Monday 13 September 2010

LF members review: What People Want? by Alice Carey and Jonathan P Watts




On the 28 June 2010 the Angel pub in East Harling, South Norfolk, was the meeting point for East Anglia – the urban to the rural, Art Farm Walk, an event coordinated by independent regional curators Jes Fernie and Deborah Smith. The day’s event was presented in association with Turning Point East – a consortium of organisations and individuals in the east of England responsible for developing and implementing Arts Council England’s regional plan for the visual arts. It was part of a wider public realm, site-specific project Fernie and Smith currently are undertaking in the Breckland region of west Norfolk called Rural Landscape.

Sunday 29 August 2010

Georgina Barney at Sideshow 2010























While in Nottingham for YH485 Press Bookmobile things, I am also looking forward to catching the culmination of Georgina Barney's ongoing Farming Fiction project. Back in June I was an 'external expert' in  a rountable discussion about the project at an earlier stage so I can't wait to see how it turns out.

Georgina Barney: Farming Fiction
Friday 05 November 2010 6-8am
One Thoresby Street, Nottingham

Sunday 25 July 2010

LF member review: My Rural by Georgina Barney

Thoughts through a visit to Grizedale Arts, with Eastside Projects, Birmingham, 25th – 27th June 2010; and Profusion an exhibition, at Calke Abbey, Derbyshire 19th June – 11th July 2010

Thursday 10 June 2010

Join us: Invitation to 'Farming Fiction and Rural Arts' Fine Art Research PHD round table discussion

'Farming Fiction and Rural Arts' on Thursday 10th June, 3 - 5 pm at Robert Gordon University, Aberdeen.

Please join myself, Harriet Mitchell and Alice Carey (by Skype) to consider the work Farming Fiction in the context of emerging rural practice in the UK. Harriet Mitchell is an independent young curator (projects include discussion group 'London Fields' and YH485 Press publishing and curatorial initiative). Alice Carey is a curator and research student (London Consortium, Humanities and Cultural Studies), investigating the idea of the farm as it appears - or not - in contemporary cultural production.

Farming Fiction is a project developed between the artist Georgina Barney, curator Alice Carey and the National Farmers' Union to make a new map of the county of Nottinghamshire through visits to farms, reading poetry and making drawings. It has functioned as a conduit for thinking through practice-led research and is intended to reach a public conclusion during 'Sideshow' at the British Art Show in Nottingham, 2010. To book for this event, reply to g.a.barney@rgu.ac.uk or telephone 01224 263647.

'Discussions Around the Research Table' is a series of five seminars led by art and architectural doctoral students. They address interdisciplinary, generative methodologies. Seminar 4 'Theory-practice from architecture to art' with architectural researcher Penny Lewis is programmed for Monday 14th June 3-5 pm, H408, Faculty of Health and Social Care Building. Seminar 5, 'Considering art-led and other disciplinary approaches to fostering engagement and collaboration' with Chu Chu Yuan will take place in August.
These events have been kindly funded by the IDEAS Institute, RGU.

With best wishes

Georgina Barney
Artist & DART Programme Co-ordinator

Thursday 1 April 2010

Hiatus

Combined with my move to the big smoke, London Fields became a bit much to orchestrate by myself with no funding! After a hiatus I have now joined forces with former attendees Georgina Barney and Alice Carey to devise the programme for the future. London Fields will return September 2010.

Wednesday 16 September 2009

London Fields Session Two

Throw a left, throw a right
By Pippa Koszerek, Hyun Jin Cho, David Johnson and David Berridge

Archaeology in Reverse
Series by Stephen Gill


Here is a short text I wrote to act as a starting point to the discussion.

Here is a link to an article by Robert Macfarlane we read in preparation, published in The Guardian on Saturday 8 December 2007.

Here is a link to Jonathan Watts' notes on the session.

Thursday 20 August 2009

London Fields Discusssion Group Session 2

The next meeting will take place on Saturday 29th August at Cafe Oto in Dalston between 2-4pm. This session will focus on defining the term 'rural focused visual arts' and investigating what kinds of art can be included within its remit.

The discussion will be augmented by an informal presentation by a (currently untitled) London-based collective comprised of
Pippa Koszerek, Hyun Jin Cho, David Johnson, David Berridge. The group have been invited to give a presentation of a work, entitled Throw a left, throw a right, that the group recently completed for a forthcoming publication on the subject of ‘periphery’ co-edited by Gymnasium and YH485 Press.

Please email Harriet at contact (at) gymnasium-online.org for a more detailed overview and to receive source material.

