PERFORMANCES SYMPOSIUM Misha Myersditions, exploring links with cultural identity. An exhibition of...

A contemporary art project in everydaylocations around Exeter city centre

17 APRIL – 15 MAY 2004

TARIQ ALVIOLADÉLÉ AJIBOYÉ BAMGBOYÉCAROLINE BERGVALL ANSUMAN BISWAS JYLL BRADLEY LISA CHEUNG MICHAEL CURRAN JEM FINERGUILLERMO GÓMEZ-PEÑAJENNY MELLINGS MISHA MYERS ROSALIND NASHASHIBI GRAYSON PERRYQUACK-PROJECT WRIGHTS & SITES + WHEN IN ROME II

THE MIDDLE ENGLAND SERIESwww.spacex.co.ukwww.relational.org.uk

A Spacex / Relational project presented, as part ofthe Middle England Series, in association with

Arts Council England’s decibel initiative, “raisingthe voice of culturally diverse arts in Britain”.

45 Preston Street, Exeter EX1 1DF, UK www.relational.org.ukTel: +44 (0)1392 431786mail@spacex.co.ukwww.spacex.co.uk

Spacex is a registered charity no. 1054163, supported byArts Council England, Exeter City Council and Devon County Council

17 APRIL – 15 MAY

12, 20 & 22 PARIS STREETCaroline Bergvall, AnsumanBiswas, Jyll Bradley, Lisa Cheung, GuillermoGómez-Peña, Jenny Mellings,Misha Myers, RosalindNashashibi, Quack-Project

THE BLUE BOY GIFT SHOPGrayson Perry

EAST TO WESTAnsuman Biswas & Jem Finer

HABITATWhen in Rome II Daniel Baker, Suki Chan,Nooshin Farhid, AmandaFrancis, Raimi Gbadamosi,Takafumi Homma, Ronee Hui,Silia KaTung, Margareta Kern,Maria Meade, Agnes Poitevin-Navarre, Harold Offeh, PaulO’Kane, Yewande Okuleye,Raymond Yap

HOMELAND / SPACEX STAFFare available at 12, 20 and 22Paris Street, and at the gallery todiscuss the work at all timesduring the project

17 APRIL – 29 MAY

ROYAL ALBERTMEMORIAL MUSEUMIntrospectOladélé Ajiboyé Bamgboyé

17 APRIL – 12 JUNE

SPACEX GALLERYi can c my way home Tariq Alvi and Michael Curranwith Jeremy Akerman, GailBurton, Michele Dendy, AnaFonseca, Marc Hulson, SerenaKorda, Geoffrey Preston, AlexSchady, Show & Tell and others

Please see map inside for details of locations

OPENING TIMESAll sites are openTuesday – Saturday 10am – 5pm

ADMISSION FREE

ACCESS Spacex is fullyaccessible for visitors usingwheelchairs, prams and buggies.Please telephone other locationsfor information about access

Bus 0870 6082608Train 08457 484950

Homeland is a Spacex/Relational project, curated by Tom Trevor andZoë Shearman. Assistant curator, Raimi Gbadamosi.

Projects out of Spacex co-ordinated by Relational. Technical/SiteManager, Caroline Mawdsley. Spacex co-ordinators, Hannah Reeves(education & outreach), Lara West (finance) and Hannah Wingrave(exhibitions & marketing).

Supported by Arts Council England, as part of the decibel initiative, andthe Henry Moore Foundation. Sponsored by Land Securities PLC inpartnership with Arts & Business South West.

Organised in partnership with Exeter City Council, the Royal AlbertMemorial Museum & Art Gallery, Habitat UK Ltd, East to West, TheBlue Boy Gift Shop, Picture This, South West Screen, Wrights andSights, tEXt festival 04, the Institute of Digital Art & Technology ,Dartington College of Arts and the University of Plymouth.

