EXCHANGE
Antwerp><UK
In January 2018, 30 artists across Europe were paired and exchanged three statements to inspire each other to make original work specifically for the EXCHANGE show, to be shown Friday 18th - 25th May 2018 at Stour Space, London .
“We have far more in common than that which divides us.”
A paraphrased statement by MP Jo Cox from her maiden speech in 2015. She was murdered by a far right extremist during her referendum campaign in 2016.
The EXCHANGE show aims to explore the 'differences' that separate us socially, culturally and geographically and to attempt to bridge those gaps creatively and with humour.
In the not so distant past, as children at school, some of us may have been paired with 'pen pals' across the seas in the hope that in writing to each other we would improve our language and communication skills and perhaps find a friend or connection despite the distance between us.
Towns were 'twinned' across Europe, encouraging the idea that we were not so different from our cousins abroad, that our similarities and differences could be celebrated and that we might feel part of a global rather than parochial community.
Both actions encouraged broad thinking and a welcoming outlook to others, to 'the other'.
Recent political events have had the opposite effect – open arms have been crossed defensively, outstretched hands have become fists, dialogue has been shut down or deliberately misinterpreted.
We need not share a common tongue, a piece of land or a cultural history to share a thought, a joke, a feeling. To exchange a point of view, a vision, is both throwaway and precious. It means everything and nothing. It is all we have to give.
By pairing artists randomly across continents, by playing with boundaries, limits and borders in the exhibition space, by laughing in the face of adversity we can challenge this new, reductive rhetoric.
After all, what have we got to lose?
Louisa Dunn - Brian Lunn
Carmen Van Geffen - Frances Grant
Denise Leworthy - Chris Giorgi
Senne Marquenie - Wendy Kirwood
Naser Kianersi - Vikki Hill
Anita Wernstrom-Pitcher - Lee Hazeldine
Hannah Baker - Anja Lubach
Orphee Pannekoucke - Mark Shaw
Howard Mason - Andrew Smith
Alexander Voutchkov - Jenny Walden
Gilles Hellemans - Dani Penhaligan
Maria Demas - Aron Spall
Martyn Cockram - Elle Lever
Paulien Verheyen - Lee Shearman
Rich Martin - Mark Freemantle
www.stourspace.co.uk
Antwerp><UK
In January 2018, 30 artists across Europe were paired and exchanged three statements to inspire each other to make original work specifically for the EXCHANGE show, to be shown Friday 18th - 25th May 2018 at Stour Space, London .
“We have far more in common than that which divides us.”
A paraphrased statement by MP Jo Cox from her maiden speech in 2015. She was murdered by a far right extremist during her referendum campaign in 2016.
The EXCHANGE show aims to explore the 'differences' that separate us socially, culturally and geographically and to attempt to bridge those gaps creatively and with humour.
In the not so distant past, as children at school, some of us may have been paired with 'pen pals' across the seas in the hope that in writing to each other we would improve our language and communication skills and perhaps find a friend or connection despite the distance between us.
Towns were 'twinned' across Europe, encouraging the idea that we were not so different from our cousins abroad, that our similarities and differences could be celebrated and that we might feel part of a global rather than parochial community.
Both actions encouraged broad thinking and a welcoming outlook to others, to 'the other'.
Recent political events have had the opposite effect – open arms have been crossed defensively, outstretched hands have become fists, dialogue has been shut down or deliberately misinterpreted.
We need not share a common tongue, a piece of land or a cultural history to share a thought, a joke, a feeling. To exchange a point of view, a vision, is both throwaway and precious. It means everything and nothing. It is all we have to give.
By pairing artists randomly across continents, by playing with boundaries, limits and borders in the exhibition space, by laughing in the face of adversity we can challenge this new, reductive rhetoric.
After all, what have we got to lose?
Louisa Dunn - Brian Lunn
Carmen Van Geffen - Frances Grant
Denise Leworthy - Chris Giorgi
Senne Marquenie - Wendy Kirwood
Naser Kianersi - Vikki Hill
Anita Wernstrom-Pitcher - Lee Hazeldine
Hannah Baker - Anja Lubach
Orphee Pannekoucke - Mark Shaw
Howard Mason - Andrew Smith
Alexander Voutchkov - Jenny Walden
Gilles Hellemans - Dani Penhaligan
Maria Demas - Aron Spall
Martyn Cockram - Elle Lever
Paulien Verheyen - Lee Shearman
Rich Martin - Mark Freemantle
www.stourspace.co.uk
For all the artists' statements, pairings, work in progress and subsequent reflective work, please go to The Repository
EXCHANGE >< Artworks
EXCHANGE >< Set up and PV
The artists were paired randomly by means of a blind ballot, having been divided into 'home' and 'away' teams. The pairings are below.
