REVOLT
As part of The Curfew Tower project - IMPOSE||LIFT
Rooftop Action- Queer Revolt
Manifest 2017
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Guest Show & Tell: Manifest Calling 2017
Sun 9 Jul 2017, 14.00 . Free. Booking required.
Part of: Show & Tell
“This July, we are giving the Show & Tell reins to our friends at Manifest, an artist-led festival aiming to showcase the talent of North West contemporary artists. Discover the regional art scene with artists making lightening presentations about their current projects, experiments or sources of inspiration.”
The Penthouse will be presenting a Show & Tell on our inspirations for The Curfew Tower projects including the current climate for gay rights.
For booking follow https://homemcr.org/event/guest-show-tell-manifest-calling-2017/
REVOLT
Preview Event: 6 July 6-10pm
https://www.manifestartsfestival.com/penthouse
The Penthouse brings their curatorship of Bill Drummond’s Curfew Tower (Northern Ireland) to their Manchester artist led space with an event titled REVOLT. REVOLT is a half way project from Curatorship IMPOSE||LIFT.
REVOLT will not be described to you prior to the event.
It will be brought to you in collaboration with Manchester’s finest LGBTQ+ and deliver Queers against Facism in action.
We are curating The Curfew Tower in the small Northern Irish town of Cushendall. Considering issues of feminism and LGBTQ+ rights across the UK bridging NI and Manchester. We can not ignore that The Curfew Tower belongs to Bill Drummond. We can not ignore that this happens to be the year of the KLF comeback. We can not ignore ideas of epic gesture, action, destruction, restriction, liberation and deviance. We can not ignore our part as the english in the colonisation of the Irish and how resistance has been re framed as mindless violence. We can not ignore that the IRA bombed Manchester. We can not politely ignore violence and oppression. We can not ignore that we are lesbian women and religious views of homosexuality are often homophobic and our very being considered deviant and oppress women. We can not ignore that religious views impact of societal values, fears and beliefs in Cushendall, Manchester and all over the world.
*added* Most recently we can not ignore proposals for a Conservative and DUP alliance.
REVOLT
Curated as part of Manifest 17
Supported by Arts Council England Grants for the Arts
Excited to announce our next Curfew Tower 17 IMPOSE||LIFT artists in residence:
ROWAN EASTWOOD
CHLOE BEECHHAM
Rowan Eastwood graduated from Leeds Beckett
University with a Fine Art BA Hons in 2013. Eastwood now works and lives in
Manchester, based in Depot Art Studios which she co-founded in 2015. Eastwood
regularly exhibits, recently showing work at PS Mirabel and Bankley Gallery. In
2016 she was selected for The Penthouse’s ‘Might & Main’ residency, and won
second prize in PS Mirabel’s art prize (selected by Mark Doyle, Touchstones
gallery curator and collections manager, Lisa Denyer, artist and precious
winner, Magnus Quaife, artist and lecturer, Robert Miller, contemporary art
collector).
Image. 'Insulation Installation' Foil covered insulation. 2017.
Chloe Beecham is a graduate from Manchester School of Art. She is an artist interested in contrasts between the masculine and the feminine, often using the traditional practice of embroidery to create contemporary sculpture, installation and drawing. She has exhibited nationally and is currently developing her practice alongside occasional teaching. Chloe was recently selected for Saltaire Open Houses as part of Saltaire Arts Trail 2017.
image. Constructed Drawing
Announcing next Curfew Tower 17 IMPOSE||LIFT artists in residence:
Mary Stark and David Chatton Barker
Since meeting at a carboot sale in 2014, Mary Stark & David Chatton Barker fell in love and began continuously documenting their everyday lives through tape recording, photography, hi8 video and 16mm film. They have collaboratively produced a number of tracks released through Folklore Tapes, as well as an EP ‘Instantaneous Spontaneity’ in spring 2017 through Hoodfaire The act of making artworks as gifts for one other has resulted in a private archive of multifarious items such as a number of vinyl dubplates, text works, zines and photographic prints.
