New media site-specific artworks exhibited in the grounds of Cuckoo Farm Studios,
by Jessica Curry, Stuart Bowditch/Damien Robinson and Gordon Flemons.
Curated by Tim Skinner and Linda Theophilus.
14th August - 20th September
Fri - Sun 11am-4pm
Mon - Thur by appointment 07716313671
Free Admission
Cuckoo Farm Studios
Boxted Rd, Colchester, CO4 5HH
www.cuckoofarmstudios.org.uk
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The Works | The Artists | The Curators | The Cross Mentoring Scheme | The Guides | The Location | The Support
Jessica Curry
Fields Were the Essence of the Song
Text: Dan Pinchbeck
Sound Engineer: Phil Thompson
Actor: Nigel Carrington
Singer: Lizzy Leggat
Recorded at Middle Street Studios, Portsmouth
An aural portrait of a world where man and machine co-exist uncomfortably together. A world where the car rules and everyone is on their way to somewhere else. Mechanical clicks and distortion entangle with and oppose the wrecked lyricism of the piano, fusing to create a post-apocalyptic soundtrack for the modern age.
Fields is a soundtrack for a film which does not exist, one which is created by the ever-changing relationship of the participant, formed by their self-steered journey, around the environment. An emotional landscape, shot through with abstract suggestions of narrative, is created by the soundtrack; the rest is up to the participant.
Someone has been here before, in this space. Their traces linger in occasional traces of voice, a response to the unknown specifics of their time here. The music creates a mood, a sense of their feelings and thoughts. The participant can explore freely, creating a unique subjective experience where the themes and symbols may shift according to their own perspectives and movements. The listener has an intimate and poignant relationship with the unidentified man, are encouraged to enter a landscape of loss and nostalgia that is never made explicit.
Fields exists as a headphone-based soundscape. The ambient noises of the environment are overlaid by music and voice, which may or may not inspire a certain configuration of interpretation, a certain navigation. Unlike the road, with its linearity, its inference of beginning and end, the work invites the participant to wander. A sense of lost past is created, prompting an engagement with the illusion of permanence of the trappings of the present, set against a landscape which is both forever changing and that will outlast any interventions by man. The machine, the defining mode of engagement with the world of the present, is exposed as a fleeting ghost, a temporary visitor to deeper time. The transient nature of existence and the inability to ever truly know one individual’s response to life and nature, despite the promises of technology, lie at the heart of the work.
Fields Were the Essence of the Song is an attempt to create a déjà vu where it never existed, to create ghosts and set them to wander.
Stuart Bowditch/Damien Robinson
For Outside 09, Damien and Stuart will be bringing together two previous projects, Vibe³ and AWSoM
Vibe³ (Vibe Cube) is a sound installation incorporating collected, donated, and archived sounds that express the “spirit of place”. Residents of Colchester, Harlow and Basildon are invited to submit both recordings and ideas for recordings which reflect the history, character, and the unique feel of their area – anything from wildlife to nightlife. We will collect and redevelop them into an ever-changing sound mix via the Vibe Cube, to be shown at locations in the towns and on the Vibe Cube website. The project was developed as part of Commissions East and Essex County Council's 'Genius Loci' public art programme.
http://drop.io/vibecube
http://www.openspaceessex.org/osp_artists_damienrobinsonstuartbowditch.php
AWSoM (Ambient Weather Sound Machine) is a project that uses the weather to play found sounds in remote places. It was a collaboration with the Mediashed, and has been installed at Two Tree Island, in the Thames Estuary, Sutton with Shopland Music Festival and part of “Interactive Screen 0.7 - User Friendly is Not Enough” at the BNMI in Banff, Alberta, Canada. This project was funded by Arts Council England.
Gordon Flemons
Then, Now, Always, Never
The installation uses mobile phones to display short video clips of details from around the farm providing the viewer with an edited synopsis of their surroundings. Placed outside the small screens are quite difficult to see, drawing people in close. This awkwardness, combined with the juxtapositioning of the real and the virtual, questions the way our lives are mediated through the electronic media.
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Jessica Curry
Based Brighton
Jessica Curry is an award winning composer and sound artist. Her work incorporates performance, video, installation, public art, virtual worlds and computer games.
As a classically trained composer Curry’s work fuses traditional instruments and orchestration with applications of digital technology. Her work is an ongoing exploration of human identity, particularly our hidden lives and emotional landscapes and the end result is a lush, melodic, melancholic sound.
