Transformism

Transformism Artists: Two one person exhibitions Melanie Jackson, Revital Cohen The Arts Catalyst’s exhibition Transformism presents two new commissions at the John Hansard Gallery by Melanie Jackson and Revital Cohen, exploring the potential of radical transformations in the material world provoked by the aspirations of science and technology through sculpture and film.

Wunderkammer

Featuring a vast array of singularly preternatural works this eccentric show will include Robert Priseman’s Sumac series, etchings and paintings from Marcelle Hanselaar (along with a selection of the Le Petit Mort series also acquired by The British Museum) and Tessa Farmer’s captivating miniscule sculptures, which are held in collections worldwide including The Saatchi Gallery and The Ashmolean Museum. Alongside Turner Prize nominee Cornelia Parker, chimerical bestiary from Angela Cockayne, YBA Mat Collishaw and the enigmatic Viktor Wynd who will debut new works. Artists: Sarah Ball Mat Collishaw Angela Cockayne Jayne Dunsmuir Tessa Farmer Patrick Haines Marcelle Hanselaar Melanie Jackson Alexander Kozer-Robinson Cornelia Parker Robert Priseman Dawn Lippiatt Ione Rucquoi Rose Sanderson Rebecca Stevenson Viktor Wynd

The Global Contemporary Art Worlds After 1989

Globalization as a phase in the geo-political transformation of the world is at once a transformation of art – of the conditions of its production, and possibilities of its diffusion and dissemination and presence. At the same time, artists, and above all the institutions of art, are faced with the questions as to the extent to which the concept global can and must be thought – and how this reflects back on its own methods of working. By means of artistic approaches and documentary materials, the exhibition The Global Contemporary. Art Worlds After 1989 examines the way in which globalization, both with its pervasive mechanisms of the market and its utopias of networking and generosity, impacts upon the various spheres of artistic production and reception.

Fluffers 2

White Columns presents in our Bulletin Board space FLUFFERS II, a project by Mark and Stephen Beasley inspired by Brian Eno and Peter Schmidt’s Oblique Strategies (1975). Created by musician Brian Eno and artist Peter Schmidt in 1975, the Oblique Strategies are a deck of around 100 cards, on each of which is printed an aphorism. They are intended as an aid to solving creative problems: each suggests an approach which might run counter to normal intuition, but which over time could lead to a more interesting solution. The cards provide a way out of linear, result-based thinking. They simulate the activity of a relaxed mind by forcing the problem solver to attack the problem from unconventional angles. There is no prescription as to the way in which the owner should use them: shuffle them, cut them, follow them, or ignore them. FLUFFERS II, consists of aphorisms suggested by invited figures from the fields of art, architecture, and music, and are intended as both a problem–solving aid and also as a snapshot of the respective artists’ working methods. The first set of FLUFFERS, arranged by FlatPack001 (Mark and Stephen Beasley) and Robert Johnston, appeared more than ten years ago in 1999. Contributors to FLUFFERS II (in no particular order): Brian O’Connell, Scott Reeder, Alexandre Singh, Pierre Bismuth, Julian Myers, Darren Bader, Jill Magid, Rose Kallal, Frances Stark, Nick Relph, Sina Najafi, Ryan Gander, Malcolm McLaren, AA Bronson, Maria Fusco, K8 Hardy, Jonathan Monk, Tirdad Zolghadr, Nicholas Bullen, Nathaniel Mellors, Mark Titchner, Matthew Higgs, John Russell, Adam Pendleton, Russell Oxley, Dan Fox, Mel Jackson, Jeremy Till, Celine Condorelli, Alex Waterman, Dan Kidner, Dexter Sinister, Mark Beasley, Stephen Beasley. Contributors to the original FLUFFERS (in no particular order): Carey Young, Stephen Beasley, Julian Lewis (East), Graham Fagen, Kirsty Ogg, Nigel Prince, Tim Hutchinson, Gavin Wade, Charlotte Cullinan & Jeanine Richards, Dean Hughes, Dave Beech, Hannah Vowles & Glyn Banks (Art in Ruins), Lucy McKenzie, Matthew Higgs, Kevin Frances Gray, Robert Johnston, Alex de Rijke (dRMM), Anne-Marie Copestake, Jim Lambie, Mark Beasley. Mark Beasley is a curator and writer based in New York. Stephen Beasley is an architect and writer based in London.

