Word of Mouth

Francesco Pedraglio, Things are going just fine..., London 2012

Holly Pester (9-11 March, live performance on Saturday 10 March, 2pm)
Ruth Barker (16-18 March, live performance on Saturday 17 March, 12pm - 6pm)
Stella Capes (23-25 March, video installation throughout the weekend)
Francesco Pedraglio (30 March-1 April, live on Friday 30 March, 8pm)
Siôn Parkinson (13-15 April, live performance TBC)

Curated by Rose Lejeune

Word of Mouth brings together five artists who use the voice as a medium to produce and deliver their work.

Featuring live and recorded performance, song, poetry, text, sound and noise, video, and installation, Word of Mouth uses the intimacy of Cartel to explore the voice as an instrument and organ:– a personal and bodily medium, a tool for transmission or a material with sculptural and physical manifestations.

Word of Mouth is an exhibition about speaking, communicating and the possibility of meaning, through the presentation of speech acts. It is also an investigation into vocal potentiality beyond language. The artists in Word of Mouth utilise their voice (or the voice of others) to engender agency, conjure memories or create tension between proximity and distance. For them the voice as a medium can question authorial authority, force a blur between speakers and auditors and operate both as a negotiator of meaning and a primordial raw material that can provoke and lull with alternate force.

Word of Mouth is a group exhibition delivered as a linear progression. The artist’s projects will be delivered as a series of solo presentations over the duration of the exhibition. For their project each artist has been invited to inhabit the space as they wish - through installation and performance – in order for the mode of presentation to best address the complexity of their concerns and their audience. 

Apropos the Kissing of a Hand

Roman Signer, X Aktion, 2009, photograph. Courtesy: Hauser & Wirth

23 March – 28 April 2012 Preview: Thursday 22 March 5:30-7:30

Holly Antrum / Becky Beasley / Billy Childish / Robert Ellis / Catrin Huber / Sophie Macpherson / Jeremy Millar / Arnaud Moinet / Francesco Pedraglio / Roman Signer / Sylvia Vögel

‘Apropos the Kissing of a Hand’ forefronts the Festival Robert Walser. The exhibition at Vane consists of the work of eleven national and international artists who share a fascination with one of the major figures of modernist literature. Organised and curated by artist and writer Paul Becker and painter Catrin Huber.

The twentieth century Swiss writer Robert Walser (1878-1956) has had a huge influence on a long list of literary, artistic and philosophical figures, from Franz Kafka to Walter Benjamin, musicians such as Heinz Holliger, visual artists from Paul Klee to Mark Wallinger and Tacita Dean, and filmmakers including the Brothers Quay. Only translated into English comparatively recently, international interest in Walser’s work has generated a wealth of new art, writing and critical discussion, which continues to explore his unique legacy.

Walser worked as a bank clerk, a butler in a castle and an inventor’s assistant, at the same time producing several novels and more than a thousand stories and poems. In 1929 he checked himself into an asylum in Berne, Switzerland, where he was diagnosed with schizophrenia. He remained in mental health institutions for nearly thirty years until his sudden death in 1956, whilst walking in a field of snow near the asylum. 

‘Apropos the Kissing of a Hand’ attempts to highlight Walser’s impact on a wide range of contemporary artists and, more particularly, seeks to present artists who attempt the complexities of referencing the influence and/or language of literature within their works.

Going public / Telling it as it is

Going Public - Telling it as it is?

22-23-24 March 2012 - Bilbao/ Vitoria-Gasteiz (Spain) Organized by ENPAP Programme22–24 March: Locating the Story in the City Throughout the city of Bilbao and in local mass mediaParticipating artists: Alex Reynolds (UK/ES), Itziar Barrio (ES/USA), María Ruido (ES), Martha Rosler (USA) and Phil Collins (UK)  23 March: Performances BizBAK UPV/EHU, BilbaoParticipating artists: Olof Olsson (SE), Falke Pisano (NL) & Francesco Pedraglio (IT), Asier Mendizabal (ES), Asli Cavusoglu (TR), Goldin + Senneby (SE), Patricia Esquivias (ES/VE) 23 March: Expanded storiesPavilion6/ ZAWP, BilbaoJeleton (ES), OJO (USA), Institut Fatima (DE/ES), Begoña+La Jawara Djs (ES) 24 March: ENPAP Caucus ARTIUM museum, Vitoria-GasteizClosed session by invitation only ENPAP partnersBAC-Baltic Art Center, Visby/ Swedenconsonni, Bilbao/ SpainMossutställningar, Stockholm/ SwedenSituations, University of the West of England, Bristol/ United KingdomSKOR | Foundation for Art and Public Domain, Amsterdam/ The NetherlandsVector Association, Iasi/ Romania