The Bay Window Project: Russell Chater

THE BAY WINDOW PROJECT, 2011

Artists in a Frame

curated by sybin

RUSSELL CHATER > SPECTATRE

From: Monday 19 September 2011

SybinQ Art Projects

The Window on Cleveland Street, London, W1T 6DP. MAP HERE.

t. 07913717999

e. curatingcontemporary@gmail.com

The Bay Window Project: Patrick Mimran once said that art is where you least expect to find it. A window that becomes a container for contemporary art pushes the boundaries of public and private, transforming an ordinary space into a place for public art. Unaware passers-by will stumble upon it, becoming unintentional witnesses of the evolution of site-specific art in a non-institutional environment.

The third artist invited to exhibit in The Bay Window is RUSSELL CHATER

A recurring interest in contained and transitional spaces pervades much of Chater’s practice. Works question the boundaries between inside and outside and the familiar and the unfamiliar - seeking to explore spaces and states that are ‘between’ or ‘beyond’. Familiar scenes are often denied their context or purpose, resulting in the viewers’ focus shifting from the immediate to the subliminal.

For The Bay Window Project, Russell presents the work SPECTATRE (Various elements, dimensions variable. Courtesy: The Artist and SybinQ Art Projects)

Inspired by the conditions presented by the private/public space of a common bay window, SPECTATRE (a word suspended between spectator and spectre) draws on the language of a shop window display. The site-specific installation is both kitsch and eerie as a spot-lit mannequin is revealed to passers-by from its theatrical stage. The piece is also surreal – presenting as it does a commercial shop-window arrangement in a domestic apartment window.  Indeed, the work draws on its surroundings, with a nod to the artistic displays of the gallery directly below as well as the numerous shop windows of central London. Ultimately, however, the work can be read as a (self) portrait – raising questions about what we hide and what we reveal, the private and the public. Fundamental relationships of figure/space, light/dark, surface/depth are framed, and wider readings around reflection and in particular the gaze are evoked. The work also acts as a kind of companion piece to a large-scale painting that the artist will be showing at London’s City Hall later in the year.

The display runs daily: 19 September - 6 October 2011

FINISSAGE PARTY on Wednesday 5 October 2011

Please join the artist and us at the Jet Lag Bar, 125 Cleveland Street, London W1. From 6:30 pm.

Russell Chater is a graduate of the MA Fine Art course at Central Saint Martins and has exhibited extensively in both the UK and abroad. Galleries include: Galerie Zurcher (Paris/New York); Grey Area Gallery (Brighton); Unit 2 Gallery/Whitechapel Art Gallery (London); Galeria Espacio (Valencia); Museum of Science and Industry (Manchester). Russell has also co-curated a number of exhibitions and was previously a Co-Director of Dalston Underground Studios. The artist lives and works in London. Upcoming exhibitions include shows at London’s City Hall and Schwartz Gallery, London.  

For further information please see: http://www.re-title.com/artists/russell-chater.asp

The Bay Window Project: Catherine Bertola

THE BAY WINDOW PROJECT

Artists in a Frame 

curated by sybin 

CATHERINE BERTOLA > Home from Home

From Wednesday 10 August  

SybinQ Art Projects

The window on Cleveland Street

London W1T 6DP

t. 07913717999

e. curatingcontemporary@gmail.com 

The Bay Window Project: a window that becomes a container for contemporary art. Beyond the white-cube display, the artwork forcefully enters the private sphere of a flat to be seen by an extemporaneous, unaware public. The aim is to map the evolution of site-specific art in a non-institutional environment. 

The second artist invited to exhibit in The Bay Window is CATHERINE BERTOLA. 

Bertola realises site-specific installations engaging with everyday debris, from dust to the delicate patterns found on blinds or net curtains that keep our domestic sphere private from the outside world. The debris speaks of a distant past, of untold and invisible stories of places and people. Her work is included in the Government Art Collection and it has been displayed widely in National Museums and abroad. 

