Martyn Cross
/ Temporary Residence Artist in Focus / Wednesday 20th February
Martyn Cross’ work present intriguing and fantastic dystopian portraits made from knitting patterns. The uncanny nature of these collages have struck a chord with the school groups coming for sessions at Kettle’s Yard. They have taken inspiration from his ‘vandalised’ knitting patterns and created there own (you can see the results
here.
) Here are a few words by Martyn himself about his work.
Since 2007, I’ve been producing intricate paintings and collages of unique individuals populating an unnamed, yet strangely recognisable world. This dystopia was first investigated through various acts of vandalism – over-painted or collaging the utopian vision of knitting pattern images so that an alternate world emerged. My birth town of Yate in Gloucestershire has always acted as stimulus to the work: the boredom, the eccentrics and the quest to escape suburbia are all vital in producing an ‘assembly of the damned’.
Richard Proffitt
/ Temporary Residence Artist in Focus / Monday 18th February
Richard Proffitt’s
Louisiana Blues, Anywhere
has garnered much interest from visitors to our Temporary Residence exhibition, intrigued by the relic-like carcass of a moped with sheep skulls, branches, light bulbs and burnt cloth. Here Richard explains more about his work.
I am inspired by the histories and fiction that become attached to landscapes, objects and cultures. I am interested in hippie and punk sub-culture, ancient civilisations, wilderness, wastelands and docklands, travellers and drifters, post-apocalyptic fiction, and the art of indigenous people. Within my work, I aim to make connections and find resonance between these disparate subjects. My work is often realised as sculpture and installation, reminiscent of makeshift ceremonial relics and ritualistic hangouts that evoke hybrid cultures and belief systems.
Sean Vicary
/ Temporary Residence Artist in Focus / Sunday 17th February
Sean Vicary’s work in the Temporary Residence show sits in a specially made alcove within Kettle’s Yard gallery. Take a moment to sit and watch this beautiful animation unfold through a 7th Century Welsh poem and a selection of found objects. Speaking about memory, language, landscape and belonging the film is really worth seeing in this intimate setting.
‘Lament’ draws on my own subjective experience of landscape, specifically the Wales/Shropshire border where I grew up. It was the death of my Father that prompted a return to my childhood home and a re-evaluation of these surroundings. The film combines bilingual fragments of spoken work, site specific recordings and elements of traditional music to achieve a dynamic synergy between sound and image. The oral source material is taken from sections of the 7th Century Welsh poem cycle, Canu Heledd. This particular lament describes the silence and ruin of Prince Cynddylan’s home after his death. My work is primarily concerned with ideas of internal and external ‘landscape’ and our increasingly politicised interaction with the ‘natural’ world. I use found objects and fragments of detritus to explore this relationship.
~ Sean Vicary
www.seanvicary.com
You can follow Sean on Twitter
You can hear Sean speak wonderfully about ‘Lament’ in an interview given to Flack Magazine at the opening of Temporary Residence. Listen
here.
Annabel Dover
/ Temporary Residence Artist in Focus / Friday 15th February
During the Temporary Residence exhibition Annabel Dover is working in the Kettle’s Yard House every Wednesday from 2-4pm. Annabel explores the social relationships that are mediated through objects. She has spent time in Kettle’s Yard exploring the house, its objects and intriguing stories. Annabel is also keeping a blog to accompany her residency, which you can read
here.
It is really fascinating to discover in her posts the connections and narratives she draws between the stories and objects from Jim and Helen Ede’s time at Kettle’s Yard and her own history and experiences – a really lovely read.
With Annabel often working in silverpoint here is what she says -
Silverpoint is a form of drawing that was popular in the 1400s. A silver stylus marks the gesso surface and creates an image. The drawing darkens as the silver tarnishes. My drawings focus on objects that have personal stories attached to them, real or imagined.