She completed her training at the National Film and Television School where she developed a passion for the merging of image, movement and music. She uses film and video in her work, often digitally manipulated and re-coloured, to inject a sense of hyper-realism, nostalgia, loss and hope into the pieces.
She has collaborated on a variety of projects with games developer and researcher Dan Pinchbeck since 2003, including a series of experimental game mods. The latest of these, Dear Esther, was selected for Prix Arts Electronica 2008 and E3 Expo, Los Angeles 2009 and has already been downloaded over 25,000 times.
She has exhibited internationally and has received commissions, residencies, grants and awards from organisations such as the The Wellcome Trust, The Royal Society of Arts, Location One, New York, PVA, Werkleitz Gesellschaft, Labculture, Arts Council England, Hull Time Based Arts, Exeter Phoenix, CIBAS and Arts and Technology Partnerships. She was the first ever Artist in Residence at the New Media Centre at the Institute of Contemporary Arts, London and was also selected for the European Media Artist Residency Exchange programme in Germany. Her latest film, i carry your heart, was shown around the world in 2008, including the prestigious Kassel Documentary Film and Video Festival; the Museum of Contemporary Art, Venezuela; several festivals in Germany; Poland; India and in the UK. She was also selected for the Berlinale Talent Campus 2009, a six day international creative summit in conjunction with the Berlinale Film Festival.
The Second Death of Caspar Helendale by Jessica Curry and Dan Pinchbeck 2008
Stuart Bowditch
Based Hackney, London
Stuart is an artist who works in many ways. He is mostly inspired by his love of open air, spaces and places.
His interest in sound and the natural rhythms and routines of everyday life have shaped the methodology of his
work, which revolves around noises and sounds which he finds, records and processes. He loves to travel, near
and far, and the recordings he makes become a document, a sound memory, of his time spent in each place.
He often works with individuals or groups to record new sets of sounds and over the years has built up a large
archive of recordings which he draws upon to make songs, soundtracks to films and art installations. In this way
of working he tries to make sense of the world he lives in and his place within it. Simultaneously, the creations
and experiences of others end up intrinsically embedded in his work, creating a rich texture of layers,
representing his life and those he as encountered along the way.
Film
With the Mediashed, Stuart took part in some ‘Video Sniffing’ projects, hacking into wireless CCTV signals around
his home town. He worked with young homeless people from Southend-on-Sea to make a short film ‘Video
Sniffin #1 : The Commercial’ , which was exhibited at Southend College in April 2006.
In May 2007 Hybernation was asked to write the soundtrack to the film ‘The Duellists’ commissioned by
Futuresonic Festival, which explores the use of parkour in urban areas. It was filmed using only the in-house
CCTV network in the Manchester Arndale shopping centre and the soundtrack was constructed entirely out of
foundsounds recorded during the filming process in the shopping centre. It has been screened all over the world
and was also shortlisted for the Big Issue Film Festival at the Barbican.
2008 saw a soundtrack commissioned by Steam Control screened at the BFI on London’s Southbank, and
soundtrack work with dance troup Base Dance. More will follow in 2009.
Installations
‘Windows Media Prayer’ is an ongoing collection of photographs through and of windows and has been screened
in several locations including Metal’s new space in Chalkwell Park and a White Bus film event.
In 2007 Stuart developed AWSoM (Ambient Weather Sound Machine) a project that uses the weather to play
foundsounds in remote places. This project was funded by Arts Council England, in collaboration with
Damien Robinson and the Mediashed and has been installed at Two Tree Island, in the Thames Estuary, Sutton
with Shopland Music Festival and part of “Interactive Screen 0.7 - User Friendly is Not Enough” at the BNMI in
Banff, Alberta, Canada. 12-17th August 2007.
Stuart took part in Ars Electronica 2007, in Linz, Austria, with the Mediashed project “Spy Kiting” as part of
“Goodbye Privacy”.
Together with Damien Robinson, Stuart recently won a commission as part of the Genius Loci project, funded by
Essex County Council and Commissions East. They are developing the ‘Vibe Cube’, Public Art installation that we
become a sound history of Basildon, Colchester and Harlow, with contributions from the general public of those
three towns.
Damien Robinson
Based Westcliff on Sea, Essex
Damien is an artist working with digital media focusing on the interplay between images, sounds and vibrations.