MOVING FORWARD, HOLDING ON

Moving Forward Holding On är en utställning som under tre dagar förenar fyra verk som på olika sätt förhåller sig till gränser, migration, och representation. Konstkollektivet Slavs and Tatars publikation Kidnapping Mountains (2009) är en lekfull och informativ utforskning av de muskulösa historier, starka viljor och frustrationer som befolkar Kaukasus. Väggmålningen To Mountain Minorities (2009) behandlar den olösta geopolitiska identitetsproblematiken hos olika minoriteter i området. Melanie Jacksons animation International Fauna (2010) är en absurd anti-lovsång och parad av olika djur; levande, utrotade eller mytiska, som satts att uppträda som nationalsymboler. Mari Lagerquists bronsstaty (monterad på en parkbänk i Slottsskogen) och karta Till mine av de vita pelikanerna (2011) utgår från historien om hur en vit pelican 1975 landade på en ö i Göteborgs skärgård och hur den därefter fick stanna I Göteborg och bli en del av Slottsskogens sortiment av djur

Several Interruptions: 15 Years of the Slade Centre for Electronic Media in Fine Art

Seven, sequential solo presentations to celebrate 15 years of the Slade Centre for Electronic Media in Fine Art in 2011. Exhibited: 'Each Long Second' 2006, A0 photocopies, tape. Dimensions: 880 X 850 cms.

The Urpflanze (Part 1.1)

Melanie Jackson traces links between the economy, science, aesthetics and plant forms, taking a lead from Goethe’s notion of the Urpflanze. The Urpflanze – or primal plant – is Goethe’s imaginary plant that contains coiled up within it, the potential to generate all possible future forms. With pollen sculptures fashioned from newspaper pulp, sound recordings, graphite drawing, 3D modeled animations and a film of photographic stills of every plant the artist came into contact over a twelve month period, Jackson’s macroscopic creations are the tactile representations of inner worlds, articulating how botanical morphology enters and affects the imagination.

Provenance

A Symposium including exhibitions at two Bath Spa University sites. Speakers including: Academics, Writers and Artists Exhibitions runs from: 5th to 27th October 2010. Philip Hoare, critic and broadcaster. James Putnam, author and curator. Jochem Hendricks, Melanie Jackson, Gavin Turk, Tessa Farmer, Mariele Neudecker, Angela Cockayne, Mat Collishaw, Gabrielle Forshaw, Martin Thomas, Viktor Wynd, Laura Ford, Jack Williams and Molly Young.

Hydrarchy:Power and Resistance at Sea

Hydrarchy: Power and Resistance at Sea* is a group exhibition that approaches historical and contemporary examinations of the sea and the offshore as contested cultural, political, legal and socio-economic territories. Focusing on specific events, situations and mythologies attached to past and recent maritime history, the works address power relations at sea and the forms of resistance and survival developed as a response.

International Fauna

International Fauna is a blast, an anti-anthem, a parade of the animal symbols designated by nation states quick change through a background of digital colour fields. The representations are matched back with their animal call, for the duration of the image - a concrete composition of the absurd. The work delights in these extraordinary attempts to project national values onto an animal form, and in the forms they have taken. International Fauna is a new animation by Melanie Jackson commissioned by Relational and produced with Picture This in association with Animate Projects as part of the Anti-Bodies programme. 2’55’ quicktime movie

The Urpflanze (Part 1)

Melanie Jackson has been investigating links between industry, aesthetics and plant forms, taking a lead from Goethe's notion of the Urpflanze. The Urpflanze - or primal plant - is Goethe's imaginary plant that contains coiled up within it, the potential to generate all possible future plants. Contemporary plant science similarly assumes the ability to create as yet undreamt of botanical objects, using an array of tools and techniques, such as nanoscience, transgenics and biomimicry. Paradoxically science also looks to primordial plant matter for clues on how to proceed. Plant science becomes an art of morphology and mutation, re-presentation and transformation, characteristics it shares with the medium of drawing.

