Some[w]Here Now – Pump House Gallery

by admin | Feb 10, 2018 | Communities of Imagination, Curatorial, Drawing, print & text, Gallery, Installation / Films, Participation, Performance, Publication / on-offline, Research & Proposals, Residencies & Commisions, Sited

Some[w]Here Now – Pump House Gallery
2015

www.somewhereresearch.wordpress.com

Some[w]Here Now invites artists, local people, and others interested to join the drawing shed for open conversations at Pump House Gallery in Battersea Park, exploring how artists may work collaboratively, with ‘local’ communities and in ‘public’ places, in the context of Now.Co-hosted by a collection of artists, local residents, critical theorists, architects, activists, public and mental health professionals, THE DAY OF SMALL CONVERSATIONS invites participants to talk openly about ideas of ‘social responsibility’ in regards to collaborative making and to collectively question the role of contemporary artists within opposing cultures of resilience, resistance and regeneration.

The frame will be set by the drawing shed‘s playful and critically informed Some[w]Here contemporary arts project over three housing estates in Nine Elms, and will feature video documentation, materials and research gathered over the past nine months of the project. The estates – known locally as ‘the island’ – are situated in the shadow of the Battersea Power Station Development, London SW8 close to the gallery; an area that throws into question the very meaning of public space and value of community in our contemporary society.

THE DAY OF SMALL CONVERSATIONS will be co-hosted by a number of artists and thinkers, including Sally Labern, Bobby Lloyd, Jordan McKenzie, Barby Asante, Daniella Valz Gen, Professor Adrian Renton, Cara Courage, Dr. Debra Benita Shaw, Shahed Saleem, Dr Chris Wood, and Lois Keidan and Katy Baird (Live Art Development Agency). The days agenda will then be shaped by all of the voices in the room, with conversations passing between small groups throughout, looking towards future possible projects, shared actions, and collaborations. Please bring thoughts, questions, agendas and an openness to unpick.

Amidst these conversations there will be a large communal picnic lunch provided in the park and a drinks reception at the end of the day for further conversation and informal networking. the drawing shed will also launch the Some[w]Here publication: Manual for Possible Projects on the Horizon.

Pump House Gallery is wheelchair accessible on the ground floor only. Please get in touch if you would like to discuss access requirements.

For more information, please email: thedrawingshed.projects@gmail.com

Mary Osborn 07792292605

THE SOAPBOX ARTS LAB

6 – 8 June | 11am – 5pm
Pump House Gallery

Some[w]Here Now – THE DAY OF SMALL CONVERSATIONS follows the drawing shed’s The SoapBox Arts Lab taking place at the gallery in the three days preceding. Here the artists will be taking over the gallery for individual and collaborative making of mobile soapbox structures. These will further be used as a platform for conversations on June 9. The SoapBox Arts Lab is free; please turn up on the day to join in, or email for further information.

Stranger : Neighbour – Paul Fletcher film

by admin | Feb 10, 2018 | Curatorial, Gallery, Installation / Films, Residencies & Commisions

Stranger : Neighbour – Paul Fletcher film
2014

the drawing shed also commissioned filmmaker Paul Fletcher from e17films and Walthamstow International Film Festival (WIFF) to make A SHORT FILM in response to ‘Stranger : Neighbour’ – which has led to a poetic response, using QWERTY from the typewriter keys and references to Hollis Frampton’s ‘Zom’s Lemma’ (1970).

#BasicSeven7

by admin | Feb 10, 2018 | Communities of Imagination, Curatorial, Drawing, print & text, Gallery, Installation / Films, Participation, Performance, Publication / on-offline, Research & Proposals, Residencies & Commisions, Sited

#BasicSeven7

#BasicSeven7 is an ongoing project for co-lead artists Sally Labern and Bobby Lloyd of the drawing shed and was originally funded by London Borough of Waltham Forest, Hoe St Ward Funding alongside the UCL Bartlett Wild Screens research project (see below) which allowed us to extend and deepen the use of social media as a creative tool, holding complicated conversations around the issues of work, mental health and housing, inviting personal and network responses to questions of responsibility for homelessness.

the drawing shed artists fed into project engagement through their historical experience and community contact with people living on and off the streets in Leytonstone, in Hoe Street, Waltham Forest and in Camden – so as to ask the following questions:

• Can the situated screen and online social media (twitter) and Instagram be of any relevance to particular challenges such as a community discourse on street homelessness?