Lisa Wilkens
/ Temporary Residence Artist in Focus / Thursday 7th February
Lisa Wilkens is the second artist our Artist in Focus series, part of the Temporary Residence exhibition with
Aid & Abet
. Find out more about Lisa’s work below.
My work is fundamentally based in drawing with a particular interest in portraiture, its limitations and possibilities. Recently, I have developed a series of ‘prevented portraits’ dealing with the political aspects of recognition and resistance, identification and identity. I draw images on lithographic stones, based on historical photographs that I find online. Using old paper collected over the years, I take prints from these stones.
Kevin Hunt
/ Temporary Residence Artist in Focus / Friday 1st February
Find out more about Kevin Hunt’s sculpture which features in our current exhibition Temporary Residence until 24 February 2013.
I construct sculpture using found, redundant objects that often go unnoticed, particularly furniture that is reconfigured into increasingly minimal works, either balanced or propped precariously. Placed in fragile equilibrium, these structures are further destabilised through transformative processes such as burning and saturating in ink. By irreversibly altering these things and simultaneously raising their status to art, the work attempts to question what it is to be an object in the world and how it comes to exist as sculpture.
Everything’s coming up poetry
/ Thresholds and Walking with Women / Wednesday 23rd January
The last few days have been a feast of poetry for Kettle’s Yard. On Friday, the amazing poet Jackie Kay made her initial visit to us to plan her residency as part of the
Thresholds
project (each University of Cambridge Museum has a poet in residence for two weeks and will be running young people’s workshops and giving talks – go to
www.thresholds.org.uk
for more information). It was a total treat to show Jackie around the house and collection. As you would expect of a poet, her use of language to capture her first responses to the artworks and objects was thrilling. We are very much looking forward to hosting her during the half term in February and for a second week in March – she will be co-leading a young people’s project with artist Filipa Pereira-Stubbs.
On Monday night, I was lucky enough to attend the launch of Walking with Women – an evening of poetry readings by an incredibly talented group of poets. The Walking with Women tour was devised by Shape East’s Learning and Participation Coordinator, Hollie McNish, in association with poetry organisation
Page to Performance
. The tour aims to engage new audiences with the built environment by combining architecture, spoken word, illustration and history and provides an imaginative guide to the often-forgotten female tales locked within the city’s buildings and public spaces. Included in the tour is a fabulous poem about Helen Ede, written by Hollie. For more information click
here
. You will never look at the lemon the same way again…
Temporary Residence
/ First look / Monday 21st January
Temporary Residence opened on Friday 11 January with a packed gallery of visitors eager to get a first look at the exhibition and to see a performance of Prince Volume by artist, Iain Paxon.
The excitement and support in Cambridge for its flourishing art scene was noted by Ruthie Collins in her
article in the Guardian
, and indeed this fantastic opening event really reflected the support in Cambridge for its art spaces and especially toward such collaborative projects. The exhibition runs until 24 February 2013 and we have a great array of events programmed around it. Find out more
here
.
Temporary Residence is accompanied by a wonderful essay, ‘The Power of Artists’ by Chris Brown. You can pick up a copy at the exhibition or read it online
here
, AND for a sneak peek at the show you can see some exhibition shots on our
Flickr
page.
Aid & Abet: an introduction
/ Video / Monday 14th January
Artist and co-founder of Aid & Abet, David Kefford, speaks about the artist run space in Cambridge and about plans for Temporary Residence at Kettle’s Yard.
You can find out more about Aid & Abet by visiting their website
www.aidandabet.co.uk
University of Cambridge Museums
/ Connecting Collections / Friday 11th January
Kettle’s Yard
is delighted to be one of the eight museums that make up the
University of Cambridge Museums
(UCM) which is collectively an
Arts Council England
Major Partner Museum. We are one of sixteen museum services to have successfully bid in open competition for a share of £20m to be used between 1 April 2012 and 31 March 2015. We have called the programme Connecting Collections to reflect the twin aspirations of connecting with our audiences, and connecting with each other across museums. There is a brand new
UCM blog
, with lots of news about Connecting Collections:
http://camunivmuseums.wordpress.com/
We are very excited about two current projects in the Connecting Collections strand. Firstly, we can’t wait to start working with Jackie Kay, the poet assigned to Kettle’s Yard as part of Thresholds. Carol Ann Duffy, Poet Laureate selected poets to work with each of the University of Cambridge Museums. Get to know more about Jackie Kay
here
where you can listen to an interview with her.
