Live on the Drive

Live on the Drive

Live on the Drive
2016

 

A Performance Project for girls aged 15-19,  led by performance artist Katy Baird and visual artist Rebecca Lindsay – Addy at the drawing shed’s project space, LockUpNumber11, on the Drive housing estate E17.

Now with NEW Blog! Documenting the exciting Live Art created by the LoT-D girls and more!

Live on the Drive (LoT-D) has been running since September 2016 and is a series of live art workshops, discussions and visits to live events. These workshops focus around discussions and creations of Live Art, and all this encompasses, including visual elements and using this to extend ideas of performance . The workshops have taken place in a range of contexts including the estate, public events such as the Women’s March, and even at Walthamstow School for Girls helping to introduce Year 10s to the project and Live Art. The LoT-D girls work collaboratively and individually to generate artwork in new and exciting ways. The LoT-D girls are at the centre of the project, including passing on their experiences and new found skills to other girls.

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“I learnt to think about the ‘how’ and the ‘why’ and not just the ‘what’.”

“I loved it; it was a really different environment.”

“It was strange in a good way.” “I have an interest in performance art now and feel more confident about performing in front of other girls.”

Feedback from participants, November 2016

Silence – Attlee Terrace 2012

Silence – Attlee Terrace 2012

Silence – Attlee Terrace
2012

In the winter of 2012 Sally Labern worked for a month visiting Attlee Terrace E17 and the site of a murder to make a performative drawing work in response to the ‘silence’ surrounding the death of a teenager:

18 year old Wahab Zaaki was stabbed to death on Friday 13 March 2009 on a stairwell at the Attlee Terrace Estate, Prospect Hill in Walthamstow. He suffered a total of five stab wounds and died on the way to hospital. A friend was with him at the time of the attack was also stabbed as he tried to protect Wahab. This friend was witness to the attack but it wasnt until March 2011 that he identified the two defendants. Two men were sentenced separately on July 6th 2012 on charges including: on one count of murder, two counts of wounding with intent, and one count of manslaughter.

For many months there was silence within the community surrounding the murder and it took the distance of time and an ongoing enquiry to get enough information together to charge individuals. Before the final sentencing Labern worked on the site where Wahab last fell to create a work marking this difficult silence and the value of a lost life. The flats are built in a quad style with many flats overlooking the place where the attack took place.

Labern used the social media site Twitter on a #hashtag ‘Lost Edges’ to write during the making of this work; although a ‘public’ site, no one person took part in this monologue connected to the long held silence within this community, mirroring the complex reasons why, when such terrible things happen within a community, the witnessing and the responsibility of witness pulls people together in a silence that conceals the possibility of ‘natural justice’.

Silence was made by pressing powered graphite for hours at a time into A2 paper on the pavement at the site, both ‘picking up’ and by the deliberate orchestration of marks that created the panels for the the installation. Many local people came up to the artist during the making of the work and Labern deliberately avoided the questioning process that accompanies much contemporary ‘dialogical’ arts practice; people brought their thoughts, assumptions and ‘received ideas’ to the conversations which were not used by the artist to dig around or stimulate a voyeurism on the ‘real and fictitious’ accounts of memory relating to Wahab’s murder. People were markedly respectful of the transparency of the artist for the reasoning behind the making of the work. At no point did the artist contact Wahab’s family.

One response that stood out above all others was the recognition that this was ‘work’ – perhaps the long hours of the artist working and the difficult conditions, and the imaginative transmission of the subjectivity of the work to its laden content, in which the community’s fragmented knowledge became a mute but potent part of this quiet but performative work. So far this work has not been shown on the estate where Labern&Lloyd run the drawing shed, but has been part of a group show in the UEL gallery, Docklands, London.

The work remains unfinished, unresolved and Labern is to return to make another in 2013 with a planned showing of the work on the estate.

IMAGES HERE….

Labern creates interventions closely made with non artists, where trust and familiarity can lead to invitations to take risks in art making where the creative spaces and relationships made with participants throw up ‘edges’. It is this practice that she currently refers to as ‘lost’, making works that are driven out of that space. Silence was made on such an ‘edge’; the relationship with residents on the two housing estates where the drawing shed is based, allowed the space for this work to be made.

Some[w]Here Now – Pump House Gallery

Some[w]Here Now – Pump House Gallery

Some[w]Here Now – Pump House Gallery
2015

somewhere image

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 LabernBobby LloydJordan McKenzieBarby AsanteDaniella Valz GenProfessor Adrian RentonCara CourageDr. Debra Benita ShawShahed SaleemDr 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.