The Intertwining Line, Drawing as Subversive Art

Far West

Combining elements of a gallery, shop, factory and market, the exhibition transformed our Project Space, a former retail venue, into an interactive concept store featuring work by artists from China, Japan, Taiwan and Thailand, as well as Europe and the US. The idea of the so-called 'experience economy' - in which commercial companies sell experiences as well as goods - has gained increasing currency in recent years. Inspired by this idea, as well as parallel debates in art and commerce around participation, individualism, authorship and productivity, Far West invited visitors to take part in the production process or purchase one of a range of goods, from cheap, mass produced items to unique artist-designed objects. Issues of participation and exchange were brought to the fore in SOI projects' Fruits, in which paper fruit patterns could be assembled and added to the exhibition display in exchange for actual fruit, and Yoko Ono's Mend Piece for Merry England - an invitation to donate and assemble broken crockery fragments in exchange for a symbolic gift. The trade in goods between East and West was highlighted in Surasi Kusolwong's 1 Pound Shop in which kitsch, mass produced items sourced from Thai market stalls were available for purchase at the flat rate of £1 each. In from the ‘Bank of Hell’, by Maverick Press with artist Melanie Jackson, a Hong Kong Joss shop displayed beautifully crafted paper replicas of everyday consumer objects designed to be burnt with incense as offerings for ancestors.

Far West Metro

Far West is an experimental project that will transform Arnolfini from an arts venue into a distinctive ‘concept store’, that explores the shifting of the economic centre of the world to the East. The Far West concept store will provide customers with the experience of interacting with, producing, and then purchasing, a selection of specially branded products, designed by artists or inspired by artists’ projects from ornaments to music, comics, food, toys, and artworks. In the process, customers will gain an insight into the nature of economy, cultural hegemony, the history of certain products, and the marketing potential of regional identities.

Mundos Locais

he project Local Worlds brings together a range of international contemporary media art and performance works that explore the relationship between the local and the global, looking at how experiences of travel, diaspora and displacement can inform our perceptions of identity, culture and nation. The title refers both to the way the world is part of Lagos local imaginary and the way the local is a form of engagement of the artists with the world they live in. Juxtaposing for the first time works whose sites of reflection include Portugal (specially the Algarve's region), other Europes and different Africas, amongst other continents with colonial histories, the project maps out the complex spatialities and subjectivities crossed by those in transit. Engaging with emotional landscapes and personal narratives of place, each work invites the viewer to approach the local — be it intimate, public, real or imaginary — as a psycho geography of everyday objects and practice

Variable Capital

As a rapidly growing Liverpool enjoys its status as European Capital of Culture, Variable Capital, presents international artists’ critical and often humourous responses to today’s ‘spend spend spend’ consumer culture.

2008 Art Futures

This year ARTfutures will be particularly artist-centred. The selection is led by independent curator Jeni Walwin and artist Nicky Hirst. To emphasise the curatorial aspect of the project whilst at the same time extending the boundaries of the show, a number of distinguished artists have been invited to nominate other artists and to contribute work themselves. The resulting exhibition will once again offer a snapshot of contemporary practice - embracing a wide variety of media drawn from the entire spectrum of the artistic profession - from artists who have recently graduated to those who have substantial reputations.

Port City

Port City explores the relationship between global sea trade, slavery and the migration of people today. Traditionally ports have been seen as gateways to a wider world, representing points of contact between different countries and cultures, facilitating the movement of people as well as goods and ideas. Today, however, working ports are increasingly separated off from everyday life, becoming sealed points of exchange on a worldwide network of trade, and sensitive entry points for the migrant worker. Several works in the exhibition draw attention to the experience of migration, in particular between North Africa and so-called ‘Fortress Europe’. Ursula Biemann’s video installation Sahara Chronicle follows the route of migrants across the desert to their embarkation points, filmed over three years in Niger, Mauritania and Morocco. Yto Barrada’s work refers to the Straits of Gibraltar, the narrow divide between Europe and Africa. Her photographic series Sleepers presents images from her home town of Tangiers, where would-be émigrés await their moment of passage. Elsewhere, Melanie Jackson’s The Undesirables re-creates the scene of the stricken cargo ship MSC Napoli, beached off of Devon’s Jurassic coastline earlier this year, using intricate paper models. Meschac Gaba’s Sweetness is a model city, comprising buildings from across the world made from sugar. Two new landmark buildings from Southampton, chosen by local people, have been added to the work. In the Gallery Reading Room, visitors can explore Mary Evans’ Blighty, Guinea, Dixie, 2007, featuring kaleidoscopes revealing contemporary scenes from historic trans-atlantic trade routes. As part of Port City the Maghreb Connection Screening Programme will be shown in the Project Room. Curated by Ursula Biemann, this comprises a series of artist’s films and documentary works exploring migratory movements within Europe and North Africa.