Louisa Dunn - Brian Lunn
Carmen Van Geffen - Frances Grant
Denise Leworthy - Chris Giorgi
Senne Marquienie - Wendy Kirwood
Naser Kianersi - Vikki Hill
Anita Wernstrom-Pitcher - Lee Hazeldine
Hannah Baker - Anja Lubach
Orphee Pannekoucke - Mark Shaw
Howard Mason - Andrew Smith
Alexander Voutchkov - Jenny Walden
Gilles Hellemans - Dani Penhaligan
Maria Demas - Aron Spall
Martyn Cockram - Elle Lever
Paulien Verheyen - Lee Shearman
Rich Martin - Mark Freemantle
Here are the 30 artists' statements, in the order and format received:
Brian Lunn
1. West Cork Flying Column
2. Bluestocking
3. Fattening frogs for snakes
Frances Grant
1-animal
2-happinesses
3-world war 3
Howard Mason
1.Colour: Payne’s grey
2.The hinge of history
3. A game of two halves
Carmen van Geffen
1. Looking at the overlooked
2. Nature mort
3. There's a crack in everything, that's how the light gets in.
Louisa Dunn
Forty seven (47)
Life seemingly goes in 7 year cycles
I miss who you would have been and I wish you were here with me
Jenny Walden
Between the earlier drafting stages and the final draft of Sylvia Plath’s collection of poems, which were published in 1965, two years after her death, under the title Ariel, Plath’s notes indicated that two significant discards of words and one alteration had occurred
These form my three ‘statements’
1 Bright Beast
2 Beautiful
3 Quietness becomes Shutting Up
Andrew Smith.
1. In the early 1990’s I would frequently peruse the shelves of my local newsagent, ultimately ending up thumbing the pages of Exchange and Mart, a classified advertising magazine specialising in new and used motor vehicles. I would typically skip to the ‘Vintage’ sections to ogle over the popular common lowbrow vehicles of the 50’s, 60’s and 70’s which had now been elevated to god like status; desirable chrome clad pressed steel sculptures by anonymous artists, salvaged from the relentless passage of time, immortalised and for-sale in the hallowed pages of Exchange and Mart. Little did I know at the time that Exchange and Mart had been in print since 1868. Founded by William Cox in a converted potato warehouse in Covent Garden, it was the first publication in the world to specialise in classified advertising. The magazine was published weekly for 141 years and at it’s peak reached an audited circulation of 350,000. In 2009 following a sharp decline in sales the magazine focused on becoming an online only business and ceased publishing the printed magazine. Whilst the online version of Exchange and Mart has enjoyed year-on-year growth of 21% and has nearly one million visitors each month, "the greatest entrepreneur of 'class' journalism", William Cox is one step closer to being forgotten.
2. I exchanged a glance with the girl I love over breakfast this morning.
3. Black market money changing is normal in Uzbekistan, I exchanged a single $100 bill, with an elderly lady sat on a pavement, who retrieved a whole bagful (260 notes) of Uzbek Som from inside her bra. Meanwhile the aboveboard legitimate ‘banks’ are performing a different kind of monetary exchange - Banks extend credit by simply increasing the borrowing customer's current account by just creating money. As banks create the amount borrowed, but not the interest to be paid on that loan, there is now more debt in the world than money. This monetary system also means that although individually we might pay off our debts, collectively we are in debt forever, paying interest to the banks. So this money system makes increasing inequality a mathematical certainty. Is it any wonder that 2% of the world's population controls about half the world's wealth?
Aron Spall
In no particular order
Not everyone will like us
Shout quietly
Gilles Hellemans
Reflective surfaces are not advised.
Green leaves should be considered but never abused.
Textured adhesives add value.
Dani Penhaligan
It's all fun and games 'till someone loses an eye!
Embrace
Depths of blue
Paulien Verheyen
1. neon pink
2. Am I an artist?
3. and it shattered
all of it
the dirty mirror
unidentifiable
the crowded void
soaring fragments
elusive
never to be whole again
Naser Kianersi
1. The flame continued to float on the water
Despair screamed in every direction
The man brought the white cloth
The end came close again
The ambiguity was another form of silence
The hand of truth opened itself and revealed absurdity
Under my rock body I felt myself weightless
The sea washed me up when the earth did not hug me
My soul was on fire
A distant sound poured in and I got my meaning.