More recently Mary & David have created expanded cinema performances with live soundtracks, often involving playful exploration of light and analogue projection, handmade instruments and drawing upon domestic rituals, such as bread making and headstands. Field trips to remote rural locations and megalithic sites allow underlying energies and ephemeral aspects of the landscape to lead them serendipitously astray in elemental improvisations, interventions and unplanned performances, always documented through sound recording and film. They recently performed at Rogue Cinema in Manchester, CineCycle in Toronto and Supernormal Festival in Oxfordshire.
We are pleased to announce the first round of resident artists for our curatorship of The Curfew Tower.
Artists will undertake residencies for IMPOSE||LIFT exploring their situation to the tower and the surrounding town of Cushendall considering themes of restriction and liberation of action and in action.
We will be sharing more about each artists in coming weeks.
Our first resident artist is Sandra Bouguerch who will be exploring experiences in life comparable to being physically situated in a tower.
Followed by Sophie Cooper who will be taking the chance to collaborate with Natalia Beylis from Woven Skull / Hunters Moon Fest and inviting locals to an open house.
Follow #TheCurfewTower17 #ImposeLift
Impose||Lift is supported by Arts Council England Grants for the Arts.
The Curfew Tower 2017
IMPOSE || LIFT
The Penthouse take over the curatorship of the The Curfew Tower.
A curfew is imposed or lifted. A blockage remains blocked or is shifted. Art can be imposed on a person or persons- Art can lift a person or persons. Action and In Action. Restriction and Liberation. You must do something. Now? You must take notice?
The title IMPOSE|LIFT is related to the idea of Curfew in artistic, societal and political terms taking into consideration ideas of restriction and liberation. Artists are invited to respond to the theme and interrogate their own position within the unique situation of The Curfew Tower and the town of Cushendall. An artist could explore identity, gender, racism, conflict, feminism, or gay rights when exploring what it means to put yourself into a tower today- previously used for imprisonment.
Artists and musicians selected by The Penthouse are invited to be awake and alive to The Curfew Tower for a self directed residency period during which they must accept the challenge to make their least compromised work. They will live in the tower but they must resist having four walls around them. They will be introduced to the town of Cushendall and over a period of time and related events including The Festival of The Glens and they will become part of the unique Curfew Tower family.
See here for previous Curfew Tower curatorship by Sagit Mezamer and exhibition Nothing but Longing at VOID.
The Penthouse - is an artist led project space in Manchester city centre’s Northern Quarter founded and ran by artists Rosanne Robertson and Debbie Sharp- described as “ad hoc art space the Penthouse…is the best of the Northern Quarter” in Tony Naylor’s Alt City Guide to Manchester (The Guardian) and as “Elevating Manchester’s underground to the top floor of a tower block” by Frances Morgan (The Wire).
Our Penthouse exists in a strange series of Penthouses all around the world- most of these spaces used to display and house wealth and objects- women often used as objects in this scenario. These shiny boxes are built on racism, sexism and slavery. Displays of power at the top of the tower. Our Penthouse holds anOTHER power- and believes in the Other, the Outsider and the magical powers of every marginalized person.
www.thepenthousenq.com
The Curfew Tower is many things…
One of those things is that it belongs to Bill Drummond (also magical)
There are many books you could find about The Curfew Tower and many ways you can get involved.
https://curfewtower.com/
Artists and projects from IMPOSE||LIFT will be documented via this website and also our Facebook page Instagram and Twitter
There will be a series of public performances in August 2017 and a program of exhibitions and events over 2017-2018. Details to follow.
This Thursday and Friday sees Una Baines new musical play celebrating the journey from girlhood to womanhood with African dance, drumming, newly written and performed music by members of Poppycock , video and stage design- all work shopped with the young people of Gorse Hill Studios and with a new star for the lead role- Awa who has been learning Qi Gong with Sue Fox among other things. Entry is free. The Penthouse have been helping behind the scenes and would like to highly recommend you snap up your free ticket to reserve your seat.
https://www.eventbrite.com/e/menarche-a-community-musical-play-by-una-baines-tickets-28624082401
Might & Main short film by Sophie Broadgate.
MIGHT & MAIN SYMPOSIUM + WED 5 OCT 6-9PM https://www.eventbrite.com/e/might-main-symposium-tickets-27633994020
Announcing our selected artists for Might & Main residency! See the new Might & Main page on our website for more information on each artist. Open studio event Friday 23 September 6-9pm at The Penthouse- open to all. https://thepenthousenq.com/MightandMain
Too Much
Rosanne Robertson
Open studio & performances.