For The Bay Window Project, Catherine presents the work Home from Home (Self-adhesive vinyl on glass, dimensions variable. Courtesy: The Artist, Workplace Gallery and Galerie M+R Fricke) 

In 2001, Catherine Bertola first installed Home from Home in the windows of three pubic houses; the Forth Hotel, Trent House and Newcastle Arms in Newcastle Upon Tyne. Net curtains are associated with suburbia and the home, not just used for decoration but also as a barrier between public and private – allowing the occupants to look out but preventing passers-by from looking in. In that instance, the installation brought a touch of intimacy to the hedonistic heart of the city. This year, the work was featured again in the group exhibition Cult of The Difficult, curated by MA Curating the Contemporary students at the London Metropolitan University in collaboration with the Government Art Collection.

Home from Home was installed in the Cass Gallery’s main window, creating a suspended screen that interrupted, in a way, the overall view of the show from the street. Drawing from the concept of copy and paste and associating it to the analysis of the same artwork in different contexts, Home from Home now reaches what could be its natural environment: a bay window.

The site-specificity of Bertola’s work is translated in an installation that may go unnoticed, sitting between the actual function of an ordinary blind and its status of artwork that has been collecting traces from different places. 

The display runs 10 – 31 August. 

Catherine Bertola (Born in 1976 in Rugby, UK) lives and works in Gateshead.

Selected Solo Shows: 2011 – To be forever known, Bronte Parsonage Museum, Haworth; 2010 - Scion, Beacon Art Project, Barrington Court, Somerset, UK; 2009 – Unseen By All But Me Alone, Workplace Gallery, Gateshead, UK; 2008 – Over the Teacups, M+R Fricke, Berlin, DE. Selected Group Shows: 2011 – Cult of the Difficult, Cass Gallery, London UK; Personal Tempest, Neue Galerie, Innsbruck, Austria; 2010 – Walls are talking: Wallpaper, Art and Culture, Whitworth Art Gallery, Manchester, UK; 2009 – Out of the Ordinary: Spectacular Craft, Millennium Gallery, Sheffield, UK. 

Will come next: RUSSEL CHATER in September

Further links: 

The Government Art Collection

Workplace Gallery

Galerie M+R Fricke

Previously in The Bay Window: Davide D'Elia > Tropical Aryballoi. If you have missed it, have a look at it.

The Bay Window Project: Davide D'Elia

THE BAY WINDOW PROJECT

Artists in a Frame

curated by sybin

DAVIDE D’ELIA > Tropical Aryballoi

From Wednesday 22 June

SybinQ Art Projects

The window on Cleveland Street

London W1T 6DP

e. curatingcontemporary@gmail.com

Back again after the success of last year, The Bay Window Project continues to be an opportunity for young and established artists to create a site-specific work in uncommon settings. Beyond the white-cube display, the artwork forcefully enters the private sphere of a flat to be seen by an extemporaneous, unaware public. The aim is to map the evolution of site-specific art in a non-institutional environment.

The first 2011 artist invited to exhibit in The Bay Window is DAVIDE D’ELIA.

Davide D’Elia produces works that often re-value modern aesthetic graphic terminology by presenting itself beyond object and objectivity. He very much focuses on the vocabulary of the neglected and the degraded. By for example artificially creating the conditions for mould to grow, he bends the flow of time to his needs and questions the viewer about the process behind it. This creates what he had decided to be an object of art out of the spontaneous hands of nature.

For The Bay Window Project, Davide presents the work Tropical Aryballoi, 2011 (Living Still Life: Perforated vinyl, table, plant, magazines, books, candles, glass, stones, plywood, light. Dimensions variable.)

When Davide D’Elia first surveyed the bay window, all we were talking about was the way he works with mould, creating the conditions for it to grow spontaneously. For all the duration of the process, which requires high humidity condition and a meticulous chemical practice, he likes to live the environment he is going to contaminate, disrupting its normal function, violating the immaculate white gallery walls and leaving baffled visitors wondering about effective methods to efface mould. Being related with a different kind of environment – that is, the private dimension of an already inhabited flat, D’Elia had chosen a different kind of process; the negotiation with both the curator and the occasional viewer from the street. The fact that he couldn’t live the environment he was going to intervene into, led him to invent a parallel space based on the effects of warm and cold light, daylight and darkness.