2. Failing Memories
3.”anonymity”
Mark Shaw
1. cadence
2. pseudorandom
3. machine
Maria Demas
1. REMEMBER WHEN: We discussed that ‘bloody’ colour laying on the threshold of fading light and lifting darkness during a sunset. Their succession –the various colours- who was where, what, when…
…So, it was a green-gray-brown. Was it?
2. MONDAY 26th October.
I’m not staying in the here-and-now.
[…] My mind suffered like from a spiraling spiritual flu. The result has become a ‘condition’ that I have developed. A tendency to flee my own carcass and deal blame by pointing my finger around.
[...] Now it’s so close I can taste it. Come 11 o’clock on that Monday I’ll take that bus and hit the road.
3. “The image that appears once and for all in the instant of its alienation.” [quote] / I’m still in doubt whether the doctor was seriously a doctor, or an actor.
Lee Shearman
1. To summarise the essential through the purity of synthesis.
2. To render the dimensional evidence by means of plastic power.
3. To express the action of forces involved in dynamics.
taken from Futurist Scenic Atmosphere Technical Manifesto written by Enrico Prampolini in 1924
Wendy Kirwood
1: Hanging by a thread
2: It's all in the detail
3: Beneath the surface
Richard Martin
1. Feather mane
2. Munching horse
3. Crazy drill
Orphee Pannekoucke
- free of colours
- war (not a typical one)
- to be or not to be.
Vikki Hill
1. My mum made profiteroles with chocolate sauce and we ate them when guests came for dinner. Every Christmas I made a plate of marzipan fruit for my dad and the food colouring stained my fingers for days.
2. When I was six there were no barriers to stop me climbing down inside abandoned tanks in the sand dunes on the beaches in Normandy. My sister and I climbed Mount Dikaios in the dark so we could watch the sun rise behind the mountains in Turkey.
3. Roxette had the best hair on Top of the Pops. I first discovered Monteverdi’s Zefirno Torna when researching music for a lesson on Renaissance art.
Chris Giorgi
Skull and Bones
Pebbles
Gold
Hannah Baker
1. A Negg, a Norange and a Napple
2. The lion beat the unicorn all around the town
3. Nothing? Nothing tra la la?!
Senne Marquienie
1. Europe
2. "I love living in the future."
3. Dolphins
Denise Leworthy
1.Tiny
2.Sand
3.Join
Alexander Voutchkov
1 The separation
2 means nothing to
3 this sentence
Martyn Cockram
1. I thought there was an elephant in the room, but it turned out to be an Armoire.
2. The dogs are on the ceiling, pretty dogs.
3. There are Daffodils in the garden.
Anita Wernstrom-Pitcher
1. Flesh tint as a normative idea of what flesh look like
2. “We teach girls shame. “Close your legs. Cover yourself.” We make them feel as though being born female they’re already guilty of something. And so, girls grow up to be women who cannot say they have desire. They grow up to be women who silence themselves. They grow up to be women who cannot say what they truly think. And they grow up — and this is the worst thing we do to girls — they grow up to be women who have turned pretense into an art form.”
― Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, We Should All Be Feminists
3. Breaking the norms is the norm of performance
Diana Taylor -Performance
Elle Lever
1. All living organisms rely on exchanges with the environment to survive. 2. Cells need to take in useful substances and remove other substances, such as waste, in order to
function effectively. Exchange of materials occurs between the cell and its surrounding environment
across the cell membrane. Depending on the circumstances, this is achieved via three transport
processes - diffusion, osmosis and active transport. To make exchange as efficient as possible, larger
organisms have evolved specialised exchange surfaces.
3. Within the lungs is a network of tubes through which air is able to pass. Air is firstly warmed,
moistened and filtered as it travels through the mouth and nasal passages. It then passes through the
trachea and down one of the two bronchi and into one of the lungs. After travelling into the many
bronchioles, it finally passes into some of the millions of tiny cave-like sacs called alveoli, which
have the specialised surfaces for gas exchange:
Alveoli are folded, providing a much greater surface area for gas exchange to occur.
Each alveolus is surrounded by blood capillaries which ensure a good blood supply. This is
important as the blood is constantly taking oxygen away and bringing in more carbon
dioxide - which helps to maintain the maximum concentration gradient between the blood
and the air in the alveoli.
Each alveolus is ventilated, removing waste carbon dioxide and replenishing oxygen levels
in the alveolar air.
The walls of the alveoli are very thin - shortening the diffusion distance across which gases
have to move.
