Sluice

2011

Karl England

Ben Street

Sponsored By

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Contents

Sluice Art Fair 2011: An Introduction 4

Aid & Abet 6

ALISN 8

A Plan 10

Banner Repeater 12

Filmarmalade 14

Fordham 16

George and Jørgen 18

Mews 20

Modern Language Experiment 22

Shift 24

Space In Between 26

studio1.1 28

Theodore:Art 30

Transition 32

Sluice Invites: Ledge 34

Rong-Wrong 36

Performances & Panel 37

Acknowledgements 40

All images copyright of their respective owners

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Sluice Art Fair 2011: An Introduction

In no other industry but the art world would a trade fair gain any kind of currency outside of those working within it. And yet, in recent years, art fairs have affirmed their placement in the constellation of international art events alongside ostensibly non-commercial platforms like biennales. What’s really strange is the overwhelming popularity of events such as the Frieze Art Fair among the paying public. Substitute Koons’ enshrined vacuum cleaners (in a white booth at Frieze) for ordinary vacuum cleaners (in a white booth at a household appliances trade fair) and you get a sense of the oddness of the sight of those queues snaking through Regent’s Park every October. What’s the difference? Why do they (we) go?

It’s true that major art fairs such as Frieze have sought to cushion the mercantile heart of their business with extracurricular events – performances, panel discussions, live radio broadcasts – and in that way provide some sort of solace for the thousands of visitors who pay £12 to wander the miles of booths. But although these activities underscore the “eventness” of Frieze after the fact, they’re not really why the public go. Part of the appeal must be to gawp: a large art fair is a good opportunity to observe the inner workings of one of the strangest human activities, like watching naked mole rats clamber over each other in a bisected tunnel in a zoo. Another draw is, inevitably, to feel part of something that still has a residue of cool, which derives from the contemporary art world’s apparently blanket sense of impenetrability – conceptual, social, economic and grammatical. But the real appeal must be the feeling of immediacy in the environment of an art fair: the sense, however accurate, that what you’re seeing on the walls collapses a temporal distance between the manufacture of a work of art and the moment of its being viewed. This sounds naïve, but it’s true. Unmediated by scholarship, unsullied by curatorial strategy, works of art in art fairs are refreshingly perplexing, pleasantly weird. The galleries themselves don’t really know if the fountain of goat urine they’re selling is any good or not, since the virtue or quality of the work itself

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isn’t intrinsic to the object, it’s generated through a whole network of social activity (writing, gossiping, thinking out loud) which hasn’t yet happened or is happening now. No-one’s decided anything yet, and that low hum of anxiety that you feel through your feet is galleries collectively worrying whether what they’re selling is actually any good. Nobody knows for sure.

The Sluice Art Fair was set up with the intention of showcasing smaller galleries – some artist-run, some non-profit, some neither of these – whose close relationship with artists and their practice gives each of them a unique window into art now. Some make a virtue out of being small. Others seem attendant on growth. That in itself makes Sluice a barometer of the way the art world works, as well as a levelled space in which to investigate several different approaches at once. Sluice has no overarching theme, and if correlations appear between works of art they’re happy coincidences, not evidence of a new art movement. What they have in common is their foregrounding of the business of making art rather than the art business. Sluice isn’t a critique, or a parody, or a survey: it’s a modest proposal.

[Ben Street]

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Aid & Abet is a new artist-run project space founded by Sarah Evans, David Kefford and CJ Mahony in 2011. Aid & Abet provides a creative platform from a large warehouse space in Cambridge, UK for the production, presentation and dissemination of contemporary art, with a particular interest in cross-disciplinary, self-initiated and DIY approaches.

For Sluice Art Fair, Aid & Abet presents new and recent work by four artists based in the UK whose practice explores the transformation of everyday objects and materials using low-tech media and processes. All four artists have a diverse approach to ideas, topics and themes and create works which range from the quotidian to the uncanny, the temporary to the psychological.

[Sarah Evans, David Kefford and CJ Mahony]

Brasso

Alex Pearl

Courtesy the artist and Aid & Abet

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ALISN (Artist-Led Initiatives Support Network) is an artist-led collaborative arts organisation engaged in creating exhibition and networking opportunities for emerging artists. Since 2007 ALISN have worked with a wide variety of individuals and organisations within and outside the arts, making use of established and non-traditional sources of exhibition spaces and support. At Sluice Art Fair, ALISN presents ‘Scotoma’, curated by Bella Easton. 'Scotoma' assembles notions of absence of colour through a dialogue in surfaces – those of the space itself and of the works within it. Underpinned by the slick surface of the parquet floor of 26 South Molton Lane, the show is grown from the ground up through installation and sculpture, perorating with obsessively textural vertical works which delimit the space. The whole veers towards the domestic, as if emerging art, having stolen into this Mayfair setting, is intent on settling in; the objects in apparent collusion to become a living room for art.