As Davide observes, “the light in which we live conditions our mood, our perception of things and our domestic rites. The light we project outside through windows, be it warm or cold, reveals the DNA of our modus vivendi. Our micro-domestic world relates with the outside by transmitting signals, both territorial and individual, to passers by who can decide to receive, or ignore, such signals.” Playing around with the few elements available to him – a plant, a table with elements on it, old vertical blinds and bits and pieces of ordinary life’s accumulation, he created Tropical Aryballoi, a two-faced container that changes at the change of light, revealing itself only to the most diligent of spectator. Tropical Aryballoi is a living still life, always the same but in fact ever-changing.

The display runs 22 June – 13 July.

The artist wishes to thank photographer Serena Andreini for her kind assistance. For further information please visit www.davidedelia.com

Davide D’Elia (Born in 1973 near Salerno, Italy) lives and works between Rome and London. Selected Shows: 2011 - Strange cross, Ex elettrofonica, Rome (IT); 2010 - Yesterday I distractedly called upon my mind memories not mine…I was by them enlivened, Ex elettrofonica, Rome (IT); 2009 - Beyond Existence, Cordy House, London (UK); 2009 – 3500 Square Centimeters, 27th Biennal Graphic Art, Lujbljana (SL). 2008 - Every other day, Zico House, Beirut (RL).

Will Come Next: CATHERINE BERTOLA in July.

As Time Goes By

Alice Anderson's Doll has been in the Bay Window for almost three weeks.
I remember a conversation I had with the artist when we were planning the installation:

sy: You know, I am scared to death by that doll.
AA: I know. She is very strong.

Dolls are tricky, mysterious, sometimes quite frightening objects.

My aunt had a doll once. The doll was dressed in pink, had dark skin, glass eyes, and a frozen smile showing little white teeth. She was seated in a rocking chair, next to a tall dresser with an unnerving ticking grandfather clock on it. When visiting her as a child, I would cross the bedroom at the fastest pace just to avoid looking at her. That grin and those eyes weren’t just fakes: there was something eerie about that lifeless double of a human being, something that didn’t quite fit. It wasn’t just the same old story about it coming to life at night: she always had a sparkle of life of her own.

I saw the same sparkle in Alice's doll, exactly as I have previously written: I remember walking past that doll at one of Alice’s solo shows and, strengthened by my adult condition, almost ignoring her until, out of the corner of my eye, I clearly saw her grinning. It wasn't a kind smile, rather a mischievous one.

And, for The Bay Window Project, the Doll and I were going to stay very close.

I was already imagining horror movies-like scenes, with me wondering at night to go to...that place and finding the Doll in a different position from the one she was supposed to be.
I know: I watch too much TV.

On installation day, Alice came with a different doll and told me her story: she was made from the same mould used for the first one but, nonetheless, came out as an "older" version of it and the artist herself. 

Like a mother. Less mischievous, and perhaps more worried. She, too, is dressed in pink, but is not smiling at all.

In spite of the role of the mother in Alice Anderson's work, where she is the one trying to put an end to her daughter's existence, I am finding the doll's presence strangely reassuring. 

She sits and sits and sits and sits... and sometime I feel for her solitude. She looks at the world, often overlooked, and unable to interact. On the opening day, when Alice was checking the Doll's position looking at the window from the street, some kids saw her and commented: "Oh my God, WTF is that?! A doll! FKN scary, man!" And I can quote another reaction from my friend Wonderland, a mommy blogger, who was in London last week, took a picture of the doll in the window and commented: "Now I can say that I visited this person's house and survived!"

The only thing that the Doll wins over is, in fact, time. She will stay the same, whereas everything around her changes. Like a vampire or Dorian Gray's portrait in reverse.
Now, you may be wondering why I chose this conclusion and perhaps that's easy to guess: the post was initiated on the 20th of November, my birthday. As the day passes, I change slightly, a little bit more, with no one noticing.

The Viewing Cabinet: Silvia Iorio strikes again

Oh yes, she does.

Perhaps you remember this post and all its implication of difficulties in the organisation of The Bay Window Project's sixth show. I'd like to throw myself in the account of what can be rechristen as The Chronicles of Silvia, but I have just realised that this whole blog is all about the organisational part of being a curator, whereas I want now to delve more into art theory...OK, maybe just one bit or two, because I think I can see you rolling your eyes in front of the screen.

