SONIA BOYCE, MBE, is a British Afro-Caribbean artist, living and working in London. She is Professor at Middlesex University and Professor of Black Art and Design at University of the Arts London.

21st May, 2015

The Clocktower Building (Lecture Theatre, CT 102)
16.30-17.30
Free, everyone welcome!

Working across a range of media including photography, installation, text and improvised collaborations. Boyce came to prominence as part of the Black British cultural renaissance of the 1980’s. Her work explores the experiences of being a black woman living in a white society, and how religion, politics and sexual politics form that experience.

“In the broadest sense, my research interests lie in art as a social practice and the critical and contextual debates that arise from this burgeoning field. Since the 1990s my own art practice has relied on working with other people in collaborative and participatory situations, often demanding of those collaborators spontaneity and unrehearsed performative actions. Working across media, mainly drawing, print, photography, video and sound, I recoup the remains of these performative gestures – the leftovers, the documentation – to make the art works, which are often concerned with the relationship between sound and memory, the dynamics of space, and incorporating the spectator.”

Boyce has exhibited her work internationally in museums and galleries recently staging a video and performance work Exquisite Cacophony at the 56th Venice Biennale. Other recent exhibitions include: The Impossible Community, Moscow Museum of Modern Art (2011), Play! Recapturing the Radical Imagination, Göteborg International Biennial of Contemporary Art (2013) and Speaking in Tongues, Centre for Contemporary Art, Glasgow (2014).

She has taught widely and uses workshops as part of her creative process, and her works can be seen in many national collections including Tate Modern.

JEREMY MILLAR is an artist and tutor in Critical Writing at the Royal College of Art, London. His work is often marked by an historic trace, whether a person or an event or the works of others, yet his interest is focused on ‘what might have been’ rather than ‘what has been.’

14th May, 2015

The Clocktower Building (Lecture Theatre, CT 102)
16.30-17.30
Free, everyone welcome!

His work often attempts to activate the possibilities of the past in order to make them available to us in the present. His recent solo exhibitions include Muzeum Stzuki, Lodz, Whitstable Biennale; Southampton City Art Gallery; Project Arts Centre, Dublin, (with Geoffrey Farmer); and CCA, Glasgow.

His work has also been included in numerous group exhibitions including ‘Self’, Turner Contemporary; ‘Curiosity: Art and the Pleasure of Knowing’, Turner Contemporary, curated by Brian Dillon; and ‘The World is Almost Six Thousand Years Old’, The Collection, Lincoln, curated by Tom Morton.

He has curated numerous exhibitions in Britain and abroad, and has contributed to numerous international publications. He is currently developing new films on the Elizabethan polymath John Dee, and the French poet Arthur Rimbaud.

DAVID BURROWS is an artist and writer. His multi media work addresses the production of fiction as a transformative process as well as notions of impermanence and immanence.

26th March, 2015

The Galvanising Shop
17.30-18.30
Free, everyone welcome!

He explores themes of violence, destruction, crisis and disorientation as structural elements in sacred, mass media and avant-garde cultures.

Burrows has exhibited internationally in solo and group exhibitions. He writes articles on art and aesthetics and is the editor of Article Press at Birmingham City University.

He is a lecturer in Fine Art at the Slade School of Fine Art, UCL, where his research interests include the depictions of events and aftermaths, utopian narratives and indexical art practices. Between 1993 and 1995 he was a member of the art collective BANK .

Burrows will talk about the performances of Plastique Fantastique, a collaboration with Simon O’Sullivan and others.
“We think of Plastique Fantastique as a performance fiction and as avatars from the past and future”.

As background reading for David Burrows talk please look at Ray Brassier’s text Genre is Obsolete concerning noise and the idea of nemocentric subject.

SALLY TALLANT is one of the UK’s leading curators. She is currently the Director of Liverpool Biennial – The UK Biennial of International Contemporary Art.

19th March, 2015

The Galvanising Shop
17.30-18.30
Free, everyone welcome!

From 2001 – 11 she was Head of Programmes at the Serpentine Gallery, London where she was responsible for the development and delivery of an integrated programme of Exhibitions, Architecture, Education and Public Programmes.

She has curated exhibitions in a wide range of contexts including the Hayward Gallery, Serpentine Gallery, Hospitals, Schools as well as public commissions.