• Does the use of Instagram and other Social Media as a creative tool allow the drawing shed artists to synthesise and transmit ideas related to their own critical practice and engage a wider audience as participants in major debates of our time?

http://www.bartlett.ucl.ac.uk/graduate/screens-in-the-wild/Artists-in-Residence

HOMELESSNESS

Under the banner of Irregular Stage, the drawing shed worked on two projects in London in relation to homelessness:

• Irregular Bulletin was a 6 month residency at Arlington House in Camden, with Space and One Housing, using the drawing shed’s mobile PrintBike alongside the Social media tools Twitter/Instagram with long/short stay residents, January-July 2013;

this is linked and feeds into/is fed by:

• Basic Seven#7 which took place in E17 in Waltham Forest as a series of critical and inclusive arts events/workshops/exhibitions and encounters on the theme of ‘homelessness, housing, mental health and work’, February 2013 to January 2014

many joined the conversation:

#homeless #sitw @wordinthehand @wildscreens

the drawing shed tested out these questions initially during March in the following four locations:

· Tuesday 5th March 1.00pm – 4.00pm – Streets of Leytonstone E11

· Tuesday 12th March 9.30pm – 12.30pm – Soup Kitchen and homeless hostel, Walthamstow, E17

· Wednesday 13th March 10.00pm – 1.00pm – Islington, N1, we proposed to work alongside a long-term Arlington House resident selling The Big Issue but inclement weather deferred.

· Tuesday 19th March 1.00pm – 4.00pm – Streets of Leytonstone E11

We continue to work on this project and earlier in 2014, we attended a day of presentations and discussion involving many partners across London, led by the Christian Kitchen, a group local to E17 who run the soup kitchen whose pitch in the centre of Walthamstow and remit to support both hungry and homeless families, was being challenged by the Local Authority. Stella Creasy MP joined the debate.

SOME[W]HERE

by admin | Sep 29, 2017 | Communities of Imagination, Curatorial, Drawing, print & text, Gallery, Installation / Films, Mobile, Participation, Performance, Publication / on-offline, Research & Proposals, Residencies & Commisions, Sited

SOME[W]HERE

https://somewhereresearch.wordpress.com

Rethinking, reworking, reusing, retelling, remaking

the drawing shed worked on a project Some[w]Here on the three housing estates Patmore, Savona and Carey Gardens in Nine Elms, London referred to locally as ‘the island’, the land-locked social housing area opposite the now infamous Battersea Power Station site, with the new American Embassy being built on its flank, to be surrounded by an insulated, ‘double skinned’ layer of privately owned flats for a new richer community.

Our project Some[w]Here explored through the metaphor of the Go Cart and the Soap Box, both migration and the fluctuating gifts of memory in relation to early street play (imagination, resilience, survivability) and the first days of work (alienation) for current residents who have come to live in the area from all over the world.

It was this critical friction of an artist-directed discourse between older estate residents, men and women of 68 – 98 years, that informed the content of the work: contemporary go cart inspired objects and mobile Soap Boxes, built on the streets with architect-makers George Williams and Nozomi Nakabayashi whilst live/performance artists Jordan McKenzie and Daniella Valz Gen made provocative interventions, and we as lead artists created quieter works as individuals triggered by this multi-layered approach and the ‘unfixed’ organic methodologies of the collaborative works we make.

Both this very accessible ‘public’ work and the disruption of the streets created the rupture in dominant ideas that flowed into these quieter individual responses. In this liminal space, and in the case of Nine Elms, a physical in-between space too of an echo chamber within which we found a ‘Point of Resonance’, creating performative and film-based works as individual artists – like the project’s poetic body piercing.

