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Issue.06 April / May 2006 £1.00 place

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an independent art zine - by the ariists, for the artists.

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Issue.06 April / May 2006

£1.00

place

She’s gone off on another tangentcreating a small, independent art ‘zine.

tangent is a bi-monthly publication produced with the intention of informing and amusing in bite-size chunks. Quick ‘n Dirty, Black ‘n White, each issue

contains contributions by and features on artists as well as arts listings in the South London area and beyond.

To get the skinny on how to submit writing and/or artwork check out the website or contact:

Karen D’Amicovia email: [email protected]

StockistsIn London:

Clapham Art GalleryICA Bookshop

Studio VoltaireThe Residence

The Flea PitTransition Gallery

In Nottingham:Moot Gallery

Further Afield:FluxFactory, New York

Sticky, Melbourne Zeke’s Gallery, Montreal

Events News etc., etc. available on the website:

www.tangent.org.uk

all content © karen d’amico 2006 unless otherwise noted. all contributing artists’ work in the form of text and /or images is used by permission and is copyright by the artist.

no stealing allowed; hey, make up your own ideas FFS! after all, we have.

inside (in no particular order)

[contributors]

Thurle Wright www.thurle.com ‘Mapping Nunhead’ London (UK)

The ‘Dear You’ Project anonymous Melbourne (AU)

Samuel Roy-Bois www.macm.org/en/expositions/23.html ‘Shallow Island’ New York City (USA)

Ettie Spencer www.crossingtheline.org.uk ‘disPLACE’ East Lothian (UK)

Russell Herron www.russellherron.com ‘tangent, Issue 6, April 2006, Page 4’ London (UK)

Lars Vilhelmsen www.larsvilhelmsen.org Hiding Place Vodskov (DK)

Karen D’Amico www.karendamico.com ‘Then and Now’ London (UK)

[reflect]

Thoughts on a Grey Day.

[inform] Arts Listings

Cover image:Samuel Roy-Bois; Ghetto 2006Wood, Fiber glass, plexiglass and objects; 80” x 58” x 56”

Place“Independence is my happiness, and I view things as they are, without regard to place or person; my country is the world, and my religion is to do good.”- Thomas Paine, The Rights of Man (1791)

The oldest word in the English language is “town”

A hamlet is a village without a church and a town is not a city until it has a cathedral.

The only word in the English language with all five vowels in reverse order is “subcontinental.”

Canada is an Indian word meaning “Big Village”.

There is a city called Rome on every continent.

The names of all the continents end with the same letter that they start with, e.g. Asia, Europe, etc.

If the world’s total land area was divided equally among the world’s people, each person would get 8.5 acres.

Fun Facts to know and tell

Above and right: Ettie Spencer disPLACEInstallation, Edinburgh, March 2005

ettie spencer www.crossingtheline.org.uk

out the aeroplane window

A Place Both Real and ImaginedMount Shasta at 30,000 feet (two points of view)

on the aeroplane map

Hiding Strategies

1. the annoying git 2. the tactical one 3. the coward

Above: Hiding Place - strategies on a psychology matter “The Psychology Behind Being a Hidden Child”, 2006; c-print,100 x 70

lars vilhelmsen www.larsvilhelmsen.org

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asked & answeredSamuel Roy-Boiswww.macm.org/en/expositions/23.html

when did you first know you wanted to be an artist?I expressed the wish to be an artist at a very young age. Something like 5 years old. I would

say to my mother that I would like to become a “painturer”. The thought of being something

else always freaked me out. I did study to become an anthropologist for a while, just to be-

come absolutely conscious of what I really wanted to do later.

favourite material or medium?I would say “the right one”. My ideas and projects dictate my choice of materials. As I build a

lot of “rooms” I end up using a lot of wood and drywall. I like drywall quite a bit. It’s such an

arid material. I learned to love it.

favourite place?Where I’m going next.

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Any heroes or villains?Hero: Joseph Beuys. Vilain: Joseph Beuys

Can you remember your first piece of work?I was probably 5 or 6. It was actually a small wooden box that I secretly made out of left-overs

found in my basement. I remember the love and care that I put in the work. I remember

using pieces of paper attached to a stick to paint it because I did not wanted to soil my dad

paint brushes.