Her artwork was originally print-based and 3D; often based on children’s stories and toys, it has been shown in venues as diverse as phone boxes and the National Art Library. From 1998 she has increasingly used digital techniques allowing her to work with media previously inaccessible to her and other deaf people. Works include De@fsite for
the Photographers Gallery, Aerial (an x-space commission for inIVA), Songbird, a sonic/acoustic work initiated in a LabCulture Residency exhibited as part of ‘Re:Thinking Time’ at Peterborough Digital Arts, and AWSoM, the Ambient Weather Sound Machine (with Stuart Bowditch).
BA Hons Fine Art, Goldsmiths College, London, 1991
Selected Exhibitions
Vibe Cube, Genius Loci, Essex, UK, 2009
'Carousel', Steam Control, BFI Southbank, London, UK, 2008
Spy Kiting, Arts Electronica, Austria, 2007
Being Here (The Event), South East Essex College, Essex, UK, 2006
Material Matters, Gallaudet University, Washington D.C., USA, 2002
Adultessence, Exeter and Devon Arts Centre, UK, 1999
AWSoM project
Gordon Flemons
Based Chelmsford, Essex
BA(Hons) Fine Art Sculpture, Norwich School of Art and Design.
BSc(Hons) Agricultural Botany, University of Reading.
GordonFlemons graduated from The Norwich School of Art in 2005 with a degree in Fine Art Sculpture. This background has given him a strong interest in space, how it is perceived and how it is used. Today his practice is increasingly influenced by geographers, town planners and architects as he looks to incorporate the choreography of peoples’ interactions with their built environment into his work. By engaging with audiences he hopes to give them a new perspective on their surroundings.
Since graduating Flemons has worked on exhibitions, projects and collaborations exploring how people move through their environment. This has included a residency with The Centre for the Arts and Design in the Environment (CADE) at Writtle College manipulating the space in the landscaped college grounds using inflatable follies. He has also undertaken a research project mapping visitor movement through the historic Gardens of Easton Lodge, and collaborated with the artist Fran Wilde observing the flow of commuters in the West End of Chelmsford
Selected Exhibitions
Genius Loci: Open Space Programme, Public Arts Project, Essex, UK, 2008-09
Questions, CADE (Centre for Art and Design in the Environment), Writtle College, Essex, UK, 2007
Enter Unknown Territories, Festival for New Technology Art, Cambridge, UK, 2007
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Rotunda (2006), Polythene bin liners, pastic shopping bags, tape, hairdryer, air and electricity.
Dimensions: 2.8m x 2.8m x 3.9m, photos: J. Townshend
Additional Projects/ Exhibitions
2008 'Space of Flows', a research project into visitor movements in the Gardens of Easton Lodge. Carried out in conjunction with The Centre for the Arts and Design in The Environment (CADE) at Writtle College Essex.
2007'Caught in the Act', collaboration with the artist Fran Wilde, investigating the West End of Chelmsford; funded by Chelmsford Borough Council.
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Tim Skinner
BA Hons Fine Art, Colchester School of Art and Design, 2003
Graduate Scholarship Award, Cuckoo Farm Studios, 2003-04
My work mainly revolves around exploring the visual force of sounds unique ability to manipulate water. Currently prodominently working in video, I use the sonically moving water visuals to create new landscapes which echo inner isolation and the desire to discover own personal beauty. Being brought up on a diet of impressionism, and taught traditional painting techniques, I like my visuals to have aesthetic impact.
Enclosure Video Installation, 2007
Selected exhibitions:
Transition, The Bargehouse, London, UK, 2009
Wide Open, Krannert Art Museum, Illinois, USA, 2008
Over Bakke Og Dal...., Mostings Hus, Copenhagen, Denmark, 2008
Urban Screens 08, Fed Square, Melbourne, Australia, 2008
Sound:Space, Digital Media Centre, Reading, UK, 2008
Curatorial Stance for Outside 09
For Outside I wanted to allow the work to echo the strong interactive element existing in contemporary new media art. When new media art becomes interactive it has this unique ability to break down the stigma attached to contemporary art, if we are to engage with the mass Essex audience the work needs to be exciting, for this we needed to commission seasoned proffessionals to create pieces which interact with the surrounding area.
Linda Theophilus
BA Hons Fine Art, Kent Institute of Art and Design Canterbury, 2004
MA Fine Art, Kent Institute of Art and Design Canterbury, 2005
After working as an arts administrator and curator for 25 years, I retrained as an artist. I make installations, from domestic furniture, bric-a-brac and textiles. I also use drawing, photography and video.