ARTIFICIAL SUNSHINE

by admin | Sep 29, 2017 | Communities of Imagination, Curatorial, Drawing, print & text, Gallery, Installation / Films, Participation, Performance, Research & Proposals, Residencies & Commisions, Sited

ARTIFICIAL SUNSHINE

Following our summer residency in Bury with The Public Typing Pool, we were commissioned as part of Bury Light Night, October 10th 2014, to make a new research work, Artificial Sunshine. We flooded the street and exterior of Bury Art Museum and Sculpture Centre, Greater Manchester, with a ‘Smog of Black Light’ from 8 large UV floodlights located behind metal barricades (an aesthetic and safety choice). These mirrored the spectacle of the world’s first 8 electric streetlights that marked the beginning of Blackpool Illuminations in 1879 and now in 2014, purposefully uses the spectrum of light invisible to the human eye.

Wearing black ‘festival’ wristbands printed in UV ink, a cross-generational public shifted the barrier of the spectacle by activating the work itself in an extraordinary series of intimate encounters with both the artists and UV light, as the public themselves became the work. Each person was invited to wear a black wristband or presented with sheets of paper to hold into the black light, printed in UV ink with numerous short texts and only readable standing within the work itself, illuminating information often obscured or hidden from the public gaze – historical, political, scientific, imaginative, poetic.

For its first iteration in Bury we immersed ourselves in the ‘smog’ itself, with texts gathered from widely random threads of inter-web searches fed by daily news briefings and reports. These ranged from current scientific research on the health implications of light pollution and interruptions to circadian rhythms (our new city LED street lights impacting essential melatonin production, pernicious effects of light pollution on animals) to media or state blackouts on information about war or terrorism, international and domestic to scientific work exploring the universe with references to astronomical ‘perfect black bodies’, new stars, life in space….

Through the metaphor of Black Light, we investigated emergent collective and imaginative threads of resistance – acts of civil disobedience, scientific cooperation – so as to engage with how we hold agency or take responsibility for a new ‘civil society’. From UV exposure of human debris to the making visible of big ideas, we explored both individual and collective actions, experiments and explorations – such as the democratic naming of a new galaxy after the amateur stargazer who spotted it earlier this year, 10 billion light years away from Earth.

The artists – through the metaphor of BLACK LIGHT – investigated emergent collective and imaginative threads of resistance in forms of the social, the scientific and acts of civil disobedience in exploring how we hold agency or take responsibility for a new ‘civil society’.

THE PUBLIC TYPING POOL

by admin | Sep 29, 2017 | Communities of Imagination, Curatorial, Drawing, print & text, Gallery, Installation / Films, Mobile, Participation, Performance, Research & Proposals, Residencies & Commisions, Sited

THE PUBLIC TYPING POOL

Residency: TEXT FESTIVAL BURY, MAY 3 -AUGUST 9, 2014

As part of Text Festival 2014, the drawing shed, aka artists Lloyd+Labern, set up THE PUBLIC TYPING POOL: a selection of old manual typewriters in Bury Sculpture Centre for a residency spanning the Laurence Wiener exhibition; Over the months they invited the local Bury public to take part in a number of events, interventions and opportunities to slam the keys, copy those carbons, make new music, write a love letter, settle an old score, make overtures to a community, create the only page of a novel, type out an apology, make a flat plan sculpture, write a poem, type alone, write together.

Event: Twitter: #un_civil

Exploring the [un]civil in contemporary society, Lloyd+Labern worked with a group of artists and writers to construct a score for a performative text work using Social Media Twitter for Neighbour : Stranger, a collaborative live art writing project. Opening up a space in the commons of the ether, the work was a call and response that extended the enquiry beyond the physical space of the Gallery, where the collisions of experience, ideas and form could take place, and the poetry of this work hit the discomfort of the prosaic and bounced up into a mile high space. Screened in real time in Bury Sculpture Centre, exhibition visitors and artists were invited to join us in the ether, or on the typewriters in response to the emerging conversation.