Keep up to date with the Thresholds project on the
website
which is growing all the time.
The second project we are developing at the moment is House Guests. The seven Directors of the other university museums have been invited to select a work from their collection in collaboration with Kettle’s Yard Artist Fellow
Jeremy Millar
. The objects will be displayed in the House at Kettle’s Yard from the end of March. As part of this project we are working with students from the Critical Writing Programme at the
Royal College of Arts
.
It’s the first
CASTLE HILL OPEN DAY
! Saturday 22 September, 2012, 12-5pm, all day free event
CAMBRIDGE & COUNTY FOLK MUSEUMCASTLE MOUNDKETTLE’S YARDST GILES’ CHURCH ST PETER’S CHURCH
Highlights include free entry to all attractions, free family friendly talks, tours and activities led by some of the best local experts, music and the unveiling of a blue plaque for Jim Ede, founder of Kettle’s Yard by the Deputy Mayor of Cambridge.
Five historic and cultural venues in the unique Castle Hill area of Cambridge are joining forces to present the first ever Castle Hill Open Day. Packed with activities, talks, tours, music, family drop in activities, refreshments and picnic areas. There is something for everyone to enjoy. The day will culminate in the unveiling of a Blue Plaque for Jim Ede, founder of Kettle’s Yard by Deputy Mayor Councillor Paul Saunders.
All venues will be free to visit for the day including the two unique collections at the Folk Museum (normally has an admission fee) and Kettle’s Yard, the historic church of St Peter’s with an art installation by Lorna Macintyre, St Giles’ Church and Castle Mound.
Andrew Nairne, Director of Kettle’s Yard said
Castle Hill is a beautiful and historic part of Cambridge. We are delighted, alongside our partners at the Folk Museum, St Peter’s and St Giles’ churches and Castle Mound, to present the first ever Castle Hill Open Day. By opening our doors to all we hope to welcome in new visitors as well as old friends. From music to contemporary art and Roman Cambridge to social history there’s a rich variety of attractions and events on offer. We hope whole families will come and spend the day here – bring a picnic (we have a wet weather option!), explore the venues and collections and enjoy everything on offer. We want to celebrate the variety of history, heritage and art in this corner of the city – please come and join us.
History:
The Castle Hill area of Cambridge is where the city began in Roman times. The Roman city of Duroliponte was located in this area and there is even evidence of some pre-Roman activity. The 17th Century timber framedbuilding that contains the wonderful and varied collections of the Folk Museum is next to Kettle’s Yard, itself a beautiful building that houses one of the UK’s most remarkable collections of 20th century art. Opposite Kettle’s Yard is St Peter’s, a simple, tiny church with an elegant spire. Originally built in the 11th Century and with Roman tiles in its walls, it is now cared for by the
Churches Conservation Trust
. On the other side of Castle Street is St Giles’ an active church with a history going back to 1092. A short walk up the road is Castle Mound, the site of Cambridge Castle which played an important role in the Civil War, refortified by Oliver Cromwell in 1642. It is now cared for by Cambridgeshire County Council. Returning to the present day, the Folk Museum and Kettle’s Yard run lively programmes of events relating to social history and to contemporary and modern art.
On the day:
Events will run throughout the day with both timed and drop in activities. The Open Day will begin with an opening prayer in St Peter’s Church by Reverend Dr Janet Bunker and music by Clare Finnimore, principal violist of
Britten Sinfonia
.
Confirmed events include the following.
