ARTISTS TALKING

# 22 [8 January 2008]

AirTrade

With more than 70 great pieces of art work, lots of preparation and one night of fun: the AirSpace auction was a success. The auction raising over £5000! 25% of which will go to the artists that donated their work. The money raised will go towards running the gallery for the following months, allowing us to hold further exhibitions and keep the AirSpace name alive in Stoke on Trent.

Mike Wolfe delivered a great performance as auctioneer, persuading most of the audience to trade generous amounts of cash for original artworks. AirSpace’s first contemporary auction allowed local art collectors to get there hands on great artwork at a price they could afford. The Pavillion at Staffordshire University was full of people eager to take advantage of the opportunity.

Most of the artwork at the auction sold; local artist Rachel Grant raised a brilliant sum of money for the gallery, her artwork ‘untitled’ sold for £270. Adam James a past exhibitor at the gallery sold three pieces ’70 Famous Psychiatrists’ ‘Entrance’ and ‘Earthbound’ totalling £445. Other works, such as Martina Mullany and Common Culture were snapped up at the end, having not reached their reserve prices during the auction. There are still some artworks for sale on the AirSpace website www.airspacegallery.org.

Thank you to everyone involved!

The support of the artists, the organisers and the buyers has helped to keep AirSpace running, it is great to know that the passion to keep AirSpace here is still strong and we endeavour to return the favour by continuing to provide Stoke on Trent with exciting and new exhibitions.

# 21 [28 November 2007]

AirSpace with Urban Vision Art and Architect Club

27th November 2007 at Burslem School of Art

Dave and Andy were invited to give a presentation as part of the Art and Architecture Club talks, hosted by Urban Vision.

Wanting to steer away from the usual power point presentation they delivered a presentation with a difference; involving scripts, props, guest speakers and aptly timed photographs. Alongside the presentation two artists were given the task of producing a piece of artwork and on another screen was a live projection of the work being created. The artists were Rob Pointon, a local artist currently exhibiting at the Burslem School of Art and Brian Holdcroft and AirSpace Studio artist, whose work will remain in the School of Art for a further two weeks.

The presentation went well and a successful question time followed. Networking events like this are really important to spread the word about the Gallery and it is really important to us to be able to give AirSpace Studio artists opportunities to show their work.

http://www.schoolofart.co.uk/

http://www.uvns.org/

# 20 [28 November 2007]

Keeping Up Appearences 

The window project at 4, Broad Street continues to give Stoke on Trent a glimpse into what is happening within the gallery walls. Phil Rawle, AirSpace's Graphic Designer installed a proposal for his window piece for a few days before the Parallax View; a line drawing with blue tape showing how the work will look upon realisation, the first of a two part piece. An intriguing cross of white tape on the pavement outside the gallery marked the optimum position for viewing the work, although you were required to be a little taller than 5'4" to appreciate it fully.

For the Parallax View passers by were confronted with a more minimal window piece, a white weather balloon pressed between the windows and the beginning of a line of umbrellas that encouraged you to enter the show, where the line of umbrellas continued into an installation by Mozal and Joaquim.

The latest and current piece is the work of AirSpace studio artist Brian Holdcroft, a small series of clay and straw blocks linked with a line of bright blue ribbon. The eye catching colour and striking work will hopefully continue to generate interest in the gallery.

# 19 [28 November 2007]

Parallax View

November at the AirSpace Gallery saw the coming together of two artist led spaces. Following a research trip to Moot in Nottingham Dave and Andy invited Tom Godfrey from Moot to co-curate a show at the AirSpace Gallery.

AirSpace designed the research trip scheme in order to create just this kind of opportunity; we believe that networking between artist led spaces is really important and were really excited when Tom took us up on the offer. Networking between Stoke on Trent and Nottingham, a city with a well established art scene, could help increase positive awareness of our city.

The exhibition consisted of the work of nine artists, interwoven with a series of found objects, including tapes from scrap yards available to play, and some risqué found images from the internet.

The artwork though eclectic in appearance was held together by the underlying theme of ‘looking'. Though each artist followed their own agenda a walk around the gallery caused a flow of dizzying perceptions: playing cards whose faces change as you walk past, mirrors placed on the floor and a DVD of a hand animated image, flickering with light.

The exhibition has proven another success for the Gallery with consistently high visitor numbers; with this being the last of our ACE funded exhibitions we look forward to AirTrade, where we might generate enough funds to continue the exhibition calendar a little further.

www.mootgallery.org

# 18 [22 November 2007]

Tomorrows Arts Masterpieces For Sale in Stoke

AirSpace AirTrade Fine Art Auction 

University Pavilion, Stoke Road

Friday 14th December 7pm

Auctioneer: Mike Wolfe

AirTrade Exhibition,

AirSpace gallery 11th 7pm - 9pm

Viewing on the 12th and 13th  11am - 5pm

Dear Friends and colleagues

This is an invitation to come to AirTrade, AirSpaceâ€TMs auction.