Oladélé Ajiboyé Bamgboyé’s Unmasking 3 is a FACT commission, co-produced with John Moores University and the Institute of Digital Art &Technology, funded by the Millennium Festival Fund and developed inpartnership with National Museums & Galleries on Merseyside.

Caroline Bergvall’s Your Number’s Up is supported by CreativeConnections Fund, DCA. Ansuman Biswas’ Season is commissioned byPicture This, Dartington Arts and The South West Film and TelevisionArchive, and funded by South West Screen. Ansuman Biswas and JemFiner’s Zero Genie is commissioned by The Arts Catalyst, and funded byLondon Arts Board. Michael Curran’s i can c my way home iscommissioned by Spacex, Picture This and South West Screen, andfunded by Arts Council England’s National Touring Programme andSouth West Screen. Misha Myers’ Lonesome Long Gone is supported bytEXt festival 04. The Quack-Project is produced by Signwave UK,Middlesex University and Kahve-Society, and Cockney and CornishDuck’s Dialect(ic) co-produced by the Institute of Digital Art &Technology and Performance Research Journal.

With thanks to Emma Blackwell, Cabinet Gallery, Neville Chambers,David England, Jake Ferguson, John Harvey, Yvonne Hayes, KariHensley, Stephen Hodge, Ceri Johnson, Polly Macpherson, NolaMariano, Tim Miles, Zoe Li, Tom Pales, David Paterson, SimonPersighetti, Janet Phare, Mike Phillips, Picture This, Kimberley Rainford,Royal Albert Memorial Museum & Art Gallery, Mariam Sharp, MikeStrover, Josie Sutcliffe, Emma Underhill, Victoria Miro Gallery, MarkWallace, Sam Wilkinson, and all the interpreters and technicians.

THE GIFTSaturday 17 April,11am

The displaced,shrapnel-scarred BlueBoy stands alone. Tothis orphan landmarkfor shoppers, wecome bearing carrierbags of gifts, thecolour of the sky.

SUBURBAN HOMESICK BLUESSaturday 24 April, 11am Caught between two versions of Middle England,Exeter and Winchester, a blue maid dreams of a blueboy and vice versa. Version two of this walk will takeplace in Winchester, on 28 April.

TOWN PLANNING CONSULTANT TO THECORPORATIONTuesday 4 May, 1.36 - 2.50am An audio walk on the anniversary of Exeter’s Blitz,inspired by a found, personal account of the post-warrebuild by an unknown Exeter resident. Meet promptlyat 1.30am and bring a personal CD player.

HAT AND BOOKSaturday 8 May, 11am

Law courts on a volcano, concrete tunnels throughabstract Princesshay: Middle Exeter’s psychogeographyand beyond... Come dressed in blue and with plentyof time.

YOU ARE HERESaturday, 15 May, 12 noonBlack Box, Exeter Phoenix

A free presentation about the company’s publication,An Exeter Mis-Guide (www.mis-guide.com) thatencourages the experience of getting “lost and lovingit”. Followed by an optional, short walk to pay homageto the Blue Boy. Presented as part of tEXt festival 04.

Wrights & Sites are Stephen Hodge, SimonPersighetti, Phil Smith and Cathy Turner.

Limited places available Please book in advance by contactingHannah Reeves 01392 431786 /mail@spacex.co.uk All walks are free andstart at the Blue Boy statue in Princesshay,except You Are Here.

Wrights & Sites Blue Boy Walks

Misha Myers

YODEL RODEOSaturday 17 April, High Noon to High Tea Royal Albert Memor ial Museum & Art Gallery,Local History galleries, and city centre streets

Myers’ persona, Buffalo Sue, reframes the old Romanwalls of Exeter into a rodeo corral. City dignitaries

and citizens once walked the walls annually to nameand shame any transgressor of the security andprestige they upheld. Tracing their steps and cheerswith renegade rodeo pageantry, the cowgirl roundsup the herds of the city with her Texas lullabies andline dance interludes performed by Exeter’sMontgomery Mavericks. You can follow along bothremotely over a 3-D map of the old city at theMuseum, or in the city centre streets.