Smartest thing you ever did in terms of your art practice?Stopping making art for a while when finished grad school.

Worst mistake in terms of your art practice?Grad school

Best / worst bit about being an artist?The best thing for me is to have complete authority over what is happening, over what I do.

The worst thing is definitly having to deal alone with the consequences of all the decisions

I’m making.

What inspires? Looking at people enjoying what they do.

What shows have you seen recently?I just saw Wolfgang Tilmans two hours ago at PS1 in New York City. Quite a good show. It’s

so enjoyable to see an artist taking advantage of art, going where he feels like going with

genuine freedom. It felt like art belonged to him. It’s the same attitude Thelenious Monk had

towards Jazz. He made what he wanted out of it.

Any words of wisdom for emerging artists?Don’t forget where you are coming from. Don’t forget where you are going to. Wash hands

frequently.

Left: I heard a noise, I ran away 2003Drywall, plaster, wood paint, lighting system; 16’ x 12’ x 8’

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everything in its place

first place

last place

take place

my placeyour place

put them in their place

know your place

our

THE place

someplace

a sense of place

noplace

anyplace

going places

place value

displace

misplace

imaginary place

hiding place

everyplace

out of place

replace

final resting place

well placed

a clean, well lighted place

favourite place

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1�

Then and Now“We are here and it is now. Further to that, all human knowledge is moonshine.”- H L Mencken

Seeking a sense of place, a sense of the familiar, of belonging

and connection is often wrapped up in that deep, melancholic

yearning to excavate one’s heritage and somehow connect it with

life the present. Then and Now is a photographic installation that

was spawned out of that desire.

The idea began to emerge when I received a box of slides from my

Father, some of which had been shot in the 1960’s on a visit to his

hometown of Stavanger, Norway. Though I was a small child at the

time, I have lingering, though fragmented, memories of that trip

and to this day can conjur smells, sounds and visual snapshots in

my mind’s eye: the whiff of bread baking in Tananger - then a tiny

fishing village, now a bustling, prosperous community, my cousin

humming a song, the spider in my grandfather’s loo and so on. It’s

funny what you remember as well as how memories awaken the

senses, forging immediate connections with a forgotten sense of

place.

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In viewing the slides in my studio, I was immediately drawn to

the marks and stains on them. Little traces of age in the form of

dust and fading colour, their residue felt like a form of evidence,

bearing witness to the passage of time.

In 2005 I re-visited Stavanger in order to re-photograph the

locations from these slides and juxtapose them in an attempt to

somehow collapse the distance between time and memory, as well

as apprehend and understand what is still, to me, a somewhat

unknowable, unreachable piece of my heritage: my sense of place

in terms of my ‘Norwegian-ness’.

Though I had been there since that first trip, it was an interesting

exercise to look at the landscape through the eyes of these old

slides and really comprehend just how much the landscape had

changed over a 40 year timespan. Most places were immediately

recognisable to me though the passage of time was of course

unmistakable. Setting up the shots was challenging and there

were instances when it was physically impossible to recapture a

location. At one point we were trying in vain to match the angle

of the slide with what we were actually looking at. My uncle

suddenly said in his matter-of-fact Scandinavian way, ‘Oh, yes, it’s

because they moved the statue.”

In re-tracing my father’s footsteps, and to some extent, my

own, I was cognizant of the fact that my own sense of place with

regard to where I belong in this landscape of my Norwegian-ness

is elusive, impossible to capture, just as the time that’s elapsed

between the two images is. As imaginary as it is real, my heritage

is infused by my own perceptions, memories and the histories I

am told. It resides somewhere between memory and imagination

and yet it exists, like so many places.

Opposite and following two pages: Karen D’Amico Then and Now (two from a series)Re - printed slide and c-type photograph, size variable

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samuel roy-bois www.macm.org/en/expositions/23.html

Architecture is a terrifying thing. It’s all about shaping people’s life and directing one’s behaviour. Architects are fancy dictators. What makes the whole thing bearable is the fact that there are as many dictatorships as there are buildings. One gets to choose.

