N-E-W… ideas
will open on Friday 18th May until the 20th of May – FREE ENTRANCE
Ashburton Arts Centre, West St, Ashburton, Devon TQ13 7DT
The recent purchase of the Methodist Chapel in Ashburton by the community has presented a wonderful opportunity for us to stage our third contemporary arts event in partnership with Ashburton Arts Centre. 10 contemporary artists, who all live in Ashburton, have come together to make new work that responds in different ways to the Methodist Chapel. All the work is site specific. Some will take the form of installed artworks and some are planned as the start of ongoing projects that ask the community for their involvement so if you want to particpate check out – SYMPOSIUM – CHAPEL STORIES – 5th PLINTH.
Friday 18/05/18
6pm – 11pm The Opening – artwork and installations, Colour Theory Cocktails, Bar and Food, Live Music from Jim Causley, Bill Murray & The Blow Up – and a set from DJ Phuzz
Saturday 19/05/18
10am – 5pm Open to view artwork and installations; 10am – 12 & 1pm – 2pm & 4-5pm Recording sessions for Chapel Stories ; 2.30pm to 4pm Open discussion with the artists; 6.30pm to 9pm Symposium
Sunday 20/05/18
10.30am – 4.30pm Open to view artwork and installations
Offering – Mark Jessett
An abstract, painted wall work occupying the western stairwell of the Methodist Chapel specifically made to reflect the unusual architectural properties of the space and to acknowledge the changing use of the building.
New Religions – Robert Manners
A site specific work using images of discarded tin drink cans – referencing Ashburton’s historical past as a Stannary town and reflecting on ideas about branding, capitalism and globalism in an old site of worship.
Continuum – Karen Pearson
A response to how the internal spaces of the new Arts Centre are inhabited over the weekend – over the course of the weekend she will be building a large physical and visual map of movement of visitors to ‘N-E-W Ideas ’. The work will grow over the weekend into a finished piece that will give a snapshot of who came, how they engaged with the building and the event and a breakdown of age data by colour.
Dinner, Ladies – Janey F Schmidt
‘Dinner, Ladies’ gently asks the question “If the central figure in Da Vinci’s Last Supper was a woman would her crucifixion served a more useful purpose? “ A reworking of the last supper
to represent women’s contribution to politics and change.
Chapel Stories – John Matthais
A project that will spend up to one year recording stories from people who have spent time in and around the Methodist Chapel in Ashburton and develop these into a locational programmed App. re- triggering the stories with newly composed music and sound for visitors to hear via their mobile phone. Tell us your stories…
5th Plinth – Alex Murdin
Two pews from the Methodist Chapel, the past support for hundreds in their gathering, will become a support structure, a plinth, for a curated program of art and objects made or found by artists and the community. Find out how to get your work on the plinth…
Symposium – Stephen Felmingham
An open invitation to the community where guests are asked to bring food to share and to take part in a discussion to exchange ideas about what the new Methodist Chapel space could become and and what it could represent for the community. During the meal statements and ideas will be screen printed onto paper for hanging in the auditorium space. Join us on Saturday 19/05/18 6.30pm to 9pm …
Prayer – Jane Cabrera
A large kinetic mobile suspended across the main chapel space containing written prayers that ‘float’ in the building representing a mass of accumulative prayers that have been ‘released’ within the walls of this chapel over time.
No Corn No Country – Dave Beech
Dave Beech is an artist and writer. He is Professor of Art at Valand Academy at the University of Gothenburg and Senior Lecturer in Fine Art at Chelsea College of Art, London. He is the author of Art and Value (Brill 2015) and is currently writing Art and Labour (Brill forthcoming) and Art and Postcapitalism (Pluto, 2019).
Wondering and Wandering – Milly Brown
A site-specific installation that collapses the past into the present and the future.
The chapel’s interior architecture, spaces and non-spaces will be used to determine forms that will sparingly populate the upper gallery of the building.The forms will be ‘seated’ on pews and will be loosely suggestive of congregation members in scale and posture. These figures will be transient and evanescent; uncertain in their boundaries, obscure in their detail, hesitant in their presence.
Organ Transplant – Andrew Stacey
An ‘Oldenburg-esqe’ intervention that transforms one of the chapel’s organ pipes into a giant colouring pencil. This intervention is partly inspired by a current ongoing debate concerning the future of the organ in the building
Pride of the Moor – Jim Causley and Bill Murray, from a project by Simon Pope
In 2013-14, artist Simon Pope convened a series of workshops on Dartmoor with renowned Devonshire singer/songwriters Jim Causley and Bill Murray. They were joined by a variety of people with an interest in Dartmoor’s tinworking heritage, and in thinking ecologically, to write “a song to the tin.” The result – Pride of the Moor – has been sung at Spacex gallery in Exeter, St. John’s College in Oxford, and at the Dartmoor Folk Festival and now for the first time in the Stannary town of Ashburton.