WAVE 3 of THE BATHROOM RESIDENCY

As the project's next guest artist, I'm delighted to be able to invite you to WAVE 3 of the BATHROOM RESIDENCY. Please join me as I present my contribution, with objects of misunderstood value and their stories, to the project this Friday 17th November, 7-9pm, 8 Galveston Rd, Putney, London, SW15 2SA. This is a social event, friends are welcome!

The BATHROOM RESIDENCY is a project organised and curated by Alice McCabe

Please RSVP via e-mail amyash (dot) art (at) gmail (dot) com


See full project desciption below.

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ob•jec•ti•fy

to represent concretely; present as an object. 

Also: objectivate
obˌjectification n

The bathroom is a space which signals personal privacy, hygiene and also presentation. It is within our cultural narrative to view the bathroom as a place where we can shamelessly observe ourselves and prepare the face we will show the world.

This bathroom residency project proposes to borrow the language of museum curatorship, using the display of objects as a pedagogical tool for the sharing and layering of personal experience.

In the bathroom there will be a collection of objects unconventionally labelled with single words, unlikely descriptions or phrases intended to prompt the imag- ination or memory of the viewer. Viewers enjoy a moment of solitude in the pri- vate space of the bathroom to examine the exhibit in detail. Each viewer is invit- ed to respond to a portion of exhibit by communicating directly to any object; in turn the object will remember up to 20 seconds of aural information and keep it, verbatim, to pass on to the next visitor.

One after the other, viewers will be invited into the bathroom for their own mo- ment of solitude and discovery, as they listen to what the curious objects in the exhibit have to say.

Throughout the duration the museum docent will be situated in a corner of the bathroom. They will welcome viewers to the exhibition and then go about their duties with earplugs.

This event will be recorded aurally in its entirety, though no video will be taken, maintaining the anonymity of those who share their experiences with the objects.

 

PLACE EXPLORATION

Sunday morning, I will be journeying far out of London to participate in PLACE EXPLORATION, "a practice-based research residency into the depths of place at Kestle Barton, whereby place is defined as something that is constructed by a washing back and forth between the past and the future, between the self and the collective, as the shoreline is perpetually recomposed by the sea."

https://trailmixed.online/2017/09/14/place-exploration/

"How did you get here?", they asked:

As far as I can tell, my memory begins on the coast with the highest tides in the world.
I grew up in rural New Brunswick, Canada. Spending my formative years so close to the ocean, I developed a need to see where it went every 6 hours and 13 minutes, which is the length of time between high and low tide in the Bay of Fundy. As I developed an attachment to my surroundings, I also grew eager to leave.


I spent time away; years in Asia—Japan, Thailand, Korea, India— tides in Hawaii, the UK, Europe and across Canada. Each place has gotten under my skin, but I never feel more of a participant in the rhythms of the world than when I am one foot in the ocean, knowing that my body is a conductor.


With that, I have dedicated my practice to act as an embodied collage of that moment: to be a conductor. Flowing through curatorial projects, teaching and learning, installation and other forms of making, most of my work involves collaboration. It hasn't happened overnight and, like the coastlines responding to the tide, it is always shifting and evolving, with wear lines and erosion as certain memories/ideas have been repeated and reworked or lost along the way.


PLACE EXPLORATION appeals to me for a number of reasons beyond it being nearly the closest point (that I can currently access) to where my practice began, although that has crossed my mind. As an artist with a socially engaged practice, PLACE EXPLORATION is an opportunity of being with, connecting and conducting moments with artists who might share a similar ethos, participating in their practices and developing new instances of wear lines and erosion in my own.

And, it takes me to the coast.

 

A Conversation with The Aesthete Hunter

The Aesthete Hunter is lovely blog about contemporary culture, authored by Irene Martínez Marín Spanish Ph.D candidate in Aesthetics interested in nostalgia as an aesthetic emotion. Recently we had a chat about my work, specifically as it relates to memory and nostalgia. She rolls in with the big questions, opening the conversation with: 

"What can we learn about ourselves through art?"

For answers and our insights, follow this link: https://aesthetehunter.wordpress.com/2017/06/25/amy-ash-interview/

News for the New Year

Happy New Year, World! 

I have a new exhibition opening next week, Saturday 7th January, from 6-8pm at Below 65 Gallery in Maidstone. Please come along and bring your pals!

Without Words, What are Facts? (exhibition view)

Exhibition View:

Without Words, What are Facts?

This exhibition combines pieces from several recent bodies of work.  Each project uses found imagery and histories from multiple sources, connecting the fragments to string together new associations.