Above and rightShallow Island 2005

Wood, styrofoam, objects, paint and air conditioning; 14’ x 11’ x 12’

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Captured whilst waiting for the light to change on

Lombard Street in San Francisco a few years back.

Weird enough to write ‘Going to Disneyland’ on the

windscreen but the best bit by far was that the people in

the car looked really pissed off, all huffy-like, both staring

straight ahead, lips pursed in a line and arms folded in

that ‘I’m not going to discuss it!’ sort of manner. Not sure

what they were so unhappy about, being on their way to

The Magic Kingdom and all; probably had an argument

about his driving or her navigation skills. The contrast

of ‘happy families with the promise of Disney Fantasy

made me laugh. Clearly, they were in a bad place.

22

thurle wright www.thurle.com

Word Worlds (detail) 2004Pages from Thought and Action by Stuart Hampshire, pins

Map of My World (detail) 2005Pages from Australian school atlas

23

On 24 March Nunhead

Community Centre became

the location for a giant

community memory map.

Conceived and put together

by artist Thurle Wright

to coincide with Nunhead

Arts Week, this one day

event was an interactive

exploration of place in

which the inhabitants of

Nunhead were invited to

share reollections and

impressions of the area both

verbally and visually.

Thurle asked the question, “What would a ‘map’ of our collective

impressions of our area look like?” and then incorporated the

oral and visual input supplied by local residents “to create a

land and soundscape of the area.” She also invited participants

to ‘draw themselves onto the map’. The resulting work was shown

at local artist-run space, The Surgury Gallery.

Mapping Nunhead from Memory

2�

dear you anonymous, melbourne

I came across this work recently and fell in love with it. Letters,

addressed ‘Dear You’, anonymously written by various people -

sometimes in different languages, are deposited into small bags with

YOU stencilled on the outside, along with a random mark, object or

trace of some kind. The bags are stapled shut and the letters become

partially visible - all the more enticing. There is a voyeuristic quality

to this work, it plays with the boundaries that reside between public

versus private space; letters are such personal things, and reading

these gives one a feeling of crossing a line of some sort, yet it’s clear

that they are intended for whomever opens them. They are addressed

to ‘you’ but who is that exactly? Is it really you or is it meant for

s o m e o n e else? In reading the letters there is a sense of

knowing-ness and familiarity,

as if receiving a letter

from an old

friend. This

draws the

reader into an

interior space,

the sort of

place that’s

at once

intangible

and at the

same time

immediately

recognisable.

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Thoughts on a Grey Day

The late Edward Said, in his book ‘Out of Place’ talked about his need to bridge the distance in time and place that separated his life ‘now’ and his life ‘then’. According to him, those gaps of time, geography and culture were always present for him in some way, and he wrote tellingly about a sense of longing for a place in which he felt he fit in. In reading that book, I connected with so much of what he had to say, always having felt vaguely out of place myself.

I find it interesting to think that Said - eloquent, academic, highly respected in his arena, could seem to have felt that longing still, after all he had experienced and written about. On the other hand, it’s nice to think that someone of his stature was also somewhat fragile in a sense.

It was somehow appropriate then, that I was sat in a hotel room in San Francisco back in September 2003, not far from where I had been raised, feeling very disconnected from my surroundings, when I heard the news that he had died. It’s a strange feeling indeed to be ‘home’ yet feel so isolated.

The world, indeed, is a small place and increasingly, people are finding themselves flung to the far corners of the earth for a variety of reasons. A sense of dislocation and permanent interruption is now a common experience. The saying, ‘you can never go home’ is certainly true to some extent, as most who have relocated for whatever reason will attest; the physical place may indeed remain but the notion of home and all it implies becomes less a geographical location than it is a constructed space in one’s mind. Someone once said ‘home is where they understand you.’ I’d agree with that. Isn’t a sense of place really no more than a feeling of belonging, and if so, is that not fleeting for us all?