Port City: On Mobility and Exchange

Port City explores the relationship between global sea trade, slavery and the migration of people today. Traditionally ports have been seen as gateways to a wider world, representing points of contact between different countries and cultures, facilitating the movement of people as well as goods and ideas. Today, however, working ports are increasingly separated off from everyday life, becoming sealed points of exchange on a worldwide network of trade, and sensitive entry points for the migrant worker. Several works in the exhibition draw attention to the experience of migration, in particular between North Africa and so-called ‘Fortress Europe’. Ursula Biemann’s video installation Sahara Chronicle follows the route of migrants across the desert to their embarkation points, filmed over three years in Niger, Mauritania and Morocco. Yto Barrada’s work refers to the Straits of Gibraltar, the narrow divide between Europe and Africa. Her photographic series Sleepers presents images from her home town of Tangiers, where would-be émigrés await their moment of passage. Elsewhere, Melanie Jackson’s The Undesirables re-creates the scene of the stricken cargo ship MSC Napoli, beached off of Devon’s Jurassic coastline earlier this year, using intricate paper models. Meschac Gaba’s Sweetness is a model city, comprising buildings from across the world made from sugar. Two new landmark buildings from Southampton, chosen by local people, have been added to the work. In the Gallery Reading Room, visitors can explore Mary Evans’ Blighty, Guinea, Dixie, 2007, featuring kaleidoscopes revealing contemporary scenes from historic trans-atlantic trade routes. As part of Port City the Maghreb Connection Screening Programme will be shown in the Project Room. Curated by Ursula Biemann, this comprises a series of artist’s films and documentary works exploring migratory movements within Europe and North Africa.

Shanghype

Co-exhibitors: Zhang Ding, Liang Yue, Song Tao, Melanie Jackson, Alexander Brandt, Xu Zhen, Yang Zhenzhong. Shanghype! portrait of the city from dawn to dusk The spectacular building of Museo del Cinema hosted a selection of art videos devoted to Shanghai including new works produced especially for the event. “The years fly by in Shanghai and each month changes the one that follows. In just a few years, we went from technological pre-history to the digital era. LED screen and LCDs are everywhere – in taxis and skyscraper lobbies, in the subway and on entire facades of buildings, or on huge screens taken out at night on barges on the river Pujiang, so bright that you just cannot help but look at them. What I’m trying to get across in this latest version of Shanghai is its inevitable contradictions, for it is bent through the eyes of artists until it becomes a fictitious, distorted reality that nevertheless conceals extravagant details somewhere in between poetry and drama, revealing once again the true face of Shanghai.” (Davide Quadrio)

The Jerwood Drawing Prize

JERWOOD DRAWING PRIZE *Melanie Jackson, A Global Positioning System, 2007 Jerwood Drawing Prize 2007 18 SEPTEMBER - 27 OCTOBER 2007 In 2007, over 2,600 entries were submitted to the Jerwood Drawing Prize for consideration by the selection panel. The panel included Paul Bonaventura, Senior Research Fellow in Fine Art Studies at the Ruskin School of Drawing & Fine Art, Oxford University; Avis Newman, Artist; and Catherine de Zegher, Art Historian and Curator. The shortlist of 87 drawings included work by 87 highly regarded, established artists as well as relative newcomers and students fresh from art school. First Prize (£6,000): Melanie Jackson Second Prize (£3,000): Brighid Lowe