Allan Brigham
, famous local historian, Blue Badge Guide and former road sweeper will give tours of the area and up Castle Mound. Peter Aiers, Head of Regeneration at the
Churches Conservation Trust
and Honor Ridout, Blue Badge Guide and local historian will speak about
St Peter’s Church
. Roman Cambridge will be explored in talks by Alison Dickens of the
Cambridge Archaeological Unit
, Cambridge University. There will be a variety of drop-in family activities led by artists from Irregular Circle. The archivist at Kettle’s Yard, Dr Claire Daunton will be on hand in the house with a selection of letters from the
archive
for visitors to look at. Artist Lorna Macintyre whose work Nocturne is currently on display in St Peter’s Church will be in conversation with Kettle’s Yard curator Lizzie Fisher.
Editors Notes
In the evening:
Unveiling of a Blue Plaque for Jim Ede, founder of Kettle’s Yard From 5.45pm – short speeches by John Durrant, Chairman of the Cambridge Blue Plaque Committee and Duncan Robinson, Master of Magdalene College, Chairman of the Folk Museum and friend of Jim Ede. Deputy Mayor, Cllr Paul Saunders will unveil the plaque.
The full schedule will be available here: http://www.kettlesyard.co.uk/openday/
The Open Day is supported by
Tees Solicitors
.
For images, to arrange interviews and for further information please contact Susie Biller,
, tel
Watch Associate Artist Matei Bejenaru speak about preparations for his work currently on show at Kettle’s Yard, in the gallery until 23 September, plus plans for future projects.
Matthew Darbyshire speaks about his preparations for the Associate Artists show at Kettle’s Yard. See his work alongside Matei Bejenaru, Lorna Macintyre and Jeremy Millar in the gallery until 23 September 2012.
The
Villa Müller
in Prague was designed by Adolf Loos for Milada and Frantisek Müller, and is now considered one of the foremost examples of domestic Modernist architecture. The villa uses Loos’ original spatial conception, the
Raumplan
, to create a spiraling of rooms, from the public to the private, drawing upon both modern Functionalism and a more classical English style.
For all their obvious differences, the buildings that make up Kettle’s Yard share with
Villa Müller
certain characteristics: the visual joining of different levels; a separation of gendered spaces; perhaps, more than anything else, an attempt to create a domesticated Modernism. Both houses are exceptional examples of such an endeavor.
In an attempt to bring to light the affinities between these two places, a female cone of a
Pinus nigra
was taken from the garden of the Villa Müller in the spring of 2012, to be placed in the house of Kettle’s Yard. The pine-cone’s placement was suggested by the year of the Villa Müller’s completion — 1930 — and so it can now be found beneath an appropriate
nature morte
painting, Christopher Wood’s
Flowers
, which was completed in the same year.
View from St. Peter's church of Kettle's Yard, Lorna Macintyre, 2012
Lorna Macintyre
/ Digital sketchbook / Tuesday 10th July
Check out the
digital sketchbook
Lorna has begun, to document her working process and thoughts in connection with Kettle’s Yard. She will be adding to this regularly over the coming months. You can find out more about our associate artist Lorna Macintyre
here
.
Lorna will have a new show,
Nocturne
, on in St Peter’s Church (next to Kettle’s Yard) from 1 Sept – 23 Sept.
Matthew Darbyshire, selected works in his studio, 2012
Matthew Darbyshire
/ Sneak peek / Tuesday 10th July
Matthew Darbyshire
has just sent us photos of new works just finished in his studio. They’re waiting to be collected for the
show
at Kettle’s Yard which opens on Saturday.
Take a look at a review of the show from the
Frieze Magazine blog
.