PHG_logo-1the drawing shed logo copy 2

PrintWandsworth logo current copy

Leena Chauhan

Leena Chauhan

Leena Chauhan

leena2 copy

LiveElse[W]here, resident artist Leena Chauhan answers questions by E17 Art Trail blogger Amy Wevill about the work she has developed during her residency and the LiveLunch event on Saturday 31st May.

Could you tell us about the work you will be showing during this year’s E17 Art Trail?

As an artist in residence and part of the drawing shed’s LiveElse[W]here I am showing a series of enlarged screen-prints of Clothing Labels that are placed around the The Drive and Attlee Terrace, covering some of the pre-existing council signage. These labels are from the inside tag in (nearly) every garment stating where it’s from and what it’s made from. My prints have been made from my photographs of the residents’ labels on what garment they happened to be wearing at the time. I enlarged the labels to increase their visibility, especially of where the garment was made, to bring to attention its origin and the trajectory of its arrival here. I screen-printed upon these photographs, layering the details tags found inside the differing garments.

A finale for our project and a place to show the works development was theLiveLunch – an event open to residents and Trail goers alike; I made food on site,Cooking with my Mama. We cooked Kenyan-Indian food and served it to the locals whilst sharing my mothers short stories of her time growing up in Kenya moving to England. Essentially, through using clothing as a focus of this project, I am engaging with sense of identity and belonging and where we (or things) are coming from.

How have you been preparing for this year’s trail? 

I have been commissioned by the drawing shed to make work for theLiveElse[W]here Project which was being actualised over the last few months. My work has acted as an instigator for developing interaction, thought and discussion. I have been working in and around the Estates getting familiar with the area and the locals; for me, the essence of the work was with the engagement of residents by having a real dialogue as an inspiration for the beginnings of the project itself. The work provoked conversations of “quality versus affordability; high-end clothing labels versus cheap labour; identity formation and clothing becoming a cultural identity; human value versus clothes carrying ‘identity’.”

Being a recent graduate from Central Saint Martins, a self-contained environment with latest gadgets and gismos, was very different to working in-situ on Attlee Estate and The Drive. I have been learning to improvise and adapt with what we have and how we can use what that is. During the Print Screening workshops I organised, along with sterling guidance from artist Joseph Kopiel, I had support from the locals: a person offered a gallon of water to aid the cleaning of the mesh screens; another resident offered homemade foods to help keep our stomachs full, whilst other parents encourage their children to partake in the process – it was moments like these that were charged with awareness and positive energy. Nevertheless, this residency has been a short period which has involved a process of gaining some trust and connections between residents and myself.

Could you tell us about an artist/ artwork that particularly inspires you? 

Can I say this I wonder…? I’ve been so very fortunate to work by Sally Labern and Bobby Lloyd who’ve both made vast amount of works both collaboratively and individually. On this journey, they’ve both helped me facilitate my project, ground my ideas and help me develop my thinking with intensive talks and contributions. I got talking to them about the some things they’ve both achieved and details of past projects that have been sensitive in approach. Watching them work, being around them, for me personally has been inspiring. Two women: genuine, real, compassionate who both mean what they say and say what they mean.

How does inhabiting a community like Walthamstow help your practice?  

When I started university, I lived near Walthamstow market, a place that reminded me of my home. It was the place I strolled when I had to adjust myself to the privileged others from university; what I understood here was how I wanted to be a positive part of this cohesion. Undeniably, the differences that occur due to class systems set an obvious bearing to our daily choices. This was the reason for which I could imagine myself working creatively amongst the crowds, not disrupting what already is, but in my small way helping to strengthen the identity of The Drive and Attlee Estates, and developing myself and my practice as an artist through this process.

What are you most looking forward to during the E17 Art Trail this year? 

I am interested to see the works of my fellow resident artists too, who have been working alongside my project. Most of all, I looked forward to the LiveLunch on Saturday 31st May. It was the first time for me to work with my mother, Minaxi, too. This is a project my mother and I have been talking about for some years! My Mum and I cooked on site, delivering the food, welcoming people whose families come from all over the world – those who both live on the estates and also visitors like us, all of which was very exciting! I guess, she was the centre of my show, as she raised me the best way she knew how, which of course has been a crucial part to the early formation of my own identity and something I wish to cherish, considering family cohesion an important part of social cohesion.