Lee Hazeldine
Three British idioms:
1) Bite off more than you can chew
2) Play it by ear
3) Turn a blind eye
Each one alludes to a ‘sense’
Anja Lubach
Everything dark
Rain
Big fish eat little fish
Mark Freemantle
1. Neutron tattoo
2. Blinding tackle
3. Beyond distance
Louisa Dunn - Brian Lunn
Carmen Van Geffen - Frances Grant
Denise Leworthy - Chris Giorgi
Senne Marquienie - Wendy Kirwood
Naser Kianersi - Vikki Hill
Anita Wernstrom-Pitcher - Lee Hazeldine
Hannah Baker - Anja Lubach
Orphee Pannekoucke - Mark Shaw
Howard Mason - Andrew Smith
Alexander Voutchkov - Jenny Walden
Gilles Hellemans - Dani Penhaligan
Maria Demas - Aron Spall
Martyn Cockram - Elle Lever
Paulien Verheyen - Lee Shearman
Rich Martin - Mark Freemantle
Here are the 30 artists' statements, in the order and format received:
Brian Lunn
1. West Cork Flying Column
2. Bluestocking
3. Fattening frogs for snakes
Frances Grant
1-animal
2-happinesses
3-world war 3
Howard Mason
1.Colour: Payne’s grey
2.The hinge of history
3. A game of two halves
Carmen van Geffen
1. Looking at the overlooked
2. Nature mort
3. There's a crack in everything, that's how the light gets in.
Louisa Dunn
Forty seven (47)
Life seemingly goes in 7 year cycles
I miss who you would have been and I wish you were here with me
Jenny Walden
Between the earlier drafting stages and the final draft of Sylvia Plath’s collection of poems, which were published in 1965, two years after her death, under the title Ariel, Plath’s notes indicated that two significant discards of words and one alteration had occurred
These form my three ‘statements’
1 Bright Beast
2 Beautiful
3 Quietness becomes Shutting Up
Andrew Smith.
1. In the early 1990’s I would frequently peruse the shelves of my local newsagent, ultimately ending up thumbing the pages of Exchange and Mart, a classified advertising magazine specialising in new and used motor vehicles. I would typically skip to the ‘Vintage’ sections to ogle over the popular common lowbrow vehicles of the 50’s, 60’s and 70’s which had now been elevated to god like status; desirable chrome clad pressed steel sculptures by anonymous artists, salvaged from the relentless passage of time, immortalised and for-sale in the hallowed pages of Exchange and Mart. Little did I know at the time that Exchange and Mart had been in print since 1868. Founded by William Cox in a converted potato warehouse in Covent Garden, it was the first publication in the world to specialise in classified advertising. The magazine was published weekly for 141 years and at it’s peak reached an audited circulation of 350,000. In 2009 following a sharp decline in sales the magazine focused on becoming an online only business and ceased publishing the printed magazine. Whilst the online version of Exchange and Mart has enjoyed year-on-year growth of 21% and has nearly one million visitors each month, "the greatest entrepreneur of 'class' journalism", William Cox is one step closer to being forgotten.
2. I exchanged a glance with the girl I love over breakfast this morning.
3. Black market money changing is normal in Uzbekistan, I exchanged a single $100 bill, with an elderly lady sat on a pavement, who retrieved a whole bagful (260 notes) of Uzbek Som from inside her bra. Meanwhile the aboveboard legitimate ‘banks’ are performing a different kind of monetary exchange - Banks extend credit by simply increasing the borrowing customer's current account by just creating money. As banks create the amount borrowed, but not the interest to be paid on that loan, there is now more debt in the world than money. This monetary system also means that although individually we might pay off our debts, collectively we are in debt forever, paying interest to the banks. So this money system makes increasing inequality a mathematical certainty. Is it any wonder that 2% of the world's population controls about half the world's wealth?
Aron Spall
In no particular order
Not everyone will like us
Shout quietly
Gilles Hellemans
Reflective surfaces are not advised.
Green leaves should be considered but never abused.
Textured adhesives add value.
Dani Penhaligan
It's all fun and games 'till someone loses an eye!
Embrace
Depths of blue
Paulien Verheyen
1. neon pink
2. Am I an artist?
3. and it shattered
all of it
the dirty mirror
unidentifiable
the crowded void
soaring fragments
elusive
never to be whole again
Naser Kianersi
1. The flame continued to float on the water
Despair screamed in every direction
The man brought the white cloth
The end came close again
The ambiguity was another form of silence
The hand of truth opened itself and revealed absurdity
Under my rock body I felt myself weightless
The sea washed me up when the earth did not hug me
My soul was on fire
A distant sound poured in and I got my meaning.
2. Failing Memories
3.”anonymity”
Mark Shaw
1. cadence
2. pseudorandom
3. machine
Maria Demas
1. REMEMBER WHEN: We discussed that ‘bloody’ colour laying on the threshold of fading light and lifting darkness during a sunset. Their succession –the various colours- who was where, what, when…
…So, it was a green-gray-brown. Was it?