LONESOME LONG GONESaturday 15 May, High Noon to High Tea Royal Albert Memorial Museum & Art Gallery,Natural History galleriesMyers presents Buffalo Sue alongside the Museum’sexhibit of a North American Bison. Hercontemporary and global Wild West show follows atrail stretching infinitely ahead and out of sight, pastmotorway exits to shopping malls, desert battlefields,inter-galactic space stations and multinationalcorporate frontiers.

PERFORMANCES WHAT IS MIDDLE ENGLAND?Sarat Maharaj, art historian and co-curator of Documenta XIKodwo Eshun, writer and researcherSusan Pui San Lok, artist and writerDiscussion chaired by Raimi Gbadamosi, artist andcurator

INVESTIGATING HISTORIES

Artists presentations of current archive-based projectsOladélé Ajiboyé Bamgboyé, Ansuman Biswas and Erika Tan

MIGRATIONS

A programme of artists films, including work by MarineHugonnier, Uyen Luu, Rosalind Nashashibi and Alia Syed,followed by a discussion with participating artists

PARADISE OMEROS the latest film by Isaac Julien

RE-BOP SESSION a live multi-media performance by Soul JazzSound System and Jonnie Williams

SYMPOSIUM IN AND OUT OFMIDDLE ENGLANDFriday 30 April - Saturday 1 May Exeter Phoenix, Bradninch Place,Gandy StreetA two-day symposium which aims toprovide a critical platform for current‘cultural diversity’ debates and to examinerelated socially-engaged concerns withincontemporary visual arts. Presented bydecibel Arts Council South West andorganised in partnership with Spacex andPicture This.

Delegate fee £20 including tickets forall events. To book contact the decibelAdministrator, Arts Council EnglandSouth West 01392 229230 / decibel.sw@artscouncil.org.uk

WORKSHOPSEX4A series of text and print-making workshops for peo-ple who live, work or study in the postal code areaEX4. These free Spacex workshops are held in part-nership with Exeter CVS.

THREADSSpacex outreach project with Exeter Islamic Centre.Participants will look at local and diverse textile tra-ditions, exploring links with cultural identity. Anexhibition of work produced will take place in theAutumn. To take part in EX4 or to attend the Threadsproject launch at Exeter Islamic Centre on Tuesday11 May, contact Hannah Reeves on 01392 431786.

GUIDED TOURS HOMELANDFriday 30 April 10.30amStarting at Exeter Phoenix, Bradninch Place,Gandy StreetA guided tour of Homeland, led by the projectcurators, Tom Trevor and Zoë Shearman.

WHEN IN ROME II Saturday 8 May 11am Habitat, 21-22 Queen Street

Raimi Gbadamosi, co-curator and artist, leads a tourof the exhibition.

Homeland is a month-long project presentingartists’ work in everyday locations around thecentre of Exeter. Organised by Spacex andRelational Projects, this series of contemporary artexhibitions, interventions, performances andevents essentially asks the question “What isMiddle England?” The project is sited at SpacexGallery, the Royal Albert Memorial Museum & ArtGallery, Habitat, the Blue Boy Gift Shop and Eastto West in Princesshay, and a number of emptyshops in Paris Street, vacant prior to re-development by Land Securities.

Increasingly politicians, advertising and the mediarefer to ‘Middle England’ as if it were an acceptedeveryday definition, and yet its underlying criteriaremain unclear. The question of who is able toconsider themselves a part of Middle England, forexample, is ambiguous. One aim of the project isto examine the construction of a culturalhegemony around this peculiarly English, class-bound model of community, with its strong senseof belonging and ownership, and thus itsequivalent sense of exclusivity and resistance tochange.

Homeland includes artists commissioned toeither make new works or show existing piecesin everyday contexts for the first time. The projectis presented in association with Arts CouncilEngland’s decibel initiative, “raising the voiceof culturally diverse arts in Britain”.

