CuratorSpace exhibition at Leeds Digital Festival

CuratorSpace are excited to present their first curated exhibition of film/video art in conjunction with Leeds Digital Festival 2018.

 


13 film/video artists will be featured on the big screen at Platform, Leeds, UK during Leeds Digital Festival which will run from 16th - 27th April 2018. The screen-based works will be played sequentially on a continuous loop throughout the festival. The screen is visible from the street so works are available for passersby to view, as well as people taking part in the digital festival and those visiting Platform. The works will also be shown on the big screen on Millenium Square throughout the festival, with screenings taking place at 8am, 12pm, 5pm, 8pm, and 10pm.

The Selectors

Videos were selected by a panel of experts specialising in film and video, including: Emma Bolland, an artist and writer based in Sheffield, who works across writing, film, and performance; Ilaria Vecchi, an experienced film and documentary maker; Gorm Lai, a Leeds-based, indie game developer and freelance programmer, who has worked on several BAFTA awarded titles; John Slemensek, director of Studio Bokehgo, a socially engaged film, photography, and publicity studio, and Nat Wilkins, a documentary photographer and filmmaker based in Northeast England, who also runs the video production company Canny Productions.

Leeds Digital Festival

Leeds Digital Festival is the North's largest digital festival. Featured events include the return of Festival favourites FinTech North and Code in the Dark, as well as events based around data, healthtech, sports tech and startups. The exhibition will open as part of Leeds Digital Festival launch which will include the launch of the new tech hub at Platform. This will take place on the evening of Monday 16th April from 5-8pm.

The Artists

The artists selected for the exhibition are: Rhian Cooke, Frank Abbott, Ed Florance, Evgeniya Martirosyan, Katie Goodwin, Thomas Lisle, Ravinder Surah, Hondartza Fraga, Sid and Jim, Irini Folerou, Chen Wang, Victoria Lucas, and Melanie Menard.
 


Rhian Cooke, 'Once in a Moon Boot', 2017

Once in a Moon Boot is a moving image work Rhian developed over the duration of two graduate residencies at The Art House, Wakefield and Serf, Leeds. The work considers the spatial relations we share with our belongings and the crossings they have through nature and history. The handcrafted and drawn objects moving and inhabiting each other, between two and three dimensions. Rhian has recently completed a commissioned short film for Random Acts North with Northern Tyneside Cinema, True North and HOME.

www.rhiancooke.com
 


Frank Abbott, 'When this tree blossoms', 2018

When this tree blossoms is a film made in the form of a short three line poem or haiku expressed as an invitation. A scrolling text, commonly executed with ease by digital means, is here elaborately constructed and pulled across the screen. The work is a contribution to the Performing The Future project co-ordinated by Rachel Jacobs. The 'Making of...'; film by Roger Suckling is also available at https://vimeo.com/258284144. Frank Abbott has been active as a film maker and artist for the past 40 years making work for television, galleries, performances and installations and works at Primary in Nottingham.

http://performingthefuture.net/treeview
http://www.weareprimary.org/people/frank-abbott/
https://vimeo.com/channels/youdosomethingtome



Ed Florance, 'Human Bath', 2018

Human Bath depicts a digital non-place, where a character is stuck anticipating endlessly. The animation features 3D props, arranged in such a way, which is seemingly plausible, yet improbable in the real world. Through the use of physically based computer rendering techniques, an odd event is constructed, where the distinction between reality and computer generation is blurred. Ed is a recent graduate from the Manchester School of Art and has been featured in exhibitions across the North of England and in New York.

www.edflorance.com
www.instagram/edflorance



Evgeniya Martirosyan, 'Chaos Game', 2017

Chaos Game was created using time lapse recordings of condensation and frost formation on the surface of a custom made refrigeration system. The sequence starts with abstracted matter appearing on a white background and undergoing cycles of transformation from liquid state to solid and back to liquidity. As the system evolves according to its own inner laws, each cycle of freezing and melting creates unique and unpredictable abstract pattern. Working primarily in the mediums of sculpture and installation, Evgeniya is interested in exploring the concepts of time, matter, chaos and transformation. Her most recent shows include a solo exhibition at TACTIC Gallery, Cork, titled 'Between Something and Nothing' and 'Brainchild' and a group exhibition with 126 Gallery in conjunction with Western Carolina University, USA.

www.evgeniya-martirosyanartist.com



Katie Goodwin, 'But Does It Spark Joy, Mama', 2017

This animation is a visual documentation of each object Katie discarded whilst decluttering her flat using the Marie Kondo method of only keeping what you love. When selling some of the rejected items, the mundane process was interrupted by a TV producer requesting she sell an Amstrad computer for a show. She said OK assuming nobody would watch this programme not having been told the name of the show until the filming day. It includes the multitude of reactions from family, friends and acquaintances who saw her cameo role when it was screened. This video work was first showcased at Space Studios gallery in London in November 2017. Other exhibitions and film festivals include Temporary Art Projects, Southend (2015), Flatpack (2013) Swedenborg (2014), London Short Film Festival at ICA (2014-2016), and Alchemy Film Festival (2016).

www.katiegoodwin.com



Thomas Lisle, 'Rooms in dreams', 2018

Lisle uses new technology in art, to explore abstraction in time based media. His most recent work with computers and 3D forms of the last 3 or 4 years has taken a number of different routes: the programmable paint stroke, off the shelf 3D models and people, fluid/gas simulations, and particles. He has been making abstracted video art since 1981, from detuning TVs, abstracting TV images, using video and slide projection installations, and 3D animation. His work has been exhibited at The Stoke Sculpture Commission, Glasgow Centre for Contemporary Arts, The Smith in Stirling, The Aspex Gallery Portsmouth, and the Newlyn Orion Gallery and he has video art works in both the LUX collection and London video art research collection.