Let me just tell you, then, that the pictures you see below were taken at the opening (by Fabio-God-Bless-Him-Lattanzi Antinori) and the artist arrived from Berlin, by bus, on the morning of the very same day (she doesn't fly. Even if she had a solo show in New York, she would go there by boat). Want to know what happened the day before? After having successfully delivered the work for The Bay Window, whose great impact and delightful humour I am going to describe in a minute, poor Silvia had to cross Berlin in all its length to get the essential UV lamp because I, the undersigned, was way too busy with another show to search for it in London and, moreover, couldn't find any in the few electrical shops I managed to go to.

SMS exchange on 13 October around 3 pm, with Silvia's Bus scheduled at 6:30 pm:

Si: My friend lost the dog,I had to take bus,no ticket,escaped the fine,have to prepare suitcase,retrieve my work from gallery and return house keys.CAN'T DO LAMP!

sy: Really Sorry.Can't do lamp either.They don't have it here! :( YOU HAVE to get it. No lamp,no party.

> Learning to say NO: Curator's Stuff

Against all odds, Silvia and the lamp were on the bus on time and the day after she triumphantly assembled everything in the window with the help of good Maddalena, transforming it in a glowing cabinet of modern prints.

As her subjects, she has chosen Museums: the place where most of the artists aspire to enter, sooner or later. The institution, the place that recognizes someone's efforts and, as she puts it, sanctions his or her contribution to the History of Art.

"Are you really interested in making history?" I once asked her.

"Indeed", was the reply.

Every building's picture was turned into an etching, in a dialogue between past and contemporary techniques of reproduction. I was mystified by the quantity (and shapes!) of Museums she managed to track down from all over the world. Some are pretty recognisable, some others...aren't. This prompted us to think about organising a competition on Facebook, coming soon.

Guess the Museum in Silvia Iorio's Viewing Cabinet: name and location.

After all, being familiar with most of the institutions around the world it's not only curator's, but also artist's, stuff.

Silvia Iorio entered every single Museum, virtually speaking, and stares at the viewer through a binocular. The viewer, in turn, needs the binocular to look at the installation properly, otherwise, what would be perceived as an effort to make something private public, is turned into private again. As the background for each museum, she chose the universe, a space nebula with stars and cloudy explosions of molecular mass, in her undying homage to Chaos and Chance. The UV lamp makes the whites glow, transporting everything in a surreal dimension; there is, indeed, much of the Surrealism inheritance in this work: Magritte immediately jumps to mind but, at the same time, you do realise that the way in which Silvia Iorio works is totally original, her own, and unexplored.

This work is an invitation to explore. The Universe of art, why not, but in the first place to explore a private window offering a cabinet of prints, curiosities, where the display itself almost institutionalises everything, transforming the space in a sort of Museum.

As you already know, not many people come to The Bay Window openings: we are not a gallery, we do not offer alcohol, we don't have an indoor space and this compels people to stand outside in the - now - cold evenings. English people very rarely come. Nonetheless, I was very pleased to see the small group who came to see this one: artists, curators and press editors.

All friends, all Italians. It was like being home for a while.

The Bay Window Project: Alice Anderson

THE BAY WINDOW PROJECT
Six Artists in a Frame


curated by sybin


NEXT OPENING: Tuesday 9 November at 6:30 pm. The artist will attend.
                                 Until Sunday 5 December.


SybinQ Art Projects
The window on Cleveland Street (between 92 and 96)
London W1T 6DP
T. 07913 717999
E. sybin@inwind.it


The Bay Window Project is a private window turned into a showcase of site-specific works, interrupting and changing the normal social fruition of such space and investigating the perception of art in a public display.


The fifth artist invited to exhibit in The Bay Window is ALICE ANDERSON.
(Born in London, 1976, where she lives and works)


The “obsessive artist” Alice Anderson uses memory and time to tell stories about her childhood, reinventing it as fiction through the language of movies and integrating this process with sculptures and environmental installations made of doll’s red hair. The characters she depicts, the family hierarchy in which the mother has the total power, behave in a cold and distant manner, like robots, obeying the rules of her world. By transforming herself into a doll, Anderson too becomes one of them, either succumbing or managing to free herself from her own plots.