AirSpace is having an auction to raise funds to extend its repertoire of exhibitions. Over 70 artists have pledge work and it is your opportunity to invest in both local and national pieces of work whilst supporting what is proving to be Stoke on Trent most vibrant visual arts asset.

All Artworks are available to view and bid for on the airspace website at www.airspacegallery.org/airtrade, as well as at the AirSpace gallery from the 11th â€" 13th December.

Silent bids will also be taken on 01782 261221 on the 12th December from 11am and 5pm.

On the 14th December the auction opens at 7pm at the Pavilion (Staffordshire University) and the auction starts at 8pm with guest auctioneer Mike Wolfe. All the artworks will be available for viewing on the night.

Entertainment and refreshing will also be provided.

To RSVP your place at the auction please or telephone AirSpace

Thank you for your support, and would like to especially like to thank all the artists who donated work for AirTrade.

Now that the Artists have done their bit, in pledging their work for the cause, it is now your chance to invest in the future Art scene of Stoke-on-Trent, at the same time as getting your hands on a unique and beautiful work of art!

Whether you are looking for that special christmas gift for a loved one, or just looking to fill that art spaced gap on your living room wall, there is sure to be something for you amongst the amazing array of works for sale in AirTrade. Internationally renowned artist Paul Rooney is offering for original signed copies of his vinyl piece 'Lucy Over Lancashire'�. Perhaps you are searching for a gift for a green-fingered friend - the Powell and Weston Bronze wall relief, based on the Neo-Assyrian Stone panel, (from around 645 BC - housed in the British Museum) is a truely unique gifting idea, and would grace the wall of any proud gardener. AirTrade can also reveal that Adam James has 4 prints on offer. Now don't go spreading this around, but we at AirTrade believe that James is one to watch! This could be the opportunity to get your hands on a masterpiece of the future!

Other featured major artists and works include; Common Culture, Matt Robinson, Rachel Marsden... and limited edition prints from AirSpace.

# 17 [15 October 2007]

Brian Holdcroft - studio artist

When I walk the landscape I find myself thinking about the way that we engage with the environment. The dialogue is one that I feel cannot be detached from the history of the land to which we are so firmly rooted and the human condition. Fleeting moments of heightened experience raise further questions about the shape of our surroundings and our relationship with it. In his book “Landscape and Memory” Simon Schama suggests….. “Before it is a repose for the senses landscape is the work of the mind”.

The momentary and the more monumental shifts that occur both external and internal to our existence creates fluid reference points.

This constant state of becoming is central to my work as an art maker. My approach is to work with a variety of mediums including Super 8 film, photography, 2D and site specific in order to open up imaginative spaces of engagement.

# 16 [8 October 2007]

recalling the future.

Reviewed by Gemma Thacker on Work Experience

AirSpace.

Art that shows important matters.

Through the art you see the lives and the sole of the artist. Each artist coming up with something meaningful to them and showing us, through art, ways to understand the world and giving us a new light with which to look on things all around us.

Talulah Miers’s Template appears to be about our earth, it is saying, our once proud world is melting into nothing, animals are dying because of our cruel ways towards nature and each other. Blackened hearts taking life itself. Soon there will be nothing left but death and blood stains on our once proud Earth.

Paul Fulton the Chicken Coop. The main body is simple enough but has a deeper meaning. To see past the body and to the inside of it. The lights, like your eyes, are a window into your soul.

Stuart Porter’s Lead Work. In a time forgot lies important memories and secret items saved for the future. The use of lead gives it an age but keeps it the same.

Andrew Reynolds’s Syanaptic Voyage. Unstoppable movement. A soul like no other. In a simple form, a journey is started from nowhere and its destination unknown to its self-moving with the river of life until the end of time.

Ben Chetter’s Starman is a symbol, a hidden question, a highlight of ones hidden self. The truth of sexuality can this be a way to express it?

Recollection, remembering the past. But to me looking to the future. In both ways you see the art. Past and the future in one. As one door closes another two open. The past has important meaning and the future is what we make it. In the hearts and minds of all the living, hopes for the future and special moments to cherish forever like a baby being born, to its first days in high school and the rest of its life. Linked by invisible threads tying all of use together binding us to the past and unknown future.

# 15 [28 September 2007]

Bernard Charnley-AirSpace Studio Artist

I have painted from an early age, studied at Leeds and in London and was a teacher in an art department while bringing up a family before going full time with painting. The last quarter century has seen paint as a medium re-invent itself to work in a democratic art space where an open-ended range of art making goes on. The debates and critique of that time and ongoing are an integral part of my outlook and painting practice and this history informs for me a current rich period of discovery.

On pushing paint around, I see the act of painting as a kind of catalyst between the sensory and the signified. The ‘about' of the painting is then the axis of discovery between these points. My larger images engage with this kinaesthetic of our bodies in an explorative dialogue with the human as sign.