The Exhibition:

the drawing shed artists Labern+Lloyd were in residence at intervals over the months of the Laurence Weiner exhibition, creating several new works in collaboration with the Bury public and through provocations with local artists. Inspired by scientist Dr Elodie Briefer’s research on the SkyLark’s song and its split-second nuanced changes in recognising both Strangers and Neighbours, the artists made a number of new visual works using the Typewriter and its Carbon Copy investigating the [un]civil in times of austerity and migration.

The Public Typing Pool – Call Out : for Typewriters:

“Iris Murdoch wrote on a Bijou Erika…..Allen Jack Kerouac an Underwood portable, William Burroughs a Remington or whatever he could get his hands on. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn used an Erika Ten Portable, Françoise Sagan a 1950’s Smith Corona Portable, George Perec an Underwood 5, and Anne Sexton a Royal Quiet Deluxe…. Ginsberg loved an Underwood 5 or was it a Remington No5?

The Public Typing Pool will work with local groups and will be open to the public to enjoy throughout May, June, July and August! Do you have an old Olivetti Lettera 32 / 22, or a Remington or a majestic old Smith Corona ….all makes, sizes and shapes are welcome!

Bury Art Museum is making a Call Out for old manual Typewriters – if you have one you could donate to create the Public Typing Pool as part of this project to launch Bury Sculpture Centre. Your story about your typewriter can become part of the artwork…!”

Man walks into The Public Typing Pool at Text Festival in Sculpture Centre Bury; he speaks to no one and sits down at one of the manual typewriters donated by a public call out, and he writes for 40 minutes:

‘I Loved Her’

He then gets up and walks out leaving the typed sheet, the copy and the carbon. Beautiful.
Neighbour : Stranger

BLACK LIGHT AT TATE MODERN

by admin | Sep 29, 2017 | Communities of Imagination, Curatorial, Drawing, print & text, Gallery, Installation / Films, Mobile, Participation, Performance, Publication / on-offline, Residencies & Commisions, Sited

BLACK LIGHT AT TATE MODERN

Artists Labern&Lloyd “trace the curve of the sun’s rays as they just graze the surface” (James Maxwell, Physicist)

What does society keep in the dark, and how can it be illuminated? Labern&Lloyd of the drawing shed, working at Tate Modern as The Light Collectors, collaborated with scientists hosted by The Institute of Physics in November 2015. Together they invited the public to engage in an afternoon of Black Light, with open conversation and research. Hundreds of people throughout the day took part in an ongoing dialogue with top physicists and astro biologists about the science and politics of light.

Framed by an installation drawn from the artists’ ongoing research into the hidden at this critical point in history, ultraviolet light revealed the disjuncture between extra-ordinary scientific explorations across the full spectrum of light and the endemic slow violence caused by human domestic light poverty across the world.

Labern&Lloyd chose the human labour and skill of hand cutting the paper stencils over a period of 12 hours, matching the year round daylight hours experienced daily by people living on the line of the equator; the prints are screened in the same UV used by the British Security Industry to track our movements, identity and money.

The Public Typing Pool©, with its manual typewriters fitted with invisible UV inked typewriter ribbons, welcomed the public to contribute to an ever growing installation of contemporary concerns, made from UV ink texts and drawings revealed through the use of hand held Black Light torches.

Part of the International Year of Light in collaboration with the Institute of Physics.

WITH THANKS

the drawing shed would like to thank the following people and organisations for their invaluable contributions to this project:

Dr Matthew Clark, Chemist and Education Manager & Richard Ashworth, Colour Experience Manager: Society of Dyers and Colourists

Dr Sergio Ioppolo & Daniel Weatherhill: Astrophysicists, Department of Physical Sciences, The Open University

Ali Hudson: Evolutionary Biology and astrophysics student, Edinburgh University

Toby Shannon: the Institute of Physics’ Coordinator of International Year of Light