[Jordan Dalladay-Simpson and Iavor Lubomirov]

Blind

Bella Easton

Courtesy the artist and ALISN

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A Plan was founded in 2010 and has worked with 25 artists to date. With no permanent gallery space, we develop projects in response to their location. Bringing together emerging artists from different areas and networks, to encourage new creative dialogues.

A Plan’s first project ‘The Grass Will Grow Over the City’ featuring artists whose works explore changing landscapes, took place on ‘Fish Island’ overlooking a vast Olympic building site. Most recently they invited artists to make new works in response to the history of a derelict Mansion in Epping Forest, mounting a vast candle lit exhibition in the vaults.

Art fairs often feel like a terrible place to actually see art. Paradoxically, they are perfectly set up to sell art, and whilst as a projects organisation that’s not our primary aim, we do think it’s important. Particularly when that means introducing a collector to an artist, beginning a rewarding relationship for both parties.

The other function of the art fair of course is as a visual catalogue of a year of exhibitions, artists and galleries. What would be really great is an art fair that broke down the shop walls, cataloguing and celebrating the innovative projects and exhibitions happening beyond the commercial art world. Sluice is A Plan's first fair and feels like the perfect fit. Choosing to avoid a booth format, A Plan is taking Sluice as another interesting space to respond to.

[Catherine Bagg]

Poppy Jones

Courtesy the artist and A Plan

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Banner Repeater is an artist-run project space and reading room dedicated to artists’ printed material. Located on platform 1, Hackney Downs rail station, the project is driven by its location, and is dedicated to developing critical art in the public realm, in the natural interstice the platform and incidental footfall of over 4,000 passengers a day provides. The project space arts programme, of exhibitions, events and performance, publishes pamphlets and posters, which are free to take away. Ideas of publishing have pushed further many of the works in the arts programme.

The reading room holds a collection of artists’ books and other printed material, for both browsing and purchase. The permanent collection is home to Publish and be Damned's public library.

The emphasis is on multiple points of dissemination, via pamphlets and posters published from the site, and the other free material we distribute, as well as on-line activities. The siting of the archive of artists’ printed material as a public library means that Banner Repeater is a resource to be utilised by both local community and visitors in a working station enviroment.

For Sluice Banner Repeater will have a selection of art works from the project space, as well as artists’ publications from the reading room bookshop.

[Ami Clarke]

Courtesy Banner Repeater

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The Filmarmalade project is both a way of distributing artists’ film and video through DVDs to a wider audience, but also as a tactic to create a series of wandering conversations around a single question: is there a form of knowledge available to artists alone, that emerges through the discipline of working with a particular medium over time. And if we can agree that this is at the very least an intriguing possibility, how might we come to speak about this arcane form of knowledge, which appears to exist outside of the accepted vicissitudes of the institutions of theory?

With the addition of bookworks, the theme of an artists’ relation to medium was extended into the form of filmed interviews, to accompany the film works To progress the idea of an intimate conversation, the interviews were constructed to be as open as possible - simply the length of an HDV tape with little editing. This provides a way of recording the space created by the artist, their language, terms of reference, gestures and sense of commitment to practice.

[Gordon Shrigley]

Video Still

Francisca Benitez

Courtesy the artist and Filmarmalade

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Invited by Man Somerlinck, Director of the Fordham Gallery, curator Veronique Follet has selected recent RCA graduate Henrik Potter to show at Sluice. Potter will display superposed layers of varied materials, resulting in a subtle and delicate simplicity.

[Man Somerlinck]

Medals

Henrik Potter

Courtesy the artist and Fordham Gallery

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Set up in the West End of London in November 2010, George and Jorgen is a gallery that promotes work by both established and emerging contemporary artists, nationally and internationally. Sluice Art Fair will provide the platform for their forth off-site exhibition, organised by the gallery directors George Lionel Barker and Ingrid Reynolds.

[George Lionel Barker and Ingrid Reynolds]

Wiped Out

Paddy Gould & Roxy Topia

Courtesy the artists & George & Jorgen

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In finance, a futures contract is a standardised contract between two parties to buy or sell a specified asset (eg. oranges, oil, gold) of standardised quantity and quality at a specified future date at a price agreed today (the futures price). The contracts are traded on a futures exchange. Futures contracts are not "direct" securities like stocks, bonds, rights or warrants. They are still securities, however, though they are a type of derivative contract. The party agreeing to buy the underlying asset in the future assumes a long position, and the party agreeing to sell the asset in the future assumes a short position.