Monday 10 August 2009

London Fields: Inquire: 1

The first series of completed forms are now available to read online here: http://docs.google.com/View?id=dzf63tb_20fzbgq22x

The purpose of London Fields Inquire is to gather information for collective interest and to act as inspiration for our future debates. At the end of its six-month lifetime, the group will decide what is to be done with this archive of information. The next stage in this sequential questionnaire will be devised at the second London Fields Discussion Group on the last Saturday of the month.

If you have not filled out a form and would like to, please email Harriet at contact (at) gymnasium-online.org. Similarly if you have an individual or organisation in mind that would augment this dialogue then please don’t hesitate to include them.

Wednesday 15 July 2009

Date for your diary: London Fields Session Two

Saturday 29th August 2009 2-4pm. Probably held at the Scout Hut in Dalston, providing those cats at Passing Cloud ever decide to open their front door.

Saturday 4 July 2009

London Fields Session One

Photo courtesy Sally Plowman

London Fields Discussion Group enjoyed a humid first session on Saturday 27th June beneath a leaden Dalston sky. I was pleased with how the first session progressed and pleasantly surprised by the enthusiasm of the participants, since I was keen to allow the first meeting to be a fairly un-authored and informal one. Luckily everyone in the group was more than willing to talk and we got a lively discussion going about the set texts: a diplomatic way of saying they were ripped apart. Cafe OTO made for a good venue but for the migraine-inducing white-noise emitting TV monitors that were steadily set up around us, in prep for the evening's entertainment. Next time I would like to move the discussion to a quieter venue for this reason and perhaps in order to dabble in a bit of online conferencing: any Skype aficionados please stand up. An intentional componant to the first meeing were short overviews given by each participant about their background and personal research interests. It was good to see that although most had not met in person before, there were many abstract ties between the participants and lots of nice things were said about the group as platform for exchange. I also made note of people that wanted to contribute to London Fields: Inquire and agreed with the group that edition #1 would be made available on Google Docs once I have them all back. At the end of the afternoon the heavens opened and we took shelter in a pub over the road. I have decided, in light of the fact that over half of the participants travelled from outside of London, to hold the group on a bi-monthly basis in future.

In attendance: Rosemary Shirley, Pippa Koszerek, John Plowman, Alice Carey, Holly, Suzie Gwendolen, Jonathan Traynor, Jennie Syson, Nicola Streeten, Sally Plowman, Jonathan Watts, Georgina Barney and Harriet Mitchell.

We discussed:

(a) 'Art in the Rural Realm' by Matthew Lennon, Extract from Ground Up: Reconsidering Contemporary Art Practice in the Rural Context, Edited by Fiona Woods, Published by Clare County Council Arts Office, 2008, pp. 22-29. With thanks to Clare County Arts Office for donating a copy of the book to the library.

(b) 'Rumble in the Wural' by Adam Sutherland, Extract from Grizedale Arts Blog: Posted on 28/06/07 at 08:00, http://www.grizedale.org/blog/917

N.B. Notes on our reactions to these texts coming soon -please feel free to post your comments below.

Saturday 6 June 2009

London Fields Inquire


Suggestion by Anna Churcher Clarke

I have just sent out the first stage of London Fields Inquire; a sequential questionnaire directed at individuals and organisations key to our programme. The initial questions set by me are: What shall we look at? and What related topics would you like to see more openly discussed? and will hopefully allow these invited contributors to voice some opinions/suggestions of their own. After the first conversation on 27th June, London Fields will devise another 1-2 questions, and so on throughout the projects' six month lifetime.

I would like to take the opportunity to invite anyone who is interested in this area to email me their answers to these two questions. Please feel free to suggest material from any medium, and as oblique in relevance as you like. Since the group is running without funding at present, donations would be gratefully accepted.

Write to Harriet: contact(at)gymnasium-online.org or comment on this blog.

Thursday 7 May 2009

London Fields Invitation


London Fields Invitation
Rural-focused visual arts discussions for city-dwelling people

Members of the public are invited to join a new discussion group taking place in various venues around Hackney each month.

Reading list to include texts and case studies of individuals and organisations such as MyVillages.org, Tacita Dean, Fiona Wood, Grizedale Arts, LITTORAL, translocal.org, Lucy Lippard, Publicworks, Marcus Coates, Guestroom, Rosemary Shirley, Agrifashionista TV and the new generation of British nature writers.

The exact schedule is currently still in its planning stages but we expect to return to some overarching themes such as: the urban perspective of the rural, embedded practice, the rural residency tradition, peripheries, tourism and the picturesque.

Meeting on the last Saturday of every month between 3pm and 5pm, beginning June 27th 2009 at Cafe Oto in Dalston (18-22 Ashwin Street)

Please email Harriet at contact (at) gymnasium-online.org for details of source material and to register your interest.