Lorna Macintyre (1977, Glasgow) uses a diverse range of materials and techniques in her work, from ferric ferricyanide crystals or marine coral to sun and moonlight. Her photographs, cyanotypes and installations also draw on a wide range of references, from psychology, surrealism, symbolism and literature, and she often takes literary sources as a departure point. Macintyre’s work could be described as giving concrete form to literary images; previous works have explored the work of authors as diverse as TS Eliot and Apollinaire, from William Carlos Williams, Fernando Pessoa and Jorge Luis Borges to Virginia Woolf. Her intuitive approach combines personal and collective iconography, exploring formal associations or the personification of objects, and allows both chance and design to inform the creative process. Macintyre is currently working on the second part of a collaborative project with Anthea Hamilton and Rallou Panagiotou, entitled One Person’s Materialism Is Another Person’s Romanticism (a title borrowed from the writings of the American sculptor Robert Smithson), to be staged in Glasgow as part of Glasgow International 2012.
Macintyre has taken part in group exhibitions at the Gallery of Modern Art, Glasgow (2011), Museum Ludwig, Cologne, the Austrian Cultural Forum, New York and Talbot Rice Gallery, Edinburgh (all 2010) and Akureyrar Art Museum, Iceland (2007). Recent solo exhibitions include ‘Granite and Rainbow’ at Wiels, Brussels, and at Kunsthaus Baselland, Basel (2010), Nought to Sixty at the Institute of Contemporary Art, London (2008). She has also undertaken artists’ residencies at CCA Andratx, Mallorca (2010), Dumbreck Marsh Art Project (2005) and Cultural Centre De Zeyp, Brussels (2000). She currently lives and works in Glasgow.
Untitled (Self-Portraits), 2008, Two Colour Photographs
Jeremy Millar
/ Kettle's Yard Associate Artist / Monday 2nd July
Some visitors to Kettle’s Yard may recognize Jeremy’s name as he curated the John Cage exhibition in 2010. More information about that show
here.
Jeremy was also involved in this year’s event at Kettle’s Yard for Museums at Night on 17 May, 2012.
Biography
Jeremy Millar (b. 1970, Coventry) changed the landscape of contemporary artistic practice when he organized an exhibition entitled The Institute of Cultural Anxiety at the Institute of Contemporary Art in 1994. Turning curatorial conventions on their heads, he brought together such disparate exhibits as works by Hieronymous Bosch and Jeff Koons and the helmet worn by Donald Campbell on his ill-fated attempt to break the Water Speed Record. In taking on the spaces and conventions of display, he claimed new territory for artists, and inaugurated a new form of artistic practice: curating as art.
The Institute of Cultural Anxiety also set out certain themes and ideas that he has continued to explore since then, through films, photographs, sculpture and installations, writing and exhibitions: the assemblage-like nature of collections; the making of exhibition and other forms of display; the relationship between art and non-art objects; and the creation of imaginary conceits with which to structure a work.
Millar is currently working with the Museum of Barnstaple and North Devon, composer Sophie Sirota, and local young people to create a theatrical event and film work exploring the people, ideas and practices behind Barnstaple’s Literary and Scientific Institute.
Millar’s writings on art have been published widely. He teaches regularly at the Royal College of Art and is a member of the editorial board of the journal
Afterall
. He has been the recipient of fellowships from Nesta, the Arts Foundation, and from 2007 until 2010 was AHRC Research Fellow in the Creative and Performing Arts at the Ruskin School of Drawing and Fine Art, University of Oxford. Millar has exhibited widely in the UK and abroad including Tramway, Glasgow; NGCA, Sunderland; CCA, Vilnius; Rooseum, Malmö and Bloomberg Space, London. A permanent public work was installed in Folkestone in 2006. A monograph on his work, Zugzwang (almost complete), with an essay by Brian Dillon, was published in 2006. He is based in Whitstable, Kent.
Katie Paterson
/ artist in residence at the Wellcome Sanger Institute / Monday 2nd July
“I am an artist often working with scientists in my exploration of time and the evolution of nature and the cosmos by way of moonlight, melting glaciers, and dead stars. I am like a magpie, collecting and piecing together ideas from a multitude of places. The imagination always plays a key role.” Katie Paterson
Katie’s conceptual projects make use of sophisticated technologies and specialist expertise to stage intimate, poetic and philosophical engagements between people and their natural environment. While in residence, she will be exploring genomics research. The outcomes of her residency will include an exhibition at
Kettle’s Yard
in Spring 2013.