The price is determined by the instantaneous equilibrium between the forces of supply and demand among competing buy and sell orders on the exchange at the time of the purchase or sale of the contract.

In many cases, the underlying asset to a futures contract may not be traditional "commodities" at all – that is, for financial futures, the underlying asset or item can be currencies, securities or financial instruments and intangible assets or referenced items such as stock indexes and interest rates.

The future date is called the delivery date or final settlement date. The official price of the futures contract at the end of a day's trading session on the exchange is called the settlement price for that day of business on the exchange.

[Carlos Noronha Feio and Mikael Larsson]

Courtesy The Mews Project Space

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The Modern Language Experiment was established in 2009 by Matthew Stock and Keh Ng as an artist-led contemporary art project based in East London. TMLE is dedicated to the development of art exhibitions, talks, seminars and screenings that bring about discussion and contemplation of the changing language of art today. The Modern Language Experiment provides opportunities for both emerging and established artists, with an emphasis that seeks to engage a broad and diverse audience, increasing awareness of contemporary visual art in the city.

The Modern Language Experiment is a transitory project with no fixed abode, with an emphasis on utilising unused buildings and project spaces.

[Matthew Stock and Keh Ng]

p.s.o.m.g.w.t.f.b.b.q

Jon Moscow

Courtesy the artist & The Modern Language experiment

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SHIFT is an artist led project/installation space run by Paul Good and Kirsty Wood. Projects are run on a residency like format, where artist have up to a month to produce and install a site specific installation. The space has been operational since November 2009, and in that time shows have focused on solo exhibitions. More recently SHIFT. has been invited to curate shows in other spaces, most recently a performance event in collaboration with Joe Watling at Angus Hughes Gallery.

For sluice artfair SHIFT has asked every artist who has had a solo show to make a maquette of, or a remnant from, their show. Collectively these works will be presented as (All Works 2009-2011).

[Paul Good and Kirsty Wood]

Forth Estate

Lee Holden

Courtesy the artist and Shift Gallery

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Space In Between (SIB) is a curatorial collective and a platform for emerging artists founded in early 2009 by Hannah Hooks and Laura McFarlane. SIB work with artists by way of curated exhibitions in disused spaces across London, exploring ideas and themes relevant to current practices and architectural context. In tandem SIB work with artists on solo shows used as a testing ground for a single idea or new body of work, currently in our Regent Studios project space (2010 - present day) and initially Lower Clapton gallery Unit 3 (2009). Artists and designers SIB have worked with include Alexander Mulligan, ARKA Group, Ben Jeans Houghton, Good Wives and Warriors, James Capper, Lilah Fowler, Kazimierz Jankowski, Luke Montgomery, Neil Porter, Nelly Ben Hayoun, Nick Roberts, Sandy Smith, Simon Linington, William Mackrell, and Xavier Poultney. Space In Between is interested in the environment of the art fair and the democracy that it offers, creating a neutral platform for the artists and spaces involved. The fair offers an opportunity to build a new audience for the artists and projects by bringing often geographically disparate organisations into one space.

[Hannah Hooks and Laura McFarlane]

Take Two

Simon Linington & William Mackrell

Courtesy the artists and Space In Between

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studio1.1 began in 2003 in a Shoreditch not quite fully colonised by the art world. A collective of six artists outside the commercial establishment, studio1.1 had no battle-plan; now as a directorate of two they present a range of shows as diverse as possible. A non- profit space, their commitment is to the work itself, and to fostering the relationship between artist, artwork, and viewer, looking for what Cage called ‘the quality of encounter’. Art isn’t a distraction, or an act of consumption, but a relationship. They were proud to take part by invitation in the first three Zoo art fairs; equally proud in retrospect to be rejected from its three further manifestations as a no-nonsense trade-fair. "Art attempts to evoke something that you are not yet. Entertainment only talks to that person that you are now.' (Richard Foreman)

[Keran James and Michael Keenan]

Orange and grey striped painting

Stuart Barnes

Courtesy the artist and studio1.1

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Twenty years after opening her first gallery in SoHo, Stephanie Theodore opened Theodore:Art – a contemporary art gallery and consultancy. By bringing a selection of emerging European artists to the US, Theodore:Art offers a window of opportunity to discover promising artists early in their careers. In addition, relations with more established artists in New York, London and the EU create the opportunity to present work in unusual contexts.

For the Sluice Art Fair, Theodore:Art is pleased to present a special project by Richard Paul – a 3D video slideshow , mixing vintage 3D images from 1950s, 60s and 70s with Paul's contemporary work, all inspired and produced by anachronistic technology and displayed on a late model 3D television.

