RELAY ! 42 Artists

We have been working on our plans for the development of Core Gallery's DIY educate programme. As an artist put it ' the sh** they dont teach you at art school...' http://www.coregallery.co.uk/diy-educate/
Busy too with exhibitions I have work in: ING Discerning Eye and the Lynn Painters Stainers Prize that I was also selected for ( me and Prince Charles work in the same room- not sure if thats good or bad....think it may be bad somehow although they were harmless watercolours and sure they sold whereas I dont think my works have...) Then again Annabel Tilley and Graham Crowley were also there so that balances that one out....
Also in the last couple of weeks there has been the wonderful, strange and macarbre exhibition Psychometry at Core Gallery , curated by Nick Kaplony. http://www.coregallery.co.uk/psychometry/ We had a fantastic artists talk on Saturday , the artists are so interesting in explaining their works. Peter Jones as well was a delight to meet, his strange Monkeys and Lambs have captivated me the entire 3 weeks they have been here, looming and leering and somehow very charming at the same time ! Peter is a charmer, a walking encyclopedia of contemporary art. He told me as well as terrible story of an unscrupulous gallery that ran away with the money from his art! Left me fuming, which leads me onto another event about artist's lack of rights and the ability for us to be trampled upon by galleries etc with no safety net.
This and amongst many other reasons I have also decided to put myself forward to be nominated to the AIR council. Trying to measure whether I can balance this role if I were nominated with my role as artist, gallerist, creative practitioner etc. At the same time my passion ruled all those concerns out. Emily Speed an AIR member , 1 0f 3 who has nominated me had this to say about why I may be good at fighting for your rights. I think I would be good too. I am pretty determined.
' Rosalind is a tireless, open-minded and enthusiastic person, both in her own practice and in her capacity as Manager at Core Gallery. Her ability to empathise with fellow artists and a particular talent for presenting a balanced view and understanding all aspects of a given situation would be valuable assets to the AIR council. I wholeheartedly support her nomination'

We are delighted to be hosting an AIR Activist Event at Core Gallery as well on the 8th December , read all about it here
As well as writing my campaign I have also been organising Relay, our final show of the year at Core Gallery, 42 artists...ouch! I am still hunting down our artists for their info for the show ! Jane Boyer, our Core Gallery associate member is arriving from France today too. Jane has been so invaluable and I look forward to buying her a well deserved supper this evening as a small thank you for her amazing organisation skills. You can read more Jane and her practice here: Anyway, Relay , its going to be fantastic, really exciting collaborations going on. Opening Friday , Read more about our lists of artists etc here. Image courtesy of Peter Jones ( top )

Image courtesy of Peter Jones ( top left ) and Graham Crowley ( top right )

The Great Open Submission Swindle......?

(02.11.10) My letter about ' The Great Open Submission Swindle' is published in November's a-n Magazine
Read it here
http://coregallery.co.uk/assets/core-gallery/Press-Releases-documents/a-n.nov0001.pdf




Image courtesy of Alyson Helyer

75 Artists in one room....bound to be trouble...!

The UKYA event was this weekend in the lovely city of Derby and all of us 75 artists who had been selected for this citywide miniature biennale were there to meet each other

So we buzzed around Derby, gorging on exhibitions, installation , lectures, artists talks, poetry, dance, networking , beer, wine, our heartbreak and romances, successes and failures, lots and lots of laughter, fried breakfasts, and far too many late nights ( I decided dancing in a car park party prob was a step too far , but hey I can robot with the best of them….!)

We took part in a speed networking session which was quite insane and left us all befuddled and confused as to who we were, let alone anyone else! Brilliant ! We forged what feels like lasting connections and relationships

75 artists full of promise and brilliance, all trying to figure out how to navigate this complicated world. To survive. It felt like such a priviliege- like how art school would have felt if I had been in the art dept, endlessly fascinating conversations ( and silliness) but also interesting because we had all been out in the real world for a little while.

I don’t know how the organisers did it, several venues, accommodation, lecture series and us artists! I am still recovering now, I wonder how they did it, but full of so much happiness and hope they are proud of their massive achievements.

Something else I am noticing is that there is a curator inside me , in the way that a lot of the curators who work with us at Core are coming into it as artists; I start seeing connections or works that I really want to show in some context…..We are yet to think about next years programming properly but I know we need to get a balance between what we want to show ( a lot) and we can actually physically manage. It is breakneck at the moment.

Liz and I had a meeting with the marvellous Amy Mckenny who runs Coexist in Southend. Firstly the Fiona Mcdonald and Phyllida Barlow show is excellent, secondly Amy is brilliant in all they have achieved down there. We are going to set up a different kind of Relay for next year in a cross artist led collaboration! Very exciting. So all in all a pretty marvellous couple of weeks.

Sisyphus - The Absurd Hero and UKYA

So Sisyphus opens tonight and I myself am not there for the PV at Core Gallery for the first time so a bit nerve wracking but I leave it in competant hands.

I am doing my art thang having been selected for the UKYA event in derby

( through an open submission- that oh so controversial subject....! ) http://www.ukyoungartists.co.uk/content/who-we-are-and-what-we-do

4 days of exhibitions, events, dance, poetry and mucis, lectures and networking. Its going to be fantastic!

Here is more about Sisyphus which looked amazing in progress and we have a fab interview with curator/artist Rachel Price who has an interview with on http://coregalleryinterviews.blogspot.com/

Read more here : http://us1.campaign-archive1.com/?u=f11c093e634c7ac5b140aa4d2&id=d19eb7a9d0&e=3e25ac9e20

SISYPHUS: THE ABSURD HERO

Core Gallery Deptford, London, SE8 3DX

21 OCTOBER - 30 OCTOBER 20

(Part I): Nick Bailey │Alexander Bates │ Jim Bond │Rodney Dee │ JooHee Hwang│ Matthew James Kay│ Rachel Price

New sculpture and video by 7 artists across in response to the Greek myth of Sisyphus. The exhibiting artists all explore notions of the absurd, futility and circularity in their practice whilst simultaneously displaying an immersion in the process, be it material or conceptual.