Port City

Maria Thereza Alves, Yto Barrada, Ursula Biemann, Kayle Brandon & Heath Bunting, Maria Magdalena Campos Pons, Ofri Cnaani & Jenny Vogel, Mary Evans, Meschac Gaba, Raimi Gbadamosi, Melanie Jackson, Grzegorz Klaman, Erik van Lieshout, William Pope.L, Kate Rich, Zineb Sedira, Zafos Xagoraris Port City is a large-scale international exhibition addressing issues of migration, trade and contemporary slavery. Set in Arnolfini, it will also be accompanied by a related programme of live art, music, film, literature, events and workshops as well as off-site projects. Several works in the exhibition draw attention to the experience of migration, in particular between North Africa and Europe. Ursula Biemann's video installation Sahara Chronicle follows the routes of migrants across the desert focusing on Morocco, Niger and Mauritania. Moroccan artist Yto Barrada's work refers to the Straits of Gibraltar; the narrow divide between two continents. Her photographic series Sleepers presents images from the public park of her home town of Tangiers, where would-be emigres await their moment of passage. Melanie Jackson's new project The Undesirables incorporates a panorama of etchings and drawings made from media reports of the wreck of the MSC Napoli that foundered off Branscombe in Devon last year. These are combined with the animated stories of dock workers she has interviewed in Avonmouth, Bristol and other container ports.

Locale

British artists Melanie Jackson, Kwong Lee, Paul Rooney, Becky Shaw, Emma Rushton and Derek Tyman present site-specific installations and multi-media works that play on the notion of place, including Rushton and Tyman's Structure I: Contemporary Art from China in the UK to Hong Kong (left). Tue-Sun, 2pm-8pm, 1a space, Cattle Depot Artists Village, 63 Ma Tau Kok Rd, To Kwa Wan. Inquiries: 2529 0087. Ends Sep 2

Road Angel

A solo exhibition of Melanie Jacksons work

Made In China

Edward Burtynsky, Polly Braden, Melanie Jackson, Michael Wolf, Danwen Xing, Jun Yang, and John Schmid and Rick Romell This exhibition, Made in China, explores the dense layers of cultural messages, media impressions, and material products emanating from China, and through a series of subtle juxtapositions, visits the possibility that history’s oldest civilization might again become the Middle Kingdom, a major center of world economy. The exhibition aims to humanize this world-shaking development, and to put a face on the “Made in China” label.

Made In China

fascinations

Suki Chan, Leung Mee-ping, Melanie Jackson, Angela Su

Made In China

Made In China

This work brings three short videos into one space: two are presented as projections back to back on a large suspended screen, and one plays on a monitor. The exhibition weaves together the tales of two Chinese women and their experiences of work and migration: One girl travels from the rural provinces of China to the city, uprooting from the family farm to take up work in a cosmetics factory, making false eyelashes. The other, a musician, takes a journey from China to London to study the traditional Chinese string instrument the ‘erhu’ under English tutorage. Melanie Jackson uses a mixture of animation, staged film and straight documentary to set up a complex set of relationships between the personal impulses and external influences that lead to certain working and living conditions, and fantasies of escape. The films focus on the girls’ patterns and structures of work, depicting the discipline that this entails in each case. The work also reflects on their inevitable implication into patterns of economic and cultural consumption in the West.Jackson

Art News

An exhibition of Contemporary Artists working with the medium of nesprint

60 Seconds

A screening of 60 Seconds, a DVD collated for the launch of n.o.where including Brad Butler and Karen Mirza, Malcolm Le Grice and Melanie Jackson

Urban Networks

East Wing Collection No.6 explored the theme of Urban Networks. The exhibition addressed notions such as surveillance and walking. Works in the collection were encountered through the terms Routes / Sites / Groups / Positions. The diverse mix of established artists, newly emerging professionals, students and those working within a didactic workshop environment created an exciting and stimulating exhibition. Franko B Keith Bates Sophie Beard Eva Bensasson Mel Bochner Leigh Bowery David Cotterrell Jeremy Deller Clancy Gebler Davis Valeria Graziano Fergus Greer Tom Ellis Zarah Hunt Zoe Irvine Melanie Jackson Manali Jagtap Isaac Julien Michael Landy Ryan S Lemke Piers Lockwood Melanie Manchot Fabian Monheim Genesis P-Orridge Magdalena Pederin Colin Ray Martha Rosler

