Experimental Studio
7pm - 11pm
The Experimental Studio was founded in 2014 by Breeze Creatives in an attempt to increase the availability of time for artists to play, experiment, reflect, and take the pressure off their usual studio practice. Applicants to this project were not expected to anything at all with their time, the usual pressure of residency programmes wherein artists propose a tight schedule for work was removed and we expected only that artists would enjoy their time to be creative, do as much or as little as they pleased.
Applicants varied, from location, country of residence and practice. This show acts as a document of the time that they had to simply experiment.
The residency was split down into three groups of two artists with a ten week access period to a studio, what they did or didn’t do there was completely up to them. Artists from Newcastle enjoyed this experimental period alongside artists from the US and Turkey.
This show is a document of their work, one year to the date, artists featured are:
Simon Farid:
“I make work about the relationships between administrative, social and bodily identities, interrogating the political and bureaucratic systems that attempt to regulate, codify and enforce these relationships. In doing this I am attempting to explore, enact and provoke a range of questions about identity systems, where and how they manifest as oppressive tools and examining the possibilities that the use of subversive and alternative identity practices can offer in terms of progressive political tactics”.
Kirsty Harris:
Harris’s most recent short film continuously loops a naval officer sporting black out goggles, waiting for a nuclear explosion at Bikini Atoll in 1946. He chews nervously while the paradisiac sun perpetually casts a moving shadow up and down his face and the breeze beats the shirt collar against his neck. Time passes but, in the video, the explosion never comes.
Constance Humphries:
Ren Butoh is instigated by Constance Humphries, an artist and educator who works with Butoh dance, performance, video, sound and costume to create works and workshops which explore the political, spiritual and psychological potential of the self while challenging the perception of self.
Mehr Javed
Çiğdem Menteşoğlu:
In this project the balloon is used as a metaphor for our tools of emotional self-control. It visualizes the point at which self-control is lost, overcome by the internal pressures of mundane crises, and thus conveys the otherwise invisible border between social and emotional behavior.
Jasper Weinstein Sheffield:
Jasper Weinstein Sheffield’s work engages with the use of landscape as a socio-political tool. Born in Somerset, he relocated to Newcastle upon Tyne and graduated from Northumbria University in 2013 with a First Class BA Hons in Fine Art. Since graduating he was awarded the 2013/14 Northumbria University Graduate Fellowship (Sculpture) and was selected to maintain a curatorial role in managing the University’s project space.
In addition to these posts, Weinstein Sheffield has sustained an active studio practice, exhibiting across the northeast and further afield in Scotland and London.
Since being selected for the Experimental Studio in winter 2014, he was selected as a finalist in the Xerxes Sculpture Prize 2015 and currently lives and works in Brighton.
Preview event Friday 29th January, 7pm - 11pm, with live experimental music and refreshments.
The exhibition continues 30 January - 27 February, Thursdays, Fridays & Saturdays, 12pm - 5pm.
Venue: 8th Floor, Bamburgh House, Market Street, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE1 6BH