Joseph Kopiel, Artist: stencil cutting and screen-printing

University of East London: ADI, Print Studio

Tate Modern: Public Programmes, Community

Brian Rothwell, typewriter ribbons: Inkjet Stores, Bury, Greater Manchester

Simon Foster-Ogg: provider of things interesting and light-related

IF…ISH

by admin | Sep 26, 2017 | Curatorial, Gallery, Participation, Sited

IF…ISH

“…and I see the universe with widened eyes and I see I see I see”
Between February and December 2013, the drawing shed developed an inter-generational project bringing together a diverse group of teenage girls and older people who reside in Hoe Street ward, Waltham Forest E17, through a series of interlinked creative and cultural activities.
IF…ISH New Experiences saw the girls collectively engaging in the research, planning, and participation of new cultural experiences. A Volunteer Agreement, signed by each participant and the drawing shed, marked the girls’ active participation and sustained commitment to the project and highlighted the projects’ model of co-production. Throughout the project the girls documented their experiences using a range of creative tools, including writing, drawing, photography and film, to develop content for a PROJECT BLOG. This engaged process opened up possibilities for an imaginative transmission of experiences and formed the basis of a series of communicative exchanges with culturally diverse older people within their own community, who, in turn, began to share extraordinary moments from their own lives.

Do you ever go to cultural events, exhibitions etc with friends or family?
“I don’t go to many. I don’t think I have been to one recently, however I would like to go to more but I don’t have much connection to the outside world so I might need help in finding some.”
Do you like trying new things that you haven’t done before?
“I really don’t know I’ve just been one of those girls who aren’t afraid of trying new things. I find it good for myself because it boosts my confidence a lot more.”
“Yes I like trying new things because it takes me out of my comfort zone and allows me to believe in myself more and gives me confidence in things which I think I could never have done before. Prime example would be Hackney WickED Festival. I would never have gone there but when I went there the people were warming and I got a real buzz out of it.”
New Experiences
For the first new experience, on a day trip to Walthamstow Marshes the girls worked with local filmmaker Paul Fletcher to explore documenting their experiences using their mobile phones. The girls’ footage was compiled to create two short films which were subsequently screened at Walthamstow International Film Festival 2013. Watch the films here: Film 1 / Film 2.
As the project progressed the new experiences the girls engaged in included outings to an exhibition at the Hayward Gallery and a special event at the Victoria and Albert Museum, experiencing design, film, performance, photography and spoken word in an evening of activities that explored the hidden voice of women and how they express this through their creativity. Joining other members of the community in Walthamstow Town Square the girls watched a performance of Puccini’s opera La Rondine as it was screened live from the Royal Opera House, while at Hackney WickED Arts Festival they explored the Open Studios and participated in arts workshops, making Photograms and learning how to do Finger Knitting – a skill that was subsequently shared with members of the community and family members. During Words Over Waltham Forest festival the girls worked with local writer Nichola Charalambou to explore new writing techniques and creative responses to respond to shared words, ideas and objects, and joined an evening of poetry and music at Walthamstow Assembly Hall for An Audience with Carol Ann Duffy. For the final group outing, the girls collectively decided on experiencing Jonzi D – Lyrikal Fearta: The Letter & Broken Lineage, a choreopoetry hip hop dance theatre production at Sadler’s Wells, with a guest performance from spoken word poet GREEdS.

What do you think about younger people engaging with older people?
“I think it’s a good idea because older people can teach the younger generation more about what they should know. It may be difficult at first because young kids tend to be shy around older people. The benefits could be that younger people learn more things from the older people and vice versa.”
“Positives: Share experiences, different lifestyles. Negatives: Youths are known as scary toward older people”
“Challenging as some old people may be scared to talk to the younger generation as there is a bad name put out for the younger generation.”
Inter-generational Exchange
The project integrated the girls’ introduction to high quality contemporary arts experiences with exploring and strengthening inter-generational relationships, opening up the possibility of meaningful engagement and increased understanding between older and younger local members of the community. Their reflections on their new experiences and creative content shared on the Blog served as a tool for instigating discussion and knowledge exchange in wide range of situations, structured and spontaneous, group-based and one-on-one.
At a community event at Greenleaf Baptist Church for International Women’s Day the girls participated in group skill-sharing with older Afro-Caribbean women and communicative exchange with members of the Waltham Forest Somali Women’s Association, in addition to numerous one-on-one interactions with diverse older individuals from the community. The girls also shared their experiences with a large number of older community members at the Walthamstow School For Girls annual community Christmas tea party.
During the outing to the Hayward Gallery, an interaction between one of the girls and an older male employee at the Hayward Gallery that began as initial exchange of responses to an artwork developed into sharing childhood memories and experiences of darkness and light in Sierra Leone and Ghana. Listen to a recording here: – Audio Player
00:0000:00Use Up/Down Arrow keys to increase or decrease volume.