My work refers to the way household things store our memories, demonstrate our ambitions and embody the tales we tell about our selves, and is infused with my interest in vanitas and memento mori.
Selected exhibitions and residencies:
Where were you when they landed? – for Windows, Braintree Art Trail, 2009
White Weight, textile installation, Benham Gallery, Colchester, 2008
Car Watching, site-specific installation for OUTSIDE 07,Cuckoo Farm Studios, Colchester 2007
Dangerous Light, 10 day residency, 2007 part of Residue programme, firstsite Colchester
Grape Floor, site-specific disintegrating installation 2005, commissioned for Salthouse 05, with grant from ACE
Red Barn Red Tent, site-specific textile installation,commissioned by Kings Lynn Arts Centre, with grant from ACE 2004
OUTSIDE 09 is part of a cross mentoring project between the curators: experienced freelance curator Linda Theophilus and international new media artist Tim Skinner. Laura Early (firstsite) is acting as a critical friend throughout the process. The project is funded by ACE East
Throughout the duration of the exhibition there will be 'live guides' on hand to talk you through the work if needed. The guides have been sourced from the University of Essex
Daniela Nedelcu
Daniela in September will enter her second year studying a BA in Art History and Theory.
"My interests revolve around Film and Art.
I am fascinated by the world of exhibitions but also by art
cinema and nevertheless, filmmaking."
Sara Taylor
Converted farm buildings Cuckoo Farm Studios is home to over 30 artists and craftspeople, situated on the Northern outskirts of the historical Essex town of Colchester.
Cuckoo Farm Studios,
Boxted Rd,
Colchester,
CO4 5HH
How To Get There
By Car
from London/Chelmsford
Leave the A12 at junction 27, then merge onto unnamed road "Colchester",
At Spring Lane Roundabout take the 2nd exit onto the A133 "Colchester",
At roundabout take the 1st exit onto the A134 "Sudbury",
Next roundabout take the 2nd exit onto the A134 "Sudbury"
At North Station continue forward onto the A134 "Sudbury",
At traffic signals turn left onto the A134 "Sudbury",
Along Northern Approach Road straight through all sets of lights A134 "Sudbury",
At roundabout take the 4th exit onto Boxted Road "Boxted",
Cuckoo Farm Studios is Third right off Boxted Rd (1st is Severals Hospital, 2nd is United Way (Colchester FC))
from Ipswich
Leave the A12 at junction 29, then at roundabout take the 3rd exit, then immediately turn left onto Newcomen Way "Colchester Business Park",
At roundabout take the 3rd exit onto The Crescent
At roundabout take the 2nd exit onto Mill Road
Next roundabout take the 2nd exit onto Mill Road,
Follow till major traffic lights, turn right at lights "Sudbury",
At roundabout take the 4th exit onto Boxted Road "Boxted",
Cuckoo Farm Studios is Third right off Boxted Rd (1st is Severals Hospital, 2nd is United Way (Colchester FC)).
Public Transport
Trains run out of Liverpool Street Station, London, every 30mins to Colchester North Station.
The studios are a short taxi ride from the station, or a twenty-five minute walk.
There is a bus out to the studios, Network Colchester 2B, need to get off at Severalls Hospital, short five minute walk up Boxted Rd. http://www.networkcolchester.com/
Cuckoo Farm Studios plays a key role in Essex's artistic community, not only providing artists an affordable space to work but facilliates a busy exhibiting scheldule. Diversity flourishes within the studios with potters work alongside book artists, new media artists alongside painters, textile artists alongside sculptors.
Arts Council England is the national development agency for the arts in England, distributing public money from Government and the National Lottery.
firstsite is Colchester’s visual arts organisation. It has three core programmes, Learning, Artistic and Artists' Support, aiming to make contemporary art relevant and life changing for artists and audiences. In 2009 it is presenting a series of events and projects in different and unusual locations across Colchester and Essex as it prepares for the move into, and launch, of a new visual arts building in 2010.
Essex is celebrating its first ever Summer of Art, a countywide showcase of art across Essex. Local artists will be exhibiting their work on 14 Art Trails in the county in rural, coastal and urban settings.
Taking place from May 2009 to September 2009 Summer of Art encourages visitors visit the Essex art trails and explore the landscapes that have inspired generations of artists.