Paul's work speaks to both the love of the 'new and improved” as well as a nostalgia for the watered-down variations of high technology foisted upon an eager buying audience in the post-space-race era. Yet what is being presented is sometimes recycled, appropriated and reused, and recontextualised without obvious meaning. The connection between association/idea and visual impression is fractured, albeit not unpleasantly. Conflations of objects and images that seem to have no relationship deflate and detourne meaning, luring in the unsuspecting browser with a vertiginous visual experience.

There are always a few moments that make it all worthwhile – visitors connecting with artwork, engaging in meaningful discussion. Any curator, artist, or gallerist – anyone who presents art for an unknown audience – seeks to create epiphanic situations, wherein ideas are offered and received. Something good is taken away. Hope springs eternal.

[Stephanie Theodore]

Gust

Richard Paul

Courtesy the artist and Theodore:Art

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Transition is an independent and innovative, artist-run, London based gallery and publisher founded by artist Cathy Lomax in October 2002. The gallery shows work by both emerging and established contemporary artists as well as producing publications and periodicals such as Arty and Garageland.

For Sluice Transition will be presenting 'Strip' - groups of 2D works that can be read as short connected series' by artists including Emma Talbot, Alli Sharma, Annabel Dover, Cathy Lomax and Corinna Spencer. There will also be a selection of Transition publications for sale.

[Cathy Lomax]

BOAC

Annabel Dover

Courtesy the artist and Transition Gallery

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Sluice Invites: Artist Projects

Each year Sluice will invite one artists' project space to intervene in the space. For 2011 Sluice has invited LEDGE.

LEDGE is a window sill that has a second life as a project space run by artist Rebecca Birch. Each LEDGE project will show a single new work by an invited artist. For Sluice Sarah Bowker-Jones will be showing with LEDGE.

Sarah Bowker-Jones makes abstract painting and sculpture hybrids from an ever-evolving, experimental methodology. Driven by curiosity and passion for material possibilities she is inspired by the enigmatic beauty of non-verbal language. Many of her recent works are expandable, collapsible and interchangeable; collecting and proudly showing off traces of aging, fold marks, drill holes, scratched surfaces and crumbling edges. The many layers of creation and destruction build up forms, realised through chance as much as intention.

[Rebecca Birch]

Under That Big Thing in the Window

Sarah Bowker-Jones

Courtesy the artist and LEDGE

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Considering publishing as a platform for research and one which seeks to blur and inflate the conventional purpose of the publisher, Rong-Wrong stands to dissolve distinctions between editing, writing, design, production and distribution by conceited conduits relative to image and textual investigation.

Acting as an assembler of matter, a variety of positions manifest and exist within such a framework. Assembling, an unspoken form of participatory representation, in which command of editorship is veered away from a unifying figure and onto the collective concern itself. And to classify the form of a thing, like production, is a grotesque operation. Instead, something else: to observe and to essay (in)balances between the body and language out to the universe and its objects—an ongoing interrogation between biographical and fictional accounts—of formulating and re-formulating definitions—and the works within (and on which the journal is based) preclude a movement within technique itself; a transplantation from one genre to another often involving an alteration in position, a meditation within an adjacent condition or an extended embellishment of a primary definition.

This is how language can be hounded; by a synthesis of retention, of something that concedes itself to hide, concurrent to the painful production of a thing that requires itself only to reveal.

[Scott Joseph]

Editor Rong-Wrong

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Edwina Ashton

Simon Linington and William Mackrell will be performing ‘Take Two’ via a live streaming video link from their studio.

Artist Alexander Costello will be performing 'The Vitruvian Project'

Rosalie Schweiker presents ‘We buy from the poor and sell to the rich’

Kate Jones

Alex Baker and Kit Poulson present 'Conversation of the Dud Men'

The Ladies of the Press* Ana Čavić and Renée O’Drobinak present ‘LIVE PRESS!’ the Ladies' signature performance of impromptu gazette-making, opening up a”press desk” and creating an on-site gazette filled with live documentation, peripheral material, interviews, doodles, finished pieces and any other quirk that they deem fit.

The discussion panel will be looking at the nature of art fairs within

the contemporary art world as a whole - are they necessary? What's their relationship or even impact on art production? What's the effect

on the way art is digested and understood by the wider public beyond the art world in-crowd?

Panelists: Jasper Joffe Artist and founder of the Free Art Fair. Cathy Lomax, artist and founder of Transition Gallery. Alistair Gentry Artist, member of Market Project and writer of Career Suicide an exposé about the realities of the art world.

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Acknowledgements

Sarah England | Lindsay Friend | Mark Jackson | Keh ng | Juan-Carlos Serna | Andrew Seto | Dr Crystal Bennes | Vanessa Bartlett | Man Somerlinck | Holly Willats | Jessica Wood