31

catch: Arts Listingsgalleries, weblinks, etc.Publications

Anxiety Culture www.anxietyculture.com/ [an] magazine www.a-n.co.uk Arty Magazine www.artymagazine.comFound Magazine www.foundmagazine.comInterlude Magazine www.interludemagazine.co.ukLeisure Centre www.leisurecentre.org.ukPublish and Be Damned www.publishandbedamned.orgRant Magazine www.rant-magazine.comrifRAG www.riffrag.org/Smoke: a london peculiar www.shink.dircon.co.uk/smoke.htm

WeblinksArtangel www.artangel.org.ukArtinliverpool www.artinliverpool.com/blogArtquest www.artquest.org.ukArts Council England www.artscouncil.org.uk/ Art South Central www.artsouthcentral.org.ukAxis Artists www.axisartists.org.ukEyebeam www.eyebeam.orgFallon & Rosoff www.fallonandrosof.com/artblog.htmlHappy Famous Artists www.happyfamousartists.blogspot.comKollabor8 http://kollabor8.toegristle.com/Newsgrist www.newsgrist.typepad.com/underbelly/weblogs/index.htmlRe-Title www.re-title.comRhizome www.rhizome.orgStunned www.stunned.org Theory.Org www.theory.orgWooster Collective www.woostercollective.com/

Galleries / Studios / ResourcesUK198 Gallery (SE24) www.198gallery.co.uk 020 7978 83092B1 www.2b1studio.co.uk - Bearspace (SE8) www.thebear.tv/bearspace/ 020 8691 2085Cafe’ Gallery Projects (SE16) www.cafegalleryprojects.com 020 7237 1230Castlefield Gallery (M15) www.castlefieldgallery.co.uk 0161 832 8034Cell Project Space (E2) www.cell.org.uk 020 7241 3600Clapham Art Gallery (SW4) www.claphamartgallery.com 020 7720 0955Gasworks (SE11) www.gasworks.org.uk 020 7582 6848Hayward Gallery (SE1) www.hayward.org.uk 020 7921 0813inIVA (EC2) www.iniva.org 020 7729 9616ICA (SW1) www.ica.org.uk 020 7930 3647Levack (W1) www.levack.co.uk 020 7539 1911Moot Gallery (Nottingham NG3) www.mootgallery.org 07786 257213 MOT (E8) www.motinternational.org 020 7923 9561Photographers Gallery (WC2) www.photonet.org.uk 020 7831 1772Photofusion (SW9) www.photofusion.org 020 7738 5774SevenSeven (E8) www.sevenseven.org.uk/ 078 0816 6215South London Gallery (SE5) www.southlondongallery.org 020 7703 6120Space Station 65 (SE22) www.spacestationsixtyfive.com 020 8693 5995Space Studios (E8) www.spacestudios.org.uk 020 8525 4330 Spectacle (Birmingham B16) www.spectacle-gallery.co.uk/ -Stand Assembly (NG3) www.standassembly.org -Standpoint (N1) www.pauperspublications.com/gallery.html 020 7729 5272Studio Voltaire (SW4) www.studiovoltaire.org 020 7622 1294Surface Gallery (Nottingham NG1) www.surfacegallery.org/index.html 0115 934 8435Tate Modern (SE1) www.tate.org.uk 020 7887 8000The Flea Pit (E1) coming soon... 020 7033 9986The Residence(E9) www.residence-gallery.com 020 8986 8866The Wyer Gallery (SW11) www.thewyergallery.co.uk 020 7223 8433 Transition Gallery (E8) www.transitiongallery.co.uk 020 7254 0045Transmission (Glasgow) www.transmissiongallery.org/ 0141 552 4813

Further AfieldFlux Factory (New York) www.fluxfactory.org/ 1 (718) 707 3362Location 1 (New York) www.location1.org 1 (212) 334 3347 Printed Matter (New York) www.printedmatter.org 1 (212) 925 0325White Column (New York) www.whitecolumns.org 1 (212) 924 4214

Platform Artists Group (Sydney) www.platform.org.au +61 3 9654 8559 Sticky (Melbourne) www.platform.org.au/sticky.html +61 3 9654 8559The Invisible Inc. (Sydney) www.theinvisibleinc.org.au -

Torpedo Artbooks (Oslo) www.torpedobok.no/ +47 48231217

Zeke’s Gallery (Montreal) www.zekesgallery.blogspot.com 1 (514) 288-2233

no matter where you go, there you are.