As a result of being involved in the IF…ISH New Experiences project, four teenage girls from the group also participated in the inter-generational Live Art writing project STRANGER : NEIGHBOUR. Working with the drawing shed, the national writing charity Arvon, and writers Jacob Sam-La Rose and Nichola Charalambou, the girls joined an intergenerational group for a 3-day residency at William Morris Gallery and Winns Gallery. Working individually and in groups, the residency enabled participants to experiment with writing on paper and old fashioned typewriters, and joined members of the community and a wider public in the digital ether for a TWITTER PERFORMANCE exploring the themes of home, stranger and neighbour. The participants worked with filmmaker Paul Fletcher who was commissioned to make a SHORT FILM in response to the project, and produced personal content for an anthology of the poems and writing created during the residency.

UNTITLED
I get out of bed and open my curtains
I look out the window,
I see the morning sun say good morning to me as
it casts its fresh yellow beams on my pale
colourless walls.
The playful breeze kisses my cheek as I look up to
see the birds flying high in the blue heavens.
I look through a different window,
I see a sheet of darkness,
Large flakes flutter to the ground like ashes after
flames, each with a different story to tell.
I stood there, viewing life through my frosted
window pane.

A HYBRID HOME
The birth of a new species, I think.
A hybrid culture.
A hybrid race.
How does one make peace with their predicament?
When ones mother was born
In a land where education is not free
Treatment is not free, water is not free
But it is her sanctuary, her escape, her home.
She remembers the vibrancy of spices, colours, clothes
Of long pastel sunsets set upon red barren land, waiting for dusk to appear
To break her fast with the ones she loves.
The birth of a new species, I think.
A hybrid culture.
A hybrid race.
How does one make peace with their predicament?
When one is born into a welfare state
In a land where education is free
Treatment is free, water is free
Yet it is their uncanny ability to create dreams
And allow those with tenacity to chase them down
With a flurry of excitement, a pinch of hope, a slice o courage
That fosters love in my heart for my land
This is my home too.
I find myself tasked with the heavy burden
Of having to reconcile the two halves
That make up the whole of my universe.
The birth of a new species, I think.
A hybrid culture.
A hybrid race.
How does one make peace with their predicament?
I do not know. Do you?

Funded by Well London and Arts Council England, the project was supported in Hoe Street by Walthamstow School for Girls and Paul Fletcher, E17 Films.

#STRANGERNEIGHBOUR

by admin | Sep 26, 2017 | Communities of Imagination, Curatorial, Gallery, Participation, Performance, Publication / on-offline, Residencies & Commisions, the drawing shed

#STRANGERNEIGHBOUR

On Saturday 9th November 2013, 1.30 – 3pm, the drawing shed‘s Lloyd+Labern,#WOW festival micropoet @herbieherb and Jacob Sam-La Rose led a Twitter Performance, open to Arvon residency participants, community and ‘public’ in joining in; with the core group following a devised ‘SCORE’, we moved between exploring themes of home, stranger and neighbour, through discomfort of the unknown, and comfort of the known, and the merge of these two assumed places, ideas collided and tweets came together using the hashtag #StrangerNeighbour
It was an extraordinary event, where people came together at Winns Gallery Lloyd Park E17 to sit around the typing pool, whilst other typed and many tweeted amongst the noise of machine but no human voice, and in the silence that seemed to permeate the space despite, and the ether becoming a community space of the imagination.