LiveElse[W]here

LiveElse[W]here

LiveElse[W]here

In March 2014 the drawing shed put a call out for proposals from Live Art / Performance practitioners to undertake  residencies as part of LiveElse[W]here. Based on two housing estates in Walthamstow E17, the residencies culminated in a mini symposium / LiveLunch as part of the part of the E17ArtTrail 2014 and as an on-going part of the ‘communities of Imagination’ project that preoccupies the drawing shed.

The two residencies were awarded to artists Leena Chauhan and Pablo Perezzerate, and alongside artist / LiveElse[W]here co-curator Jordan McKenzie they worked in residence in the drawing shed‘s new project space LockUpNumber11, developing projects that responded to, and engaged with, the diverse local communities. In parallel local people were also in residence in the project space, trying our their own creative ideas and becoming part of a dialogue with other artists and residents about the value of creativity in all our lives and exploring and extending the possibilities for practice in non traditional art spaces.

As Leena and Pablo developed their projects for LiveElse[W]here they also fed their ideas, work and responses into the IdeasFromElse[W]here project blog, a space for artists and collaborators of the drawing shed‘s arts lab project to experiment and share creative ideas alongside working in the project space at Winns Gallery E17.

For his residency Pablo developed Sound Maps comprised of stories and interviews compiled from members of the community living along the Drive and Attlee Terrace estates. The map, essentially a simple graphic representation of the layout of buildings and neighbouring streets, shows different numbers corresponding to specific locations of importance to the stories of the area. Each number represents a “Sound Track” in a “Track List” containing all the stories and interviews. The intent for this project is for listeners to explore the urban environment from the perspective of the stories told by the residents who live there, with listeners going to the estates in Walthamstow E17 and following the map while listening to each track as they arrive to the corresponding spot on the map.

Listen to Pablo’s Sound Maps here:

The Past – This first collection focuses on oral history about the area, detailing stories from recent and distant pasts.

Living Here – This collection focuses on testimonials from local residents about their experience of living in the Estates and the difficulties and joy of creating community.

Home Sounds – This third collection focuses on the music that reminds local residents of living in the area, and how these sounds affected their lives whilst living there.

For LiveElse[W]here, the drawing shed worked with the project’s advisers, LADA, who are keen to support the conversation about the value and role of arts practice which takes risks, may challenge received ideas and can support mutuality of dialogue with local people around contemporary arts practice, diverse creativity, the value of difference, and the culture of day to day life; the intentions for this project are that any artists who work with us will become part of a dialogue which will valuable to us all and extend the possibilities for practice in non traditional art spaces.

Live Art Development Agency (LADA) http://www.thisisliveart.co.uk/

E17 Art Trail (under the umbrella of Artillery) http://www.e17arttrail.co.uk/

Click here to see the original call out for the LiveElse[W]here residency proposals.

Live Else [W]Here LUNCH

Live Else [W]Here LUNCH

Live Else [W]Here LUNCH

For LiveElse[W]here, and at intervals throughout May 2014, artists Leena Chauhan and Pablo Perezzerate worked in residence in our project space LockUpNumber11, alongside artist Jordan McKenzie as co-curator – engaging residents across different spaces in sound, film, drawing, tailored-made performance in people’s homes and print. In parallel, several residents took up residency in LockUpNumber11 as a space to develop their own work and creative ideas.

LiveElse[W]here culminated in our LIVE LUNCH on May 31st, 12-3pm, during which Pablo prepared and shared Mexican food while simultaneously sharing family stories and memories, and Leena cooked Kenyan/Indian style food with her very own Mama. Attended by artists, curators, commissioners, local residents, and members of the public exploring the E17 Art Trail, LIVE LUNCH was also a space for seeing some of the work made by the artists involved in LiveElse[W]here, acting as a springboard for discussing the value of performance and visual artists working on estates such as those on which our project takes place in E17.

Feedback from a participant on the day: “When I walked down The Drive in Walthamstow yesterday afternoon after a lengthy drive of another nature, I knew from first glance how worthwhile it had been to be stuck in traffic from the scene that I was to become a part of in the coming moments. There was artistry not just in the wonderful array of colours decorating the area, but in the cohesion of colour and style of people coming together in exactly the way that I would have hoped, as an informal artist’s assistant connected with the work being produced by the drawing shed group, resident artists of this community.

Grey pillars were decorated with crimson tape, mounted with coloured lines from which hung dazzlingly produced prints in eye-catching hues, and covering the signs issuing commands to the residents about prohibitions, were prints of clothing labels from all over the world, that were worn by local residents, to draw attention to how much diversity was gathered in this small area. Fate could not have produced a more perfect day for the occasion. A lovely, warm, slightly breezy day compounded the warmth that I felt from people of various origins, artists and residents, people of advanced ages, people young and carefree enough to seemingly live effortlessly in the moment, people of all ages in-between, relaxing together after sharing a lunch that was a culmination of interactions on the estate for this project.