My practice pays close attention to the way layers of memory settle to form new narratives, impacting our perceptions of reality. I aim to disrupt existing structures and hierarchies, tracing their relation to the construction and perpetuation of personal and cultural narratives and lore. Stripped mostly of their context, these fragments of history and technology continue to echo their stories alongside those we assign to them to affect our own sense of truth. Tapping into (and confusing) the collective memory, I alter my findings through careful actions of material intervention, gently persuading connections to be made.

The exhibition’s title, Without words, what are facts? makes reference to Susan Howe’s poetic docu-essay Sorting Facts, or Nineteen Ways of Looking at Marker.

In an age of digital saturation, I choose to work primarily with found images and analogue photography materials.  The works included in this exhibition (with the exception of With Every Remembering) are all unique images made without digital intervention. A combination of silver gelatin enlargements and cyanotypes, each photographic image was produced in the darkroom, from found negatives, and materially altered by hand. Much of this work was created on residency at The Banff Centre for the Arts, with the support of The Peter MacKendrick Endowment Fund for Visual Artists.

 

 

Saturday 17th September: ART MARKET MAIDSTONE.

How about a day in the countryside? Every year Making Art Work put on a great contemporary artists' market. Tomorrow, I will be exhibiting with many works for sale in an attempt 'fundraise' for a new laptop. I will have some older works, experiments and also one of a kind cyanotypes and drawings. Sneak peek below!

Please come along and say 'hello'! I'll be at stall no.21, right next to the incredible, Hattie McGill. Hope to see you lovely people!

YOUTH UNCOVERED: please celebrate with us!

YOUTH UNCOVERED is youth curatorial initiative which interrogates social and educational hierarchies by supporting a group of young people from three South London secondary schools to curate a professional exhibition of contemporary art.

I began working on plans for a youth curatorial programme nearly a year ago and, in fact, had been running ideas through my mind long before that. When I drafted the proposal for Gerald Moore Gallery, after having spoken to Director, Elinor Brass, about the possibility of such a programme, I was both excited and unsure.  I received the ‘go ahead’ to begin the project in June of 2015 and sought out schools who were willing to take the leap with me.

Since then, I’ve been working closely with an amazing group of young people and teachers from three diverse South London Schools—Thomas Tallis School, East Dulwich Harris Academy and Eltham College.  We worked together to release an international call and the group selected artists from an outstanding number of submissions from around the world.  They have been fiercely surpassing every obstacle to create an exhibition which speaks to their experience as young people, today.  Just a couple months ago we found out that our exhibition had been granted the support of Arts Council England. We are thrilled to have their seal of approval and to be able to pay the artists appropriate wages.

The exhibition, which opens in two days’ time, considers what it means to be a young person today and is shaping up to be even more impressive than I could have hoped. Likewise, I think the team are proud of their achievements—they certainly should be!

“The project has been really interesting for me, not only as a young person but also as a prospective art student. I am sure that ’youth culture’, as a theme is reflected in many art exhibitions but I feel privileged as a young person to be at the forefront of creating and curation. It really is #youthuncovered.”  Sian Newlove-Drew

If you’re in London, please join us for the opening event 23 April 2-5pm. There will be a Q&A with artists and young curators at 4pm. Refreshments will be available and all are welcome! And it is a FREE event.

ARTISTS:

DIANA &ELEANOR BURCH, FIONA GRADY, LINNEA HAVILAND, ANDREW JOHN MILNE

CURATORS:  

MICHELLE NGUYEN, HOLLIE WILD, GABRIELLA DREW, ELLIOT WEDGE, THOMAS BUGG, CAMILLA MAKHMUDOVA, SAPPHIRE HALES, KELLY COUGHLAN, HARPREET UPPAL, SIAN NEWLOVE-DREW, WILL NICHOLLS, GEORGINA BAKER

Artists in the Woods.

From 1st November to the 15th December, 2015, I lived in what could be described as a wintery camp for artists who have 'fibbing' tendencies.

Banff Centre for the Arts 2015 fall thematic residency, TRUTH LIES AND LORE.

               

I remember driving at dusk (in the airport shuttle) from Calgary--flat and homogeneous, with grid upon grid of cubic dwellings, directly into the Rocky Mountain range. With almost no warning or graduation the mountains appeared, looking majestic and refreshingly disheveled in comparison with suburbia's well-practised order. It was dark by the time I reached Banff and, truth be told, I fell asleep en route, missing the final portion of the journey.

 

Below are some fieldnotesfrom my time in the mountains.

Also featured in some images are artists:

Emma Finn, Meghan Price, Gabby Dao, Marijolijn Kok, Carolina Fusilier, Emma Rochester, Anna Khimasia, Jennifer Crane, Ilyn Wong, Emily Promise Allison, Heilum Ng, Angharad Davies.

PHOTOS: Amy Ash & Emma Finn.