STRANGER : NEIGHBOUR 2013-14

by admin | Sep 26, 2017 | Communities of Imagination, Curatorial, Gallery, Participation, Performance, Publication / on-offline, Residencies & Commisions

STRANGER : NEIGHBOUR 2013-14

STRANGER : NEIGHBOUR– Artists Labern+Lloyd in Residence at Winns Gallery, a ‘scored’ live art writing Twitter Performance, a Typing Pool, two writers, a three day writing workshop at William Morris Gallery and an inter-generational and culturally-diverse group of 16 Waltham Forest residents! #WOW
In November 2013, visual Artists Bobby Lloyd and Sally Labern from the drawing shed, inspired by their ArtAngel Open100 project, Sky.l.Ark, set up an exhibition and project space in Winns Gallery E17 entitled: “Stranger: Neighbour & The Lost Print”. With an enthusiastically received public Typing Pool of fabulous old fashioned typewriters and showing a series of trade mark screened ‘Lost Prints’ on archive tissue alongside a build up of carbon copies, Labern+Lloyd made new work in the space around the theme of Stranger : Neighbour. This references the split second changes in the skylark’s song, unheard by human ear which delineates recognition of stranger and neighbour, of threat and territory, of warning and welcome.
Throughout October 2013, the artists and writers Jacob Sam-La Rose and Nichola Charalambou led public inter-generational writing workshops in LockUpNumber11, the drawing shed’s new project space on The Drive estate, London E17 (courtesy of Ascham Homes) and in The Mill community centre and Walthamstow School for Girls E17. With national literature partner ARVON, the artists and writers also led a three day intensive writing residency in early November where participants worked individually and in groups, using pen and the ubiquitous exercise book and moleskin!
On Saturday 9th November 2013, 1.30 – 3.00pm, the drawing shed‘s Lloyd+Labern, #WOW festival micropoet @herbieherb and Jacob Sam-La Rose, led a TWITTER PERFORMANCE using the hashtag #StrangerNeighbour. This was open to the writing residency participants, with the local community and ‘public’ joining in. With the core group following a devised ‘SCORE’, we moved between exploring themes of home, stranger and neighbour – through the discomfort of the unknown, the comfort of the known and the merging of these two assumed places. Ideas, memories and observations were shared and then collided, tweets at odds, even dissonant, then echoing one another and ending in a respectful, slowed down rhythm. It was an extraordinary event, where people came together at Winns Gallery Lloyd Park E17 to sit around the typing pool, whilst others typed and many tweeted amongst the noise of machine but no human voice. In the silence that seemed to permeate the space despite all the ‘sound’, the ether emerged into a community space of the imagination.
As an integral part of the project, the drawing shed also commissioned filmmaker Paul Fletcher from e17films and Walthamstow International Film Festival (WIFF) to make A SHORT FILM in response to ‘Stranger : Neighbour’ – which has led to a poetic response, using QWERTY from the typewriter keys and references to Hollis Frampton’s ‘Zom’s Lemma’ (1970).
Finally at Winns Gallery, the drawing shed introduced an ’emergency shelter’ as an intervention into the gallery space, a physical/ideological object they are using in all their project work, both on and off the housing estates, and in settings across London and beyond the UK.

STRANGER : NEIGHBOUR

by admin | Sep 26, 2017 | Curatorial, Gallery, Installation / Films, Residencies & Commisions

STRANGER : NEIGHBOUR

Creative Writing workshops for all ages are held on the second Tuesday of the month, 6-8pm in LockUpNumber11. Led by artists Sally Labern and Bobby Lloyd, the group members write from their own life experiences and imagination.
In parallel, about four times each year to coincide with each public exhibition held at the Parasol Unit Foundation in London N1, the group is invited to join art-writing workshops in the galleryto explore contemporary texts and poetry in a friendly open group. Participants have exclusive evening access to the gallery to see each show before poet and musician Simon Pomery leads the workshops, with artists Labern&Lloyd from the drawing shed bringing ideas to the table, encouraging experimentation for inspired poetic responses.
stranger-neighbour_final_a3