There is a world of art that is glitzy and commercial, that perhaps at times makes a deliberate effort to “be more accessible” that I personally feel somewhat alienated from. The artwork of this project, with which I was engaging today, was so much more than the money-making highly commercial stuff. It was real. It was meaningful to me. Pardon my wide-eyed lyrical reflections, but they are induced only because I find this so rare: it really touched me. I’m writing this partly just to capture, in the way I prefer, something of the experience, for my journal, and partly as a simple act of appreciation that I wish to share with the organisers and artists responsible for what I came to enjoy so thoroughly yesterday afternoon. So, the drawing shed with Bobby, Sally, Jordan, Pablo, Angelique, Esther, Jayne and Will and last and for me personally definitely not least, Leena: thank you, and may there be more of a similar nature to come, and take pleasure from.”

Amy Wevill from the E17 Art Trail also joined us for the LIVE LUNCH – read her blog piece here

Some[w]Here Research

Some[w]Here Research

Some[w]Here Research – 9 ELMS – Wandsworth

thedrawingshed.SomeWhereNow

www.somewhereresearch.wordpress.com

the drawing shed’s new project Some[w]Here Research is underway, opening up new imaginative spaces through engaging residents across the Wandsworth estates of Patmore, Savona and Carey Gardens.

Together with performance artists Jordan McKenzie and Daniella Valz Gen and designer-makers George Williams and Nozomi Nakabayashi, the drawing shed will be working in and between the three estates’ public spaces, activating these outdoor spaces within and across the estates through the visible process of making a series of mobile structures. Exploring the history of the area, including the old soap box factories and go-kart culture, and learning from older people living on the estates Some[w]Here will explore the platforms from which stories are told and conversations take place across the estates, cultures and generations, with the PROJECT BLOG – www.somewhereresearch.wordpress.com – providing further space for residents to share and explore old memories and new ideas. Rethinking, reworking, reusing, retelling, remaking.

9elms03.webSurveying the scene on Thessaly Road

9elms6.webBeautiful garden path on Savona

9elms7.webWhose in goal on a sunny afternoon

9elms13.web9elms08.webOut and about – all things mobile

9elms09.webOver the wall to Covent Garden Market

9elms11.webWatching Battersea Power Station changing before their eyes

#BasicSeven7

#BasicSeven7

#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.

Festival Here – July 1st, 2012

Festival Here – July 1st, 2012

Festival Here – July 1st, 2012

the drawing shed invited residents, passers-by, friends and other organisations to participate in their mini youth festival, ‘Festival Here’, on Sunday 1st July 2012 from 12pm to 5pm on the green area at the intersection of Prospect Hill and Attlee Terrace (E17 3EG).

Festival Here was led by the Young Women’s Estate-based Performance Project with the support of Roisin Feeney, performance director from The Albany, Sally Labern and Bobby Lloyd from the drawing shed, and “…Ask Freda”. The day centred around the girls’ new performative work that used film, Twitter and den-making. The girls have been using the quad spaces and streets of Attlee Terrace to explore how teenage girls use ‘public’ spaces, how contested these spaces are (who owns them?), and how they can feel safer to use local spaces / streets – redefining and examining their rights to be more visible within their communities.

the drawing shed invited artists EMILIE TAYLOR and SINEAD LOFTUS to make interventions and socially engaged works as part of the festival, while  ClayOven provided more than 70 pizzas for over one hundred local residents, passers-by and invited guests. The project was supported by Walthamstow School for Girls, Asham Homes, Waltham Forest Council and Epping Forest’s Branching Out Project. It was funded by Arts Council England and Hoe Street Community Fund.