Front: Grayson Perry, Storm

Brew

ing, 2002,courtesy of the artist / Victoria M

iro Gallery, London

Buffalo Sue (still), 2003

Cour tesy D

ave Paterson

ROYAL ALBERTMEMORIAL MUSEUM& ART GALLERY

Queen Street, tel. 01392 665858www.exeter.gov.uk/museums World Cultures galleries(continues until 29 May 2004)

INTROSPECT

Oladélé Ajiboyé Bamgboyé

Introspect (2003) contrasts Western perceptionsof Africa with images of the day-to-dayexperience of living in Nigeria. As part of hisExeter-based project, Bamgboyé has re-editedarchive film footage donated by local residents,who have lived both in Devonand Nigeria. He alsopresents Unmasking3, a new digitalcommission,alongside theWorldCulturesdisplay ofa Beninhead.

LOCATION

Caroline Bergvall

Your Number's Up Do you have a favouritenumber? Do you avoid travelling on certaindates? What does zero mean? In more waysthan 1, numbers shape the ways we relate tothe world. Poet and site-artist Bergvall willwork for 3 days (13 - 15 May) in the oldbetting shop, with sound duo Liminal, torecord your answers to questionnaires,numerical games and symbolic patterns.These soundings will be incorporated into anocturnal public event in Exeter this Autumn.

Ansuman Biswas

Season, a new four-screen video installation,is part of a series of works exploring themultiple links between Bengal and Devon,and between past and future, includingfootage from the South West Film andTelevision Archive and autobiographicalmaterial from India.

Jyll Bradley www.fragrant.org.uk

Fragrant, Exeter is a site-specific floralinstallation made in collaboration with JanetPhare, a flower arranger from ExeterCathedral. Fragrant, Exeter draws upon thetraditions of English church flower arranging,a popular ‘art of the everyday’, but createdwithin the confines of a city centre shop. Theinstallation combines local Devon foliagewith ‘exotic’ orchids and anthuriums, tocreate a stunning hybrid arrangement.

Lisa Cheung

The Great Wall of china is a participatoryproject that attempts to record the faces ofMiddle England. A broad range of Exetercitizens, including passers-by, are invited tohave their photograph taken for thecollection in the Portrait Studio (open 17April – 1 May). These portraits will then betransferred onto a set of commemorativeplates that celebrate the people that make upExeter’s changing and vibrant society. Theplates will eventually make up The GreatWall of china, to be exhibited in the Autumn.

Guillermo Gómez-Peña

Ethno-Techno: Los Video Graffitis (2004)consists of approximately 30 ‘video graffitis’,or short performance video segments, bycelebrated Latino-American artist Gómez-Peña and the performance group La PochaNostra. They range in length from thirtyseconds to three minutes. This body of workdeals with critical contemporary issues suchas globalization, immigration, the politics oflanguage, censorship, race relations, thecommodification of ethnicity, Latinos in themedia, and the digital divide.

Jenny Mellings

A new animated film, resulting fromMellings’ residency at Spacex as part ofwhich she worked with local groups focusingon everyday life in Exeter. “The subject is theHigh Street, which resembles a fickle stream- dry river bed at the dead of night or flashflood on a Saturday morning.”

Misha Myers (see Performances)

Buffalo Sue’s Wild West is an installation thatincorporates ephemera and videodocumentation of Myers performance YodelRodeo, and the video Pain Town, whichfollows the cowgirl’s journey to the wildWest Country seaside town of Paignton, withits amusement arcades and ‘hill-billy’shooting gallery on the pier, made with videomaker Gillian Wylde.

Rosalind Nashashibi

Beck’s Futures-winner, Nashashibi presentsThe States of Things (2000), a 16mm blackand white film transferred to DVD, in whicha Salvation Army jumble sale at Maryhill inGlasgow is set to the sound track of an oldEgyptian love song by Um Kolthoum, In HaliFi Hawaha Agab.