In Greek mythology Sisyphus was the king who for his crimes was subjected to the ceaseless task of pushing a boulder up a mountain only to watch it fall down the other side, and to repeat this for all eternity. However it is Sisyphus’ approach to his hopeless fate that rouses interest and why the myth is so frequently revisited in literary interpretations.

The French Absurdist, Albert Camus, refers to Sisyphus as ‘The Absurd Hero’ concluding that: “I leave Sisyphus at the foot of the mountain! One always finds one’s burden again. But Sisyphus teaches the higher fidelity that negates the gods and raises rocks. He too concludes that all is well. This universe henceforth without a master seems to him neither sterile nor futile. Each atom of that stone, each mineral flake of that night filled mountain, in itself forms a world. The struggle toward the heights is enough to fill a man’s heart. One must imagine Sisyphus happy”. Albert Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus (1942).

I think we have all felt a little like Sisyphus at times......

Deptford X Madness and New Formations

Wow, so it has been nearly a month since I have written a blogpost! There is so much to tell but where to begin. It has been dizzyingly busy.

Since my last post we had the Deptford X fortnight. South East London’s foremost contemporary arts festival
Our open submission exhibition was absolutely superb, the artists a delight to meet. Alliances have been formed and an exhibition seed planted for 2011 with Tom Butler, Alyson Helyer and Marion Michell who won the other prize we ran of a 2011 exhibition with Core Gallery

We had over 900 visitors in 2 weeks, including Lewisham College our local adult education who took part in our community drawing day event ( that is called engaging with the arts Sir! ) . We had open studios as well which was fantastic. Art talks and events, Arnold Borgerth and I both ran an art talk and ended up selling work afterwards to our new audiences! Many interesting and new connections were made.

Pretty exhausting too. I thought my brain might just might break at times. I also had a 30th birthday to celebrate somewhere along the way too. My present was a brand new shiny bicycle, a result of many new friends and studio colleagues all chipping in. The bike seems to symbolise to me what I have been blogging about, I have become part of something……

Anyway , I am going to be writing about the benefits of open submission competition in defence of quite a lot of negativity about them ( rightfully so in some cases) . I feel I need to justify and balance the arguments a little as we have just run one ourselves at the gallery and pretty darn successfully too and it was quite the opposite of a swindle!

There is also another new and exciting development . Core Gallery has a new member, an overseas associate , Jane Boyer who I met through our blogs here: Jane’s fantastic and thought provoking blog about working in isolation is here http://www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/643588

Jane is coming on board to assist us and we are most grateful and lucky for this.

Jane is going to help us on a variety of levels and we are planning to make the gallery more sustainable and we are all going to work on a funding strategy so we can implement a proper educational programme; at the moment, we run art talks, engine chatchat ( peer on peer critiques etc ).

It seems to me that we are beginning to forge a new model of gallery , with people inputting, maintaining contact and assisting us outside of the studios ( ex studio member Chantelle who runs the wonderful Core Gallery Interviews).
Even our friends who are art lovers are ready to help. We have an Art Kibbutz!

In response to this momentum our final exhibition of the year is going to be Relay. Each artist in our studios invites an external artist to exhibit with them. Jane shall be joining in as will Josie our intern, a new graduate from Newcastle , who we wish to thank for her endless help by giving her an opportunity to exhibit. Its going to be a smasher !

The Pleasure Parlour

The Pleasure Parlour opened in September too which I have not properly blogged about yet as it has been breakneck

http://bit.ly/PLeasureParlour

With my father ,Peter Davis who has been an artist for over 60 years and my partner Enver ( a heady mix for me ) as well as Holly Revell and Kelda Hole , it was a splendid show

Here are two more of Chantelle's fabulous core gallery interviews to accompany the show.http://coregalleryinterviews.blogspot.com/2010/09/interview-with-peter-davies.html http://coregalleryinterviews.blogspot.com/2010/09/interview-with-enver-gursev.html

I interviewed the artists on the closing Sunday which was wonderful . Debating art, erotica, nude's and nudity.

My father told stories about art and we expanded to greater philosophical questions about beauty and transformation. I need to find a way to do podcasts so you can all listen.

The night of the private view my father, now nearly 80 had the opportunity to see how his work still reached and touched people. He has an audience of cross generations, all who wanted to meet him and shake his hand, admiring his work, studying it, touching his sculptures . After several years of feeling like he may no longer have anything that people want to see , he is transformed. For this alone , the hard work is worth it.

October – Rosalind Davis « NepArtism

October – Rosalind Davis « NepArtism
I am delighted to have been selected by Liv Pennington to start a game of Nepartism!

Its been mentally busy so this blog post is a precursor to one where I actually talk about things but in the interim:
I am delighted to have been selected by Liv Pennington to start a game of Nepartism! http://nepartism.wordpress.com/2010/10/06/october-rosalind-davis/
A fantastic game of artist's tag. Liv Pennington showed in The Exquisite Corpse.
' The show grows because of who we know; it is nepotism with a bit of altruism. I am interested in where this chain goes, does one artist get selected more than once. How small or large are the artist pools.
How do our selections reflect on our own artist practice, are we interested in similarities or differences, do opposites attract? or is it safety in familiarity?
Are our relationships formed with others because of admiration and interest in the artwork or in spite of?
A series of monthly online exhibitions ' Liv Pennington