She has developed commissioning programmes for artists in a range of contexts and developed long-term projects including The Edgware Road Project, Skills Exchange and Disassembly.

She has also curated performances, sound events, film programmes and conferences. She is a regular contributor to conferences nationally and internationally.

She is a Trustee of Metal, and Advisory Board Member of Open Arts Archive (Open University), a Board Member of the International Biennial Association and a member of the London Regional Council for the Arts Council of England.

Whitstable / Strood / Rochester / Chatham / Swale / Len
51zero voyager Tour 2015 launches in Northern France

Whitstable / Strood / Rochester / Chatham / Swale / Lens                            51zero voyager Tour 2015 launches in Northern France

51zero Touring Programme
The Other side of here

Lens, 26-28 March 2015

51zero touring programme, 26th – 28th March 2015, is a collaboration between Maison de l’Art et de la Communication in Lens, France and 51zero Festival from Medway and Kent, UK and showcases acclaimed international artists alongside emerging talents over the three days. Its carefully honed programme encompasses work by British and French artist filmmakers, creating out-of-the-ordinary cinematic experiences of the kind you won’t find in traditional cinema.

IMAGE: Sally Troughton, still from Set Aside 2013

The festival launches on the night of Friday 27th of March at Maison de l’Art et de la Communication with a newly curated programme, accompanied by the premiere of Moving Pictures: Artists’ Films from the Film London Jarman Award – British Council International Touring Programme. Moving Pictures is a two part programme of artists’ film which brings together 18 filmmakers who have been nominated for the prestigious Film London Jarman Award over the past seven years. Each part, lasting around 70 minutes, contains a selection of innovative and thought provoking works, programmed in partnership with the British Council and Film London.

The UK strand continues with Turner Prize winner and Jarman Award nominee Laure Prouvost and consists of three films, one of which won the Principal Oberhausen Prize. Known for films and installations characterised by richly layered stories, translation and surreal moments, Prouvost’s seductive and disorienting tales toy with the audience’s ability to become fully absorbed by a single narrative.

Artistic Director Margherita Gramegna says: “51zero Tour extends its brand of moving-image experience to Northern France, linking the artistic communities of Medway, Kent, Lens and Sallaumines thanks to Maison de l’Art et de la Communication and Institut Universitaire de Technologie de Lens, who have enthusiastically embraced our project. This is a groundbreaking moment for 51zero. The Tour has attracted great contributions from many interesting artists and kick-started collaborations with project partners in the UK and France. The collaboration with British Council and University of Kent in particular has enabled us once more to showcase an impressive programme of work.

Image: Alix Delmas, Lalala, 2011

The cross-border collaboration is further reflected through an exhibition of work by prominent French artist filmmakers Alix Delmas, Jivko Darakchiev, Thibault Jehanne and Richard Negre, along with interactive installations by Jean-Louis Accettone and CabSii.

Screenings of work by graduates and students, alumni and lecturers, begin with a pre-festival launch presentation at Institut Universitaire de Technologie de Lens, continuing across the festival tour weekend at Maison de l’Art et de la Communication and Futur Café du Projet, Lens. These include contributions from University for the Creative Arts and University of Kent, including TEA, Sophie Dixon and Georgina Wilcox, together with established and emerging artists from France, Medway and further afield, such as Sally Troughton, Callum Cooper and Amy Dixon.

Exhibitions of work by UK based artist filmmakers Nadia Perrotta and Ben Crawford and installed works by Kathrin Saqui, Aggela Ioanniddu, Karen Cosby, Clarinda Tse and Hannah Millest, also offer an opportunity to see emergent artistic practice from the UK.

Lastly, the public is invited to participate in the closing strand of the tour with Open Projector, at Futur Café du Projet: an evening of films brought in by audiences and screened live during the festivals closing event on Saturday. To kick-start Open Projector, the four finalist films in Eastleigh Film Festival and Bournemouth By the Sea Film Festival, Steven Dorrington, Marina Morales Moya, Louise Schachter and Alice Gautier, will be shown alongside Ipswich Our Town Competition winners.

The festival, made in part possible by the European Regional Development Fund – Interreg IVA France (Channel) England via the Recreate and ICR projects – and by lottery fund from Arts Council England (Grants for the Arts), brings contemporary moving image to new audiences and provides a fertile ground for dialogue between British and French artists, making 51zero a truly cross-border event.

Contact:
51zero Festival
info@51zero.org