For further information email thedrawingshed@gmail.com

PERFORMANCE PROJECT. For more information Click Here

Conflict Resolution with YIAG

(Waltham Forest Youth Independent Advisory Group)

Guest Artists: EMILIE TAYLOR and SINEAD LOFTUS


PEOPLELIKEUS

PEOPLELIKEUS

PEOPLELIKEUS, A LIVE TWITTER PERFORMANCE, 2012

The PeopleLikeUs Collective led its first Live Twitter Performance as part of the E17 Art Trail in September 2012. This public Twitter writing performance has further extended this space beyond the estates and into the ether where others were able to join the PeopleLikeUs Collective in writing to the hash-tag #bestow during the recent E17 Art Trail, September 2012. See our Blog During Spring and Summer 2012, the drawing shed @WordintheHand worked with writers Jacob Sam- La Rose and Dorothy Fryd on a Twitter live art writing project PeopleLikeUs, with residents of Attlee Terrace, The Drive and Hoe St in E17.the drawing shed’s interest in using Twitter for Live writing and Open Performance is in pushing the creative boundaries of dialogical art practice led by artists in both public and community spaces, exploring innovative ways to connect communities and to build virtual relationships; The value of difference and cultural values exposed and in creative collision, has become the material fabric of a rising and responsive Community of the Imagination.

Over the spring and summer of 2012 the PeopleLikeUs Collective met regularly to write together and use Twitter as a creative space to explore, share and riff off each other in the ether.

In collaboration with the E17 Art Trail Poetry Trail organisers, we warmly welcomed everyone with Twitter on their mobile phone to join us on Sunday 2nd September, with Jacob Sam-La Rose, in a Live performance during the E17 Art Trail. On the streets of Attlee Terrace , The Drive and the Hoe Street Ward  and using the 140 characters of Twitter, we wrote on the hashtag #Bestow to embrace The E17 Art Trails Poetry Trail. Participants needed to have Twitter on their mobile phone to join us in this collaborative writing project. A full briefing  at 2pm at garage number 11, Fanshaw House, The Drive, E17 3BY was given to all participants. No previous experience of using Twitter in this way was needed, though the basics of Twitter and a Twitter name were.

At the end of the performance at 4pm, tea, flapjacks and scones were served courtesy of “…Ask Freda”, a local residents’ community group, at garage number 11, Fanshaw House, The Drive, E17 3BY.

TO TWEET:

1 – Set up a Twitter Account, Click Here

2 – Download on your mobile the Twitter App (For info about Twitter for Android Click Here, for info about Twitter for iPhone Click Here)

3 – Tweet under the hashtag #bestow

4 – Alway leave a single ‘space’ before and after #bestow or it will not be picked up within the group of Tweets and your contribution will be invisible to all of us!

5 – To read the stream of #bestow tweets, click on the hashtag #bestow

 

Festival Here

Festival Here

Festival Here

Between January and July 2012, the Young Women’s Estate-based Performance Project worked on a new piece with the drawing shed, Roisin Feeny (associate producer at The Albany) and two volunteers, Kelly and Sonita.

The new performance was presented on July 1st 2012 at ‘Festival Hereand used film, Twitter and physical theatre in the quad spaces  and streets of Attlee Terrace, exploring how girls use ‘public’ spaces, how contested these spaces are (who owns them?) and how they can feel safer to use local spaces / streets, redefining and examining their rights to be more visible in their communities.

the drawing shed set up the Young Women’s Estate-based Performance Project  in 2010.
The project is supported by partnership organisations, including  Walthamstow School for Girls, Epping Forest’s Branching Out Project and it is funded by Art Council England, Hoe Street Community Fund and Walthamstow and Chingford Almshouse Charity.

Making dens with Epping Forest’s Branching Out Project

FESTIVAL HERE, THE DRIVE, JULY 1ST 2012

Twitter signage dialogue in Lille, 2012

Twitter signage dialogue in Lille, 2012

Twitter signage dialogue in Lille, 2012

In October 2012, Bobby Lloyd took a series of twitter signage dialogue screen-prints from the estates in Waltham Forest, East London to the city of Lille in northern France as part of the city’s annual Portes Ouverte des Ateliers d’Artistes and at the invitation of artist Phoebe Dingwall. Having exhibited the prints within the ‘gallery’ setting, Lloyd and Dingwall then took them to the streets, setting up further dialogues and new elements of surprise. Click here to watch a short film made by Dingwall in response to this intervention in the city where she lives and works.

This was the first in a series of outings for the Twitter signs, the second being to Portland Bird Observatory on the Isle of Portland in Dorset where they were installed in the lighthouse by Sally Labern in early November 2012.

SOME[W]HERE

SOME[W]HERE

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

ARTIFICIAL SUNSHINE

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

THE PUBLIC TYPING POOL

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

BLACK LIGHT AT TATE MODERN

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

 

#STRANGERNEIGHBOUR

#STRANGERNEIGHBOUR

#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

STRANGER : NEIGHBOUR 2013-14

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.

IDEASFROMELSE[W]HERE

IDEASFROMELSE[W]HERE

THE IRREGULAR BULLETIN

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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.