemporaryart.org
W: www.nncontemporaryart.org
http://www.nncontemporaryart.org/exhibitions/guests-hosts/

Ghost Club Talk

I'm honoured to be talking about the GHost project at what may well be the oldest psychical research organisation in the world -   The Ghost Club


from 2pm - 3pm
at
Victory Services Club

63-79 Seymour Street

London W2 2HF

"Guest, Hosts and Ghosts and How to Make Them"

 Sarah Sparkes is an artist and curator.  She is currently an affiliated fellow at the University of London where she runs the creative research project:  "GHost" 

 As a visual arts and creative research project GHost  takes on and explores the conceit of guests, hosts and ghosts, both metaphorically and practically, in its activities.  Functioning in its capacity as a supporting platform (or host) GHost aims to enable invited guests to visually and conceptually manifest and interrogate the idea of the ghost. The project has had two central strands: a consideration of the relevance of ghosts in contemporary culture, centred around a programme of interdisciplinary seminars – so-called Hostings – held in Senate House at the University of London; and a series of exhibitions, screenings and performances designed to make manifest and, by extension, examine the aesthetics of ghosts and haunted spaces held primarily at St John on Bethnal Green, London.

This talk will feature images, recordings and short films documenting the various activities of GHosts exhibitions and Hostings as well as its off-shoot project The Ghosts of Senate House. 

The Haunted Sea Film Screening

GHost presents

The Haunted Sea

Edges of the Peripheries - still. Emma Caddow

Amy McDonough, Ash on my Skirt (still)

Short Film Screening

Friday 23 September 2011

7pm doors open

64 Tontine Street, Folkestone, Kent, CT20 1JP

Map: http://tinyurl.com/6zd2ssc

We have selected twelve international artists who have responded to our call for short films on the theme of “The Haunted Sea”. Their films will be screened on the final weekend of the Folkestone Triennial:

Films by
Tymon Albrzykowski, Neil Baker, Nick Baxter & Jude Cowan & Joanna McCormick, Emma Caddow, Kieron Clark, Inez de Coo, Glenn Church, Romeo Grünfelder, Ellen Lake & Chris Green, Amy McDonough, Eva Rudlinger, Stasis73

FULL FILM PROGRAMME HERE

Andy Sharp will open and close the event with “An intermission of aural lagan, manipulating phonographic salvage from actual locations"

Saturday 24th September, 2.00p - 6.00pm
the films will be screened on a loop at 64 Tontine Street
and the B&B Project Space will be open with
a final chance to glimpse the GHost CLHub

4.00pm – Performance by Joanna McCormick and Jude McGowanthe B&B Project Space, 14 Tontine Street

GHost at opening of Folkestone Triennial

 

GHost has been invited to haunt the B&B Space in 14 Tontine Street for the duration of the Folkestone Triennial (25 June – 25 September). Our project GHost CLHub has manifested in a corner of the B&B and will open its doors to the public on 25 June. Over the three months of the Triennial GHost CLHub will explore  the hidden narratives of ‘hauntings’ emanating from Folkestone and the Shepway area and our corner in the B&B will grow from the initial exhibition into an archive of artworks, artefacts, documents, films, stories and other entities.

For the opening of GHost CLHub we will be showing haunted artworks by Miyuki Kasahara, Calum F. Kerr, Domingo Martínez Rosario, Sarah Sparkes, Ricarda Vidal and Cathy Ward.  

read more on the GHost blog

The Haunted Sea

"The Haunted Sea"  Found Object (from Folkestone) with Frosted Lettering - made for The GHost CLHub at Follkestone Triennial Fringe, June 2011

GHost CLHub Wallpaper

GHost has installed 'GHost CLHub' at the B&B Project Space in Folkestone for the Triennial Fringe.The GHost CLHub has its own hand made wallpaper created by Sarah Sparkes and Ricarda Vidal

Reflections - Cathy Ward's work and the GHost CLhub wall paper

GHost II

GHOST II
curated by Sarah Sparkes and Ricarda Vidal
























Photogragh taken at St John on Bethnal Green by Sarah Sparkes 2009

Friday 18th December 6pm - 10pm
Screenings commence at 7.30pm
at St John’s Church on Bethnal Green 200 Cambridge Heath Road, E2 9PA (opposite Bethnal Green tube)

Join us for the Return of GHost!A night of artist films, performances and moving image interventions to celebrate the darkest days of the season and to welcome in the ghosts that inhabit them. With moving image installations around the foyer and belfry and a screening of artist films on a movie-sized screen in the nave. Plus, as a finale a screening of Mario Bava's 1963 classic, 'I tre volti della paura: La goccia d'acqua’


And, of course, Mulled wine and minced pies!



With (in no particular order): Glenn Church, JoWonder, Geraldine Swayne, Daisy Delaney, Sinead Wheeler, Magnus Irving, Sarah Doyle, Tessa Garland, Lisa Fielding Smith, Gail Burton, Rebecca Feiner, Sam Treadaway, Katja Tukiainen, Sarah Breen Lovett, Calum F Kerr, Anne Charlotte Morgenstein, Andrew Graves-Johnston, Mason Stone, Richard Mansfield, Fernando Cestari, Mikey Georgeson, Reverand Marc Vaulbert de Chantilly, Geoff and the Daughters of Moroni, Miyuki Kasahara, Jo David, Julian Wakeling, Derek Jordan, and David Buckley on the ORGAN


Visit our website for more info: http://www.host-a-ghost.blogspot.com/


or join our


Facebook group


With thanks to St John’s Church on Bethnal Green, the Institute of Germanic & Romance Studies (University of London), Betting on Shorts, Paul Dillon, Jonathon McKay, Cosimo Trisolini and Intellect Books.