Bootleg

Occupying most of Spitalfields Market's main trading space, Bootleg featured the work of over fifty artists. The exhibition alluded to various bootlegged items, from sought-after, illegal vinyl pop recordings available at Camden Lock to the shabby, devalued counterfeits of famous-brand clothing touted on Bangkok's Kao San Road. Bootleg also – through performances, video projections, sculptures market stalls and in-between pieces and actions- considered the 'copied' art object and how this relates to notions of value, influence, quotation and restaging, as well as private pleasure, Prohibition-era Speakeasies and the history of 'snake-oil'. Bootleg also featured work by: Carey Young, Cerith Wyn Evans, Matthieu Laurette, Richard Woods, Jeremy Deller, Simon Moretti, Goshka Macuga, Dallas Seitz, Nathaniel Mellors, Conrad Shawcross, Dell Olsen, Peter Jaeger, Mike Dawson, Will Hunt, Seb Patane, Graham Hudson & David Hoyland, Alexis Marguerite Teplin, James Hopkins, Peter Newman, Andy Smith, Olivia Plender, Daniela Klein, James Emmerson, Tom Dwyer, 360° Corps, Rosanna Guy Greaves, Value & Service, Katie Morton, Melanie Jackson, Donald Urquhart, Pablo Leon de la Barra, Laurence Lane, Jason Minsky, Lisa Brice, Elizabeth Price, Larissa Fassler, Daniela Klein, Sarah Baker, Antonia Low, Rebecca Birch, Rob Grose, Fritha Jenkins, Natasha Rees, Mike Cooter.

Some Things You Are Not Allowed To Send Around The World

For her second solo exhibition at Matt’s Gallery, Melanie Jackson has made a new installation of small-scale sculpture and video that has grown out of an ongoing interest in found stories and news media. Collecting different media outputs: newsprint, video footage and other printed matter, the artist then uses the fragments as raw material to construct her own films, pamphlets, maps, landscapes and architectures. She has collected together as many foreign edition newspapers available on the domestic market as possible as a means of registering how far she could ‘go’ or travel in the imagination without leaving the city. Some works are made in response to a news story or image, and others are from memory or from a fantasised journey through impenetrable texts. She constructs minutely detailed architectural models out of the newsprint: cranes, water towers, satellite receivers, refugee and holiday camps, world fairs and container ports. This laborious process of construction is contrary to the news media’s obsession with circulation and speed. Melanie Jackson follows tales of peoples who have transformed the cultural or political landscape in different ways through very low key, domestic responses to international concerns. One of the video works in the exhibition, A Westerly Wind and a Clear Night Sky, tracks an illicit journey by boat between Africa and the foothills of the Sierra Alhamilla in Spain. The Spanish terrain is now covered in an estimated 64,000 hectares of greenhouses made of sheet plastic, designed for the mass production and export of produce. Ironically, this thriving industry that exports fruit and vegetables around the world, relies on the illegal settlement of a migrant labour force. The unrestricted movement for individuals, goods and ideas on the one hand, and highly restricted movements on the other, is a concern that is reflected the title of the exhibition itself. Some Things You Are Not Allowed To Send Around The World is a poster made up of the recent ‘prohibition and restriction’ guidelines issued by international post offices. The assembled list reveals some of the superstitions and regional eccentricities associated with the exchange of goods. This poster will be available as one of a series of free publications produced for the exhibition.

Perspective 2000

An exhibition of emerging contemporary artists from the Uk and Ireland

Clean Slate

3 Contemporary Artists working in Wales including Bethan Huws and Melanie Jackson

soil and seawter

An exhibition of new video works and sculptures by Melanie Jackson

The Brazen Oracle

Senate House, University of London, Artist’s film, book and exhibition from the collection, commissioned by Bookworks.

after The Conjurer

A solo exhibition of Artist Melanie Jackson

Escale/Stopover/Tussenstop

An exhibition of emerging Artists from France, Uk and Belgium