For The Bay Window Project, Alice is presenting Rear Window (50 cm doll made out of silicon and plaster. Courtesy: The Artist and SybinQ Art Projects).


When Alice Anderson’s doll took shape, she was sharing details of her private life that she would have never thought to say to a total stranger. The person working on it listened and modeled her face, and at the end of the process they both looked at the result in awe. Before knowing this story, I remember walking past the doll at one of Alice’s solo shows and almost ignoring her until, out of the corner of my eye, I clearly saw it smiling. In the collective imagination, we already know that a doll is not just a decorative object or a toy, but is fraught with uncanny and sometimes not quite clear feelings. Since she was created, Alice’s doll – or perhaps Alice herself – has always been trapped somewhere, looking at events unfold before her, watching, without being able to act; The Bay Window will be her home for a while and only one thing is certain: she will be watching.


INFORMATION ABOUT THE ARTIST: www.alice-anderson.org


Selected Solo Shows: 2010 The Isolated Child, Cinematheque Francaise, Paris; Mother Web, Royal Opera House, London; Alice Anderson’s Time Reversal, Riflemaker, London; 2009 The Doll’s Day, Artprojx Space, London; Selected Group Shows : 2010 elles@Pompidou, Pompidou Centre, Paris; Living in Evolution, Museum of Contemporary Art, Busan, Korea; 2009 Voo Doo, Riflemaker, London; 2008 Peur et Desir, Palais de Tokyo, Paris; Hbox, Tate Modern, London; 2006 Art Unlimited / Art Film, Art Basel, Basel.


The everyday life of Alice Anderson’s Doll will be documented. Stay tuned!

Please follow the MAP below to find her:

SybinQ Art Projects > 13-14 October Events

Click on the images to enlarge them

SybinQ Art Projects is pleased to present a series of exhibitions and events curated by sybin and opening during the Frieze Art Fair week. In addition to this, we are glad to introduce a useful tool to avoid missing all the parallel events in the area: The Fitzrovia Art Map.

Wednesday 13 October 2010: performance

MARCO DALBOSCO > Meeting Ring

Starts at 1:30 pm

63 Whitechapel High Street (corner with Commercial Rd) London E1 7PF

13 October – 3 November 2010: solo show

VALENTINO DIEGO > Alterations

Opening: Wednesday 13 October at 6:30 pm

41 Commercial Road, London E1 1LA

THE BAY WINDOW PROJECT
14 October – 7 November 2010: solo show

SILVIA IORIO > The Viewing Cabinet

Opening: Thursday 14 October at 6:30 pm

The window on Cleveland Street, London W1T 6DP

For the most exciting week of the year in London’s art world, the nomad association SybinQ Art Projects will present three International artists in two different parts of the city.

Starting on Wednesday 13 October in London’s East End, Marco Dalbosco and Valentino Diego will present, respectively, a performance and a show both engaging with the notion of stage and representation in different ways.

Disrupting the normal afternoon passers-by routine, Marco Dalbosco will coordinate the performance Meeting Ring at 1:30 pm: the social gathering will see artists and curators, the two very figures that allow shows to happen, ironically confronting each other in a virtual ring where they will have to pursue their preferred role through suggested actions that may, or may not, enter in conflict with one another. To express the supposed existence of a clash between artists and curators, we can recall Daniel Buren’s critical definition of the curator as being a “super-artist, using artworks as many brushstrokes in a huge painting”. But, the artist wonders, is this really the case? The reason why this artificial antagonism is staged lays in Dalbosco’s aim to explore how this particular social interaction works, transforming the performance in a rehearsal for a proper dialogue and constructive confrontation that is expected to follow afterwards. After all, relationships are built on dialogue, not procedures.