2. MONDAY 26th October.
I’m not staying in the here-and-now.
[…] My mind suffered like from a spiraling spiritual flu. The result has become a ‘condition’ that I have developed. A tendency to flee my own carcass and deal blame by pointing my finger around.
[...] Now it’s so close I can taste it. Come 11 o’clock on that Monday I’ll take that bus and hit the road.
3. “The image that appears once and for all in the instant of its alienation.” [quote] / I’m still in doubt whether the doctor was seriously a doctor, or an actor.
Lee Shearman
1. To summarise the essential through the purity of synthesis.
2. To render the dimensional evidence by means of plastic power.
3. To express the action of forces involved in dynamics.
taken from Futurist Scenic Atmosphere Technical Manifesto written by Enrico Prampolini in 1924
Wendy Kirwood
1: Hanging by a thread
2: It's all in the detail
3: Beneath the surface
Richard Martin
1. Feather mane
2. Munching horse
3. Crazy drill
Orphee Pannekoucke
- free of colours
- war (not a typical one)
- to be or not to be.
Vikki Hill
1. My mum made profiteroles with chocolate sauce and we ate them when guests came for dinner. Every Christmas I made a plate of marzipan fruit for my dad and the food colouring stained my fingers for days.
2. When I was six there were no barriers to stop me climbing down inside abandoned tanks in the sand dunes on the beaches in Normandy. My sister and I climbed Mount Dikaios in the dark so we could watch the sun rise behind the mountains in Turkey.
3. Roxette had the best hair on Top of the Pops. I first discovered Monteverdi’s Zefirno Torna when researching music for a lesson on Renaissance art.
Chris Giorgi
Skull and Bones
Pebbles
Gold
Hannah Baker
1. A Negg, a Norange and a Napple
2. The lion beat the unicorn all around the town
3. Nothing? Nothing tra la la?!
Senne Marquienie
1. Europe
2. "I love living in the future."
3. Dolphins
Denise Leworthy
1.Tiny
2.Sand
3.Join
Alexander Voutchkov
1 The separation
2 means nothing to
3 this sentence
Martyn Cockram
1. I thought there was an elephant in the room, but it turned out to be an Armoire.
2. The dogs are on the ceiling, pretty dogs.
3. There are Daffodils in the garden.
Anita Wernstrom-Pitcher
1. Flesh tint as a normative idea of what flesh look like
2. “We teach girls shame. “Close your legs. Cover yourself.” We make them feel as though being born female they’re already guilty of something. And so, girls grow up to be women who cannot say they have desire. They grow up to be women who silence themselves. They grow up to be women who cannot say what they truly think. And they grow up — and this is the worst thing we do to girls — they grow up to be women who have turned pretense into an art form.”
― Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, We Should All Be Feminists
3. Breaking the norms is the norm of performance
Diana Taylor -Performance
Elle Lever
1. All living organisms rely on exchanges with the environment to survive. 2. Cells need to take in useful substances and remove other substances, such as waste, in order to
function effectively. Exchange of materials occurs between the cell and its surrounding environment
across the cell membrane. Depending on the circumstances, this is achieved via three transport
processes - diffusion, osmosis and active transport. To make exchange as efficient as possible, larger
organisms have evolved specialised exchange surfaces.
3. Within the lungs is a network of tubes through which air is able to pass. Air is firstly warmed,
moistened and filtered as it travels through the mouth and nasal passages. It then passes through the
trachea and down one of the two bronchi and into one of the lungs. After travelling into the many
bronchioles, it finally passes into some of the millions of tiny cave-like sacs called alveoli, which
have the specialised surfaces for gas exchange:
Alveoli are folded, providing a much greater surface area for gas exchange to occur.
Each alveolus is surrounded by blood capillaries which ensure a good blood supply. This is
important as the blood is constantly taking oxygen away and bringing in more carbon
dioxide - which helps to maintain the maximum concentration gradient between the blood
and the air in the alveoli.
Each alveolus is ventilated, removing waste carbon dioxide and replenishing oxygen levels
in the alveolar air.
The walls of the alveoli are very thin - shortening the diffusion distance across which gases
have to move.
Lee Hazeldine
Three British idioms:
1) Bite off more than you can chew
2) Play it by ear
3) Turn a blind eye
Each one alludes to a ‘sense’
Anja Lubach
Everything dark
Rain
Big fish eat little fish
Mark Freemantle
1. Neutron tattoo
2. Blinding tackle
3. Beyond distance