Katie Paterson will begin her residency in July 2012.
Scottish artist Katie Paterson (born 1981) is an emerging talent in the world of art. Her conceptual projects make use of sophisticated technologies and specialist expertise to stage intimate, poetic and philosophical engagements between people and their natural environment. Since graduating from the Slade School of Art in 2007 she has gone on to exhibit internationally, from London to New York, Berlin to Seoul, and her works have been included in major group shows at Tate in London, and Vienna’s Kunsthalle. Her artworks are represented in collections such as the Guggenheim New York and SNGMA Edinburgh.
Find out more about Katie from
Katie’s site
You can watch the artist’s ’100 Billion Suns’ video below
Matthew Darbyshire
/ Kettle's Yard Associate Artist / Monday 2nd July
Biography
Matthew Darbyshire (1977, Cambridge) studied at the Slade under the acclaimed British sculptor Phyllida Barlow, alongside other rising British talents Spartacus Chetwynd and Pablo Bronstein. Darbyshire is best known for installations that draw heavily on the aesthetic language of today’s commodity culture and the aspirational lifestyles it promotes. He is interested in the fact that bright CMYK dots are the logo for an estate agent and a cinema, as well as a NHS walk-in centre; that Arne Jacobsen egg chairs can be found in London’s Zetter boutique hotel as well as in recently rebranded McDonald’s restaurants. He explores design as a barometer of social change within the complex visual environment of contemporary Britain.
Darbyshire’s work has been included in recent exhibitions at the Miro Foundation in Barcelona, Turner Contemporary in Margate, (both 2011). He was included in The British Art Show 7 and Newspeak at the Saatchi Gallery (both London, 2010), and Altermodern: the Tate Triennial at Tate Britain (London, 2009). Darbyshire has also had a string of solo exhibitions in London in recent years: at Gasworks and as part of the Nought to Sixty programme at the Institute of Contemporary Art (both 2008), Hayward Gallery Project Space (2009) and Frieze Projects (2010). His largest public exhibition to date, T Rooms opened in January 2012 at Tramway in Glasgow.
In 2010-11, Darbyshire was the Stanley Picker Fellow in Fine Art at Kingston University, London. He teaches regularly at the Ruskin School of Art, Oxford and is based in Rochester, Kent.
Matei Bejenaru
/ Kettle's Yard Associate Artist / Monday 2nd July
Biography
Drawing particularly on his own experience of postcommunist life, Matei Bejenaru (b. 1963, Suceava, Romania) is interested in how historical, socio-political and cultural contexts shape everyday life and dictate the conditions of artistic practice. His poignant and poetic work often brings different artistic languages together; it can take the form of a travel guide to the UK for illegal Romanian immigrants (Travelling Guide, 2005-2007) or a modernist interpretation of choir music. Songs for a Better Future (developed in collaboration with composer Will Dutta and premiered at the Drawing Room and Tate Modern in London in 2010) draws on musical themes from proletarian choir songs to electronic music of the 1970s.
Bejenaru works and exhibits internationally, including recent projects at the Tirana Biennial (2003), Thyssen-Bornemisza Contemporary Art, Vienna (2006), Tate Modern, London (2007), the Taipei Biennial 2 (2008), The Drawing Room, London (2010), Glasgow School of Art and The Western Front, Vancouver (both 2011). He is based in Iasi, Romania, where he established the Periferic Biennial (http://www.periferic.org/) in 1997, initially a performance festival and now an international art event. He is also a founding member of the Vector Association, which promotes contemporary art in local contexts.
Bejenaru teaches photography and video art at the ‘George Enescu’ Art University, Iasi, and is currently Visiting Professor in visual arts at the University of Quebec in Montreal, Canada.
You can watch the artist discuss his travel guide at Tate Modern
here
.