www.thomaslisle.com



Ravinder Surah, 'Download Delete Repeat', 2018

Surah's photographic practice studies the digital age of imagery, particularly that of New Media and how we are bombarded by this relentless flux in technological changes and imagery. We have become resistant to the image and its messages, dismissing it socially but, more importantly, almost forgetting its importance in terms of impact and the intended meanings (from an evidential standpoint) in photojournalist images. Download Delete Repeat comments on the bombardment of image data we see daily by using algorithmic strings of programming code to download the first 64 images of any given internet search term. Surah's work has been exhibited and published across the UK, US and Europe, including in Sheffield, Bath, London, Venice, Rome, Athens, Berlin, Moscow, Philadelphia, and New York.

http://www.rndgphotography.com
https://www.instagram.com/rndgphotography
https://twitter.com/rndgPhotography



Hondartza Fraga, 'Irresistible Distance', 2017

Irresistible Distance is an animation of a found image of a star field. The camera zooms in until the construction of the image is revealed and the illusion of travelling across Space is broken. Hondartza works mainly with drawing, photography, animation and video. Her work is an ongoing exploration of our relationship with landscape and the different 'distances' between ourselves and everything else: spatial, temporal, emotional, cultural and imagined. Fascinated by extreme environments, from deep sea to deep space, she explores our individual and collective relationship with these type of landscapes. She has exhibited nationally (Liverpool, London, Sheffield) and internationally (Portugal, Spain, Norway, Istanbul, Italy). Her work is also represented by Espacio Alexandra in Santander (Spain). Hondartza is currently a studio holder at Patrick Studios (East Street Arts) in Leeds.

www.hondartzafraga.com



Sid and Jim, 'The Best 4 x 4 x Far', 2015

The video shows Land Rover and Range Rover commercials remade using Google SketchUp and Street View. It draws parallels with past and present technologies and how a significant icon, such as the Land Rover, can be paraded with the intention of instilling hopes and dreams in all who are exposed to it. Sid and Jim are a London based collaboration who work in a variety of mediums including but not exclusive to performance, installation, and moving image. Issues of value, presence and authorship form the subject of their work. Recent exhibitions include 'Ad-Venture' at The Vitrine Project, London, 'They, as opposed to he/she' at The Evie Evie Space, Istanbul, and 'Level Playing Field' at The Wellness and Motivational Center, Leeds. They also exhibit extensively across the UK and produce their own curated projects.

www.sidandjim.com
https://www.instagram.com/jimbicknellknight
https://www.instagram.com/sid_smith



Irini Folerou, 'Revealing', 2016

The work 'Revealing' is a video document, of experimental work of projection on a window. The window's blinds smoothly, in an alluring way, fold and unfold, revealing a disembodied body part. The blinds in this way are 'transforming' the materiality of the hand and symbolically create a second skin. The work occurred from experimentations, questioning the meanings of embodiment, defragmentation and integrity. Irini is a graduate of Central St Martins and has been featured in exhibitions across London and Athens.

www.irinifolerou.com



Chen Wang, 'Utopia Process', 2018

Chen Wang works prominently in video, hand-made costume, drawings, animation, performance and sound. Through a variety of elements including video and installation, she portrays a satirical imaginary space based on our present-day society. She uses bright colours and optimistic aesthetics to challenge the boundaries of the physical body. Constructed biomorphic forms entangle and pulsate speaking about gender, politics and sexuality. Chen Wang (China,1991) is an artist who lives and works in Rochester, New York. She received her BFA in Painting + Printmaking in 2014 from Virginia Commonwealth University and her MFA in Imaging Arts from Rochester Institute of Technology in 2017.

www.chenwangstudio.com
https://www.instagram.com/dododra



Victoria Lucas, 'The Hitchcock Staircase', 2015

The Hitchcock Staircase (2015) is a short video that explores site as an object of temporal suspense. Situated in the Pan American apartment building on Broadway, Downtown LA, the staircase encountered by the artist in this work has apparently featured in a number of Hitchcock films, although no record of this fact has yet been found. Victoria works with video, photography, sound, sculpture, installation and performance. Victoria's artworks are often initiated by a physical encounter with a place, site or landscape. She is specifically concerned with the chimerical potential of space; documenting, fabricating or reconstructing places using digital and sculptural means as a way to reposition socially constructed identities. She has exhibited in solo exhibitions at Grizzly Grizzly, Philadelphia; Airspace Gallery, Stoke-on-Trent; Chiara Williams Contemporary at London Art Fair; Oriel Wrecsam, Wrexham and HOME, Manchester. She has exhibited in group shows at Casa Maauad, Mexico City; 91mq Gallery, Berlin; Millennium Galleries, Sheffield and The Hepworth, Wakefield.

www.victorialucas.co.uk



Melanie Menard, 'Tricyclic Transform', 2015

Tricyclic Transform documents the creation and self-destruction of Menard's 'biologically-challenged drag-queen' alter-ego Miss Liliane. Tricyclic Transform theatricalizes the experience of being genderqueer: the character on screen tries to negotiate restrictive gender-roles by performing symbolic rituals, but the inability of their mind to comfortably inhabit any predefined role causes them to get trapped in an endless loop of repeated, pointless gestures. This mini-performance is a step towards a one-person musical cabaret show still in development. Melanie Menard has exhibited and performed extensively in the UK and internationally.

http://www.melaniemenard.com

 

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