The Quack-Project

An interactive CD-ROM which asks thequestion: “Do ducks quack in the same wayall over the world?” featuring the voices ofnursery children from over 20 Londonschools, making animal noises in a widerange of languages that reflect the capital’scultural diversity. These sounds mingle witha new work, Cockney and Cornish Duck’sDialect(ic), featuring conversation betweenCockney and Cornish ducks.

12, 20 & 22 PARIS STREET

THE BLUE BOYGIFT SHOP

22-24 Princesshaytel. 01392 258013www.blueboygifts.co.uk

Grayson Perry

Turner Prize-winner, Perry presentsa pot entitled Storm Brewing(2002), in the context of the BlueBoy Gift Shop, a specialist china andglass retailer. Perry’s work combinesthe traditions of fine and decorative artswith compelling personal and socialthemes, in an uncompromising investigation of thecultural stereotypes which lie at the heart of Middle England.

EAST TO WEST34 Princesshay, tel. 01392 413555

Ansuman Biswas &Jem FinerIn the film Zero Genie (2001), presentedin the window of East to West (which sellshand crafted Indonesian furniture andgifts), Biswas and Finer fly in zero gravityconditions, dressed as genies, at the UriGagarin Cosmonaut’s Training Facility inStar City, Moscow. They dance, levitate,and reveal, for the very first time in theWest, the mythical Flying Carpet.

HABITAT

21-22 Queen Street, tel. 01392254000 www.habitat.net

WHEN IN ROME II

Daniel Baker, Suki Chan,Nooshin Farhid, AmandaFrancis, Raimi Gbadamosi,Takafumi Homma, RoneeHui, Paul Jones, Silia KaTung, Margareta Kern, MariaMeade, Agnes Poitevin-Navarre, Harold Offeh, PaulO’Kane, Yewande Okuleye, Raymond YapWhen in Rome is an ongoing project, curated by Raimi Gbadamosi andAmanda Francis, which aims to function as a critical platform for ‘culturallydiverse’ artists to consider their practice and profession. When in Rome IIis presented as part of the Homeland project, showing new works in thecontext of Habitat, Exeter, addressing issues of modernism and thesupposed universality of form. There is also a project book,published to accompany the exhibition with new pageworks by each of the artists showing at Habitat.

SPACEX GALLERY

45 Preston Street, tel. 01392 431786(continues until 12 June 2004)

i can c my way home

Tariq Alvi and Michael Curran with Jeremy Akerman, Gail Burton, Michele Dendy, Ana Fonseca,Marc Hulson, Serena Korda, Geoffrey Preston, Alex Schady, Show & Tell and othersTariq Alvi creates open-ended accumulations and collages of images, cut-out from magazines orbrochures, as a kind of visual free association. The juxtapositions are often provocative, sometimesusing sexual imagery, in a celebration of fantasy and chaos. Working in collaboration, Alvi andCurran present an installation that explores the underbelly of Middle England, with guestcontributions by artists and friends.

Michael Curran also presents a new film, i can c my way home, as a two screen video installationthat contrasts Killerton House, a thriving National Trust property near Exeter, and the neighbouringPoltimore House, a ruin fast falling into a state of utter dilapidation. Each space defines and defiesthe other – decay and dereliction counter-pointing order and upkeep.

Introspect (still), 2003G

ambit, 2004, R

aimi G

badamosi

Michael C

urran, 2004

Z ero Genie (still), 200 1

Season (still), 2004Jacket, 2004

Beatriz, an expert orchid grow

erin C

olombia, photo Jyll B

radley2004

Tea Set, 2002El Z orro, G

uillermo G

ómez-P eña

at T ate Modern,

photo Manuel Vason, 2003

Filmstill, 2004

Buffalo Sue (still), 2003

The States of Things(still), 2000

The Quack Project, 2003

If you would like to take part in Your Number’s Up or the GreatWall of china please contact Hannah Reeves on 01392 431786

Tariq Alvi, Parasites, 2000, courtesy M

useum B

oijmans, R

otterdam

Michael C

urran, i can c my w

ay home (still), 2004