Following the performance, please join us at 6:30 pm to celebrate Valentino Diego’s first solo show in London: Alterations is a site specific installation created for a window in the London Metropolitan University’s premises in the East End. Inspired by the tailor shop windows you may find in residential areas, with owners putting their work on display in order to attract clients, Alterations is a stage prop trying to convince the distracted passer-by of its authenticity. Working on displacement and on the “redemption” of the fake object through a meticulous attention to details, the artist’s response to the window follows the general lines of a “wrong perspective” theme: the gaze builds the perception of a space but, unless the mathematical rules of perspective are applied, its representation may differ from reality. Diego’s representation of a temporary alterations shop offers a wrong perspective in its literal meaning.

Moving to the West End and in conjunction with Frieze’s Art Fair opening on Thursday 14 October, THE BAY WINDOW PROJECT will feature the first solo show in London of its fourth invited artist: Silvia Iorio.

For The Bay Window Project, Silvia is presenting The Viewing Cabinet, 2010 (Two panels, Plotter print, 193 x 80 cm each. Courtesy: The Artist and SybinQ Art Projects)

In line with the previous shows, which explored issues like capturing the gaze and the notion of voyeurism, the artist has created a viewing cabinet of her latest works. The concept of a cabinet of curiosities, a treasured collection normally reserved to a few, is turned inside out, becoming a public display that demands to be seen and, in turn, watches. Reflecting Silvia’s interest in the connection between science and art, the work aims to direct the never-resting gaze to explore this cabinet through a binocular in a sort of voyeuristic game, with the viewer actually standing on a street and using a magnifier tool to look in what would be a private window. This particular collection is almost invisible to the naked eye, its miniature details concealed: only our natural curiosity, which for example allowed Galileo to define the Solar System, will reveal what lies under the starry sky.

Please note that you will need a binocular to see Silvia Iorio’s work. Binoculars will be available at the opening and by appointment.

INFORMATION ABOUT THE ARTISTS:


MARCO DALBOSCO
Born in Rovereto, Italy, 1958. Lives and works in London. Selected Solo Shows: 2010 – 26cc Space for Contemporary Art, Rome (IT); 2008 – Paolo Tonin Contemporary Art Gallery, Turin (IT). Selected Group Shows: 2010 – Michael Landy’s Art Bin, South London Gallery, London (UK); Censorship and Self-censorship, performance with Cesare Pietroiusti, Rome (IT); 2008 – Scala 1:18, Manifesta 7, Trento (IT); 2006 – Mavarte Gallery, Valencia (E). www.marcodalbosco.com


VALENTINO DIEGO
Born in Ciriè, Italy, 1978. Lives and works in London. Selected Solo Shows: 2010 – Race, with Tomas Dzadon, Hunt Kastner Artworks, Prague (CZ); Roomates/Coinquilini, with Pietro Ruffo, MACRO Museum of Contemporary Art, Rome (IT). Selected Group Shows: 2009 – Usine de reve, 26cc, Rome (IT); 2007 – Versus XIII, VELAN, Turin (IT); Spazi Incorretti, Fondazione Pastificio Cerere, Rome (IT); 2006 – Generazioni/Rigenerazioni, CAMeC, La Spezia (IT); 2005 – Italian Camera, San Servolo, Venice (IT).

SILVIA IORIO

Born in Rome, 1978. Lives and works in Berlin. Selected Solo Shows: 2007 – Chromatèma, Silvia Iorio, Artist’s Corner, Auditorium Parco della Musica, Rome, (IT); 2005 - N-Kiloton, Silvia Iorio, The Venice Biennale, 51. International Art Exhibition, Venice, (IT). Selected Group Shows: 2010 – Sorry, We’re Open, London Metropolitan University, London, (UK); 2009 - Galleria Vistamare, Artissima 16, The International Fair of Contemporary Art, Turin, (IT); 2007 - Across Art and Science, MAKRÁČ Institute of Macromolecular Chemistry, Prague (CZ).

Leaving Frieze Art Fair? Do not miss all the events in Fitzrovia!

Keep yourself on top of what’s going on with the Fitzrovia Art Map, realized by MD in collaboration with SybinQ Art Project. Download and print it here.

Will come next for THE BAY WINDOW PROJECT: Alice Anderson in November

Cadavre Exquis Video, previously in THE BAY WINDOW, showed the work of more than 60 artists. True or false?

Leave your thoughts on the Guestbook post. 

SybinQ Art Projects

T: 07913717999

E: sybin@inwind.it