This dynamic of the body is then released as metaphor. The vertically rendered examples offer an alternative space to the commoditised human sign or interrogate exclusion and control. They ‘come out', desiccated but re-empowered and iconically sited.

The inverted moving figure paintings, with one example shown, push crazily and happily at the idea of the normal and achieve a different coherence that reflects on difference, in our settings and in the narrative of painting. Another recent strand is a figureless imagery (one example) that explores the undefined of origins, maybe the proto space or place of identity.

# 14 [26 September 2007]

Recollection Private View:

A paper polar bear is engulfed in a hurricane of polystyrene balls and is imprisoned in glass. This is the first scene you encounter at the Recollection exhibition at the AirSpace Gallery. It is as you are passing by this window display, that inquisitiveness leads you on into the gallery itself where you are confronted by Tallulah Miers' projection of said polar bear onto a hanging of paper. The balls sweep in to gradually cover the bear, a tragic reminder of the melting polar ice caps, whilst maintaining an air of meditation with the repetitive imagery and rhythmic sounds of the ocean.

Scattered and disguised throughout the exhibition are Stuart Porter's lead sculptures; ghostly souvenirs of a time passed. A clock without hands or cuckoo hangs on the wall, whilst a record sits on the player without a needle. A pencil sits within the wall, illuminated but out of reach like a fading memory. The sculptures appear to be soft yet like the nature of the material they are made from, they are heavy with the memories they hold.

These small domestic items are dominated by Ben Chetter's looming clothes closet, from which emanates the sound of a distant disco and sure enough, hidden behind is the revealing of what is in the closet. Chetter's face is twice disguised, once with the mask of a stag and the other by contrast a dancing glitter painted face; demonstrating his struggle with peoples perceptions of masculinity and sexuality. The work continues to bombard us with camp, homosexual imagery versus masculine connotations made ugly. A clear message.

A whole 20ft of meditative drawing winds its way up and down one of the AirSpace walls. Unlike a maze there is no path just line after line of narrative that leads the viewer by staccato lengths into the compulsive mind of the artist. Or maybe just back to where you started. Andy Reynolds' drawing comments on the instinctive, like an unconscious doodle spilling and out of control.

At the back of the gallery is a darkened room, lit by a star speckled chicken coop. It seems that there is something about to burst from within the coop, a moment of enlightenment waiting to be released but imprisoned by lengths of pine wood and walls of agricultural plastic. These mundane objects hold onto this moment, perhaps to be released at another time.

ReCollection's private view was a great night with the gallery reaching full capacity requiring a one out one in policy on the door. Alongside the opening of the new show AirSpace joined Future Shorts in Creationism, a night of music, video, photography and performance art at the Underground in Hanley. Miers brought her work into the club with a performance piece, seeing her slowly pull undone a knitted blanket was almost as frustrating as the polar bear's fate was tragic with the delicate wool that had been time consumingly put together spiralling onto the floor. Performances by local bands Coda, Cats in the Alley and Rachel Rimmer were powerful and fun with the smooth flow interspersed by the video work, allowing each art form the full attention it deserved.

# 13 [29 August 2007]

Chris Simcox-airspace studio artist

 Some things that Chris has been up to...

Architecture week "A Fuller Space"

This was an event that intended to demonstrate the need within town centres for use of space to be explored in different ways, whether it be shelters or some kind of seating area. To capture people's imagination about public space and the surrounding architecture and to open up other possiblities or ways of seeing the surrounding urban landscape. The project started by putting together Architects, engineers, Artists with a local youth group and to come up with ideas through the use of workshops and events to inspire the young group to come up with their own ideas and to actively engage with the project. After some plane sailing, and the scenario of getting to know who you are working with! We arranged a time table and a brief to work from, the first day we came together as a group to come up with some funny, fantastical and sometimes crazy ideas. As the weeks went by we all came up with the idea of a "chill out" space, based upon the shape of a football.. So it was the professional's turn to make the idea a reality, realizing we should make the architect on our team work and show his skills of design. The next stage was to construct the shape using a 'geo-dome' which is made up of pentagons, and hexagons. Some serious late nights followed using in the 'airspace' studios to build it. Using the dome we collaborated with the youth group to come up with some panels to attach upon the surface, different materials such as steel, grass, and clay to add an interactive element to the project. On the day we were unfortunate to have the worst summer's day you can imagine, but the work was brilliantly successful and the youth group certainly made it their own.

Harlech Bienale  "Uncommon Ground" Five day residency involving artists from all over the world including Argentina, Spain, Israel and even England. The project was to have studio based artists who normally work and live in vibrant cities (Stoke-on-Trent)?? To come to Harlech which is an incredibly beautiful landscape of tree's, Mountains, Sand and sea to produce work and to place it in and around the landscape. My own perpective on this was to use and pick out the vast natural colour of Harlech and the surrounding landscape. I began by gathering scrap wood from which i could cut out circular shapes, and paint them with the intension of capturing colour and light to expose the natural beauty of the landscape.