Me and Tim covered the residency studio with paper and invited the public to collect rubbings from the architecture and environments of Wysing and build a place of the future!

Waiting for somebody?

The Rubbings begin!

Cutting up the Rubbings.

Installing!

More Installing!

The Big Draw Installation.

I have recently been uploading a few ‘experimental’ films on Vimeo (a site dedicated to sharing video/film based work).  Some are playful and improvisational in a kind of slapstick way and some document various studio-based activities 2008-9.

click the link here http://www.vimeo.com/user1363145/videos

Enjoy.

David

It’s raining in Istanbul today, so I thought I would write to you all in the UK, before I get back to my own work.

I am keeping busy, besides thinking about my own work, there is so much going on….I went to see the Hisar Short Film Selection, the ten best Turkish short films of the year, as part of the Istanbul Film Festival on 18 April, which was a good opportunity to see the films with English subtitles, (outside the Film Festival it’s not so easy to see Turkish cinema with English subtitles). Visited a great market on 19 April, with vast amounts of good, fresh food, before sitting by the Bosphorous to enjoy the good weather and Turkish tea with some of the other residents. There was an exhibition opening on 20 April, of work by Gamze Özer, curated by Manzara Perspectives, (Anna Heidenhain & Kristina Kramer), in a newly renovated apartment with views of Golden Horn and the Bosphorous. (It was also Heidenhain & Kramer who curated a show last week in an old recording studio). All the residents and interns had a lunch on Wednesday here at Platform – a good opportunity to meet those I hadn’t already met. (There are links on the Platform website for those interested in the other artists here). It was public holiday here in Turkey on Thursday, Children’s Day, so Turkish flags in abundance. On Saturday I went on a tour to see the diversity of urban patterns of neighbourhoods along the European side of the Mamara coast, through Yenikapı, a place of global migration out west towards Yeşilköy, Istanbul’s upper class suburbia, with a range of neighbourhoods and historical sites in between.
I am feeling quite settled here now, and am falling in love with Istanbul and the pace of life here. It’s taking some time to get used to a new, very empty looking studio, but I’m reading lots, which all filters in.

It’s good to see images of Tom & Simon Bloor’s As Long as it Lasts on Wysing Flickr site!

It’s Thursday late afternoon here in Istanbul, and the sun is still beaming into my studio, (as per the photo, taken just moments ago). I went to see ‘(Very) Small Distortions in the Order’ yesterday, which was screening as part of the Istanbul Film Festival, a programme of short videos by artists from Turkey,  Was really struck by Kisa Devre, (Short Circuit) by Ahmet Öğüt, who’s also representing Turkey at this year’s Venice Biennale, alongside Banu Cennetoğlu. There’s an interesting exhibition opening and concert tonight, (‘Relative Positions and Conclusions’) in a really beautiful space, which will at some point in the near future be renovated into a hotel. I visited Istanbul Modern at the weekend, and hope to explore Sultanahmet, and the coast along the Sea of Marmara in the next few days. It’s still quite surreal to be walking ten minutes from my apartment to the studio along Istiklal Caddesi each morning! The image below is the view outside the studio window at Platform Garanti this morning, which is just off Istiklal Caddesi. 

I send my best wishes from Istanbul,Katherine 

http://www.platformgaranti.blogspot.com 

I have been nominated by Sanna Moore, Exhibitions Curator at Towner, Eastbourne for this months Open Frequency on the AXIS website.

Open Frequency is a forum for curators to nominate artists living and working across the UK and presents an eclectic group of new artists each month.

To view the profile click on the link

http://www.axisweb.org/ofSARF.aspx?SELECTIONID=19490

Any feedback welcome,

David

As the Marketing Manager at Wysing i recently attended an Arts Marketing day www.a-m-a.org.uk  in London and certainly the key note speech was incredible ….Robert Jones of Brand design agency Wolff Olins www.wolffolins.com    spoke about ‘What do galleries stand for ?’

He emphahsised how all aspects of the business should be inspired by the brand …but he recognised that Brand is a dirty word in public art galleries so instead looked at an organisations’ values and what it stood for …this he said was pretty much the same as the brand.

he quoted the work they had done at the Tate ten years ago with the phrase Look Again Think Again … how art began democratising itself through just that phrase and alongside new buildings and new strategies has seen the phenomenal growth of the Tate over the last ten years with regards to audiences and profile.  www.Tate.org.uk

he also said in the future people will be less passive consumers and as they are already very very active participants and consumers and so now galleries and their web portals have become platforms on which people can do things for themselves - platforms of activity.  Brands are now platforms.  Now we have a different less emotional commitment to a brand and we are more interested in what we as individuals can do with an organisation … not only what it stands for.

Brand loyalty is therefore less secure than in previous times.

 As we take our own Wysing website into new and adventurous territory in the coming months and years this will remain in our minds as we hope to provide access to more individuals and communities from around the world who are interested in what we stand for and what we offer to both artists and the public alike - without perhaps ever having to actually visit Wysing itself in rural Cambridgeshire…

 Already our long established International and National Residency programme past present and future takes our work into countries and places that we could not previously reach and as we all enter an expanding exploding global ‘market place’ Wysing as a model for art practice, for artists residencies, for experimentation and risk taking in the visual arts and for mentoring and support to studio holders and visiting artists alike will become a model we hope other organisations, artists, curators and individuals worldwide will want to work with and be inspired by.

The Tate holds an annual weekend called Come Play and these words struck me as something we encourage artists to do on site here at Wysing - to experiment to develop their practice as well as encouraging the public to participate and be part of our programme - often in a friendly accessible perhaps even comic way to encourage understanding and engagement in the process of making art itself.

Also visit Donna Lynas, Wysing’s Director Curatorial Advisor page for Shezad Dawood on AXIS :
http://www.axisweb.org/ofSARF.aspx?SELECTIONID=19405