IDEASFROMELSE[W]HERE

by admin | Sep 26, 2017 | Communities of Imagination, Curatorial, Gallery, Installation / Films, Participation, Performance, Publication / on-offline, Residencies & Commisions, Sited

THE IRREGULAR BULLETIN

IdeasFromElse[W]here is an arts laboratory project led by the drawing shed lead artists Sally Labern and Bobby Lloyd and co-curated by artist Jordan McKenzie. From the project base in Winns Gallery, E17 (and throughout Lloyd Park), from June 16 – July 13 2014, artists and the public came together to collectively engage in the sharing and exploration of art-making, performance and creative ideas.

Informed by the likes of Allan Kaprow, multi-disciplinary artists and makers from across Waltham Forest, the UK and as far away as New York, joined us in opening up, challenging and extending the processes of devising, making and presenting art, with this ‘festival of ideas’ incorporating live art performance, film, live writing, dance, text, print, sculpture, sound, and new media. Provocations, invitations and responses from artists and public participation continually informed and adapted the project from the Winns project space as well as from the drawing shed‘s project space LockUpNumber11 on The Drive estate E17 and the ARTS LAB PROJECT BLOG – www.ideasfromelsewhere.wordpress.com – which continues to develop as a document for experimentation, dialogue, and evaluation of this arts lab and the process of ‘thinking through making’.

The IdeasFromElse[W]here project space at Winns Gallery was open to the public 11am – 5pm, Wednesday to Sunday, from June 18 to July 11 2014. On Mondays and Tuesdays during the project, resident artists used the project space to play, experiment and develop their own work. At these times the artists also had exclusive access to the William Morris Galleryarchive, library and research resources.

Over 50 artists and practitioners were involved in the arts lab, including

Katy Baird Nadia Berri Sarah Buckle Laura Dee Milnes Ben Faga Film Direction Simon Foster-Ogg Joseph Kopiel Sally Labern Bobby Lloyd Leah Lovett Jordan McKenzie Justine Pearsall RARA Annette Robinson Phil Sanger Single Action Group Site Space Steakhouse Live Daniella Valz Gen Carrieanne Vivianette Ed Woodham

In the run up to and duration of IdeasFromElse[W]here we invited Cara Courage to ask questions of and write critically on the process in the role of ‘Thinker in Residence’. This role ran in parallel with Cara’s research into the drawing shed‘s projects for her PhD studentship at University of Brighton Doctoral College, looking at grassroots urban arts interventions and the affect they have on people and place in an investigation of the phenomenon and theory of relocalism.

In addition to PrintBike, by popular demand the drawing shed brought back The Public Typing Pool, striking up letters and conversations in exchange with users of The Public Typing Pool concurrently installed alongside Laurence Weiner in the new Sculpture Centre in Bury, greater Manchester, as part of Text Festival.

Alongside the daily art-making and performance that developed organically and spontaneously throughout the month, programmed events included Film Direction’s screening of ‘A-Z of London: 26 Raw Films’, People Pavilions with the public joining RARA to build human pyramids in Lloyd Park, and performances from Single Action Group, Steakhouse Live, and Site Space

Over the course of the arts lab, artists contributed to zine boxes which were auctioned at ‘JUNK, A FUN[D]RAISER’ at Winns Gallery on Thursday 10th July. A fundraiser to support the drawing shed‘s future projects, the evening also included film and live art performance, bringing artists and the public together to celebrate the arts lab in its final few days.

Some[w]Here Now – Pump House Gallery 2015

Stranger : Neighbour – Paul Fletcher film 2014

#BasicSeven7

SOME[W]HERE

ARTIFICIAL SUNSHINE

THE PUBLIC TYPING POOL

BLACK LIGHT AT TATE MODERN

IF…ISH

#STRANGERNEIGHBOUR

STRANGER : NEIGHBOUR 2013-14

STRANGER : NEIGHBOUR

THE IRREGULAR BULLETIN

Some[w]Here Now – Pump House Gallery
2015

Stranger : Neighbour – Paul Fletcher film
2014