29 Apr- 8 May
*Preview/VIP- Friday 29 April 6-9pm*
The Penthouse
Northern Quarter
Manchester
M1 2EH
Directions: https://thepenthousenq.com/Directions
(Open both Fridays 6-9pm with scheduled performance & both Saturday- Sundays 12-6pm)
Too Much is a research and development project by artist Rosanne Robertson focusing on mental health, the modern condition of anxiety and the personal in contemporary art resulting in the development of newly exhibited assemblage, sculpture, performance, drawing and sound art work.
The project Too Much takes its title from a quote by Carolee Schneemann who wrote:
“Our best development grows from works which initially strike us as “too much”…Because my sex and work were harmoniously experienced I could have the audacity, or courage, to show the body as a source of varying emotive power”.
Too Much has developed throughout a period of studio based experimentation and research into uses and examples of anxiety and the personal in art via key movements including feminist art, ‘outsider’ art and Dadaism. Performance, extensions of the body and the personal in relationship with objects and sculpture has been a main concern- exploring the idea of performance sculpture or event sculpture as a site for expression vs form and spontaneity vs control.
Assemblage, sculpture & performance, collage, improvisation, ritual, sound making and automatic drawing have been a focus in material terms as well as when selecting key artists and movements to research including the radical black artists of the 70′s LA avant-garde scene including Senga Nengudi and Barbara McCullough. Women in Dada and the use of assemblage and found objects in relation to performance and embodiment including Baroness Elsa, Suzanne Duchamp and Hannah Hoch. Direct expression and improvisation has also been a focus- exploring the boundaries of male dominated fields of sound art and improvisation.
This project has involved a period of research at The Henry Moore Institute with the Helen Chadwick archive. Focusing on specific works such as Ego Geometria Sum & Domestic Sanitation and the relationship between the autobiographical and the personal via the body<>object<>performance dynamic.
Too Much has developed into a number of strands and series’ of works including:
Hit On (2015) Circular glass, lead, sandpaper, metal thread, ink, hair.
-made during and of heightened emotional states and periods of mania- over activity comes up against boundaries and restraints of form.
Idealism (2015-16) Ink on paper.
-a numbered series of works depicting masses of bodily features drawn in an automatic state from memory, physical feelings and heightened emotional states bringing into question the relationship between the mind and the body and links between mental and physical health.
Appendage & Bond (2016) Sculpture and performance (found metal, cotton, nylon, hair, skin, flesh, bone, plastic).
-a sculptural work activated and reworked by the body in performance with a minimalist set of sound making. Combining materials and sculptural arrangements that depict raw and open parts of the body- clothed and unclothed- this work magnifies abstracted bodily sections as if to look for the small intricate fear hidden within small spaces of the body- to sublimate the discord of the past.
Some of these works were recently exhibited with The Penthouse at Sluice__ at Oxo Tower Wharf, Southbank, London, performed at Zarata Festival (Madrid) and at WUR Bradford self publishing fair. Appendage & Bond was developed with the support of Instigate Arts and is to be performed at Wonder Women: What IS She Wearing at Manchester Art Gallery on 3 March. The project is supported by Arts Council England.
For further information keep updated via my website, mailing list, email me or follow me on twitter.
rosannerobertson1984@gmail.com
I am compiling parts of my research via this online journalhttps://toomuchproject.tumblr.com/
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I would like to thank Arts Council England for their support of this project, this support has meant the development of a whole new body of work and series of opportunities. I would like to thank all those who supported the project via Indiegogo and also an anonymous contributor. I would like to thank Instigate Arts for their vision and support. I would like to thank those who have bought work from the project and invested in my practice. I would like to thank the Henry Moore Institute for their open support whilst carrying out my research.
Press Gang at Wur Bradford- Mini Self Publishing Fair 21 November visit https://wurbradford.wordpress.com/2015/11/02/why-diy-it-bradford-mini-self-publishing-fair/
Some shots of The Press Gang- launched at Sluice__ 2015 - a new self publishing project ran from The Penthouse. Artists included is Press Gang were Jean McEwen, Gary Fisher, Rosanne Robertson, Graham Dunning and Debbie Sharp.