Creatrix Mag

New York based Go Push Pops inaugurate the premier issue of CREATRIX MAG with their story about their 2014 residency in Manchester's Alex Park and their final performance HOLY CREATRIXXX. Commissioned by Alexandra Arts for Pankhurst in the Park 2014, HOLY CREATRIXXX – ritual gathering, divine incantation and mystical neo-shamanic coven – was Go! Push Pops’ first work overseas and most comprehensive public project to date. They also facilitated a 5-week Holistic Art for Female Empowerment workshop series for the moms and students of St. Mary’s Primary School. Check it out here

‘Fuzzy Puzzle’ by Pablo Melchor

“We are not Complicated People. We Don’t Care if we are Behind the Camera or in Front of the Projector”

Pablo Melchor and “Fuzzy Puzzle”:  A Profile – by Jo Rose

“Paris born, Manchester bred artist Pablo Melchor’s projection piece, “Fuzzy Puzzle”, marks the NYC closing ceremony of Manchester-based collective Alexandra Art’s third year of the Pankhurst in the Park Festival. It illuminated the walls of the Mothership in Brooklyn’s Greenpoint on September 21st.  Melchor describes “Fuzzy Puzzle” as ‘a prism vision. A Fuzzy collection of memories’ which aims to be ‘subjective and colourful’. As such, the piece holds a strange place for Pablo as an author since it is, as he himself insists, an extension and acknowledgement of his involvement with Alexandra Arts and its branching out beyond Manchester’s frontiers, especially to New York, and Manchester’s cultural scene over more than a half-decade. It embraces its own inherent fragmentation and displacement.”
— Jo Rose

This article is now live over at Art 511 Magazine. This piece was commissioned by us for the centenary for UK women’s suffrage [funded by ARTS COUNCIL ENGLAND] during the Pankhurst in the Park 2018 season. See Pablo Melchor’s projection piece in full below.

Author’s Bio

 Jo Rose is a writer, musician, promoter, and English Literature Postgraduate based in Manchester, England. He currently works closely with the Alexandra Arts collective, most notably with the Pankhurst in the Park Festival and with the teacher training initiative the “Art as Activism Toolkit”. His principle academic focus has been in ‘modernist’ and ‘late modernist’ literature (most prominently the works of Samuel Beckett and animals in literary works). He has released several records, and has toured extensively throughout the UK and Europe for over a decade, working alone and collaborating with a multitude of other artists. He co-habits with a miserly ex-racing greyhound, Harpo, a relationship he likens to having a deer as a pet.

From Manchester to NYC: Pankhurst in the Park Salon

Recap article of the last and final Pankhurst in the Park event in NYC., read it here. We aim to be back in the Big Apple in 2020 for more art shenanigans. All photos by Jennifer Brown

“The final installment of Alexandra Arts Pankhurst in the Park was a salon-style gathering for artists and art appreciators held at the Last Frontier in Greenpoint. A space stewarded by the Norwegian artist Sol Kjok, Last Frontier is a rustic open space with high ceilings, fixtures for hanging massive works of art (such as Sol’s recent series “Spiraling Smoke” on view) and a large teepee where Kjok hosts regular medicine circles and shamanic drum journeys.

During the month of September, UK-based artist, curator, and founder of Alexandra Arts artist Lotte Karlsen was Artist-in-Residence at Kjok’s nearby other space The Mothership. Karlsen kicked off the Tuesday night salon with an informal lecture and slide show presentation of her near decade-long socially-engaged artwork in Alexandra Park, Manchester, where the majority of the Pankhurst in the Park (PitP) festival took place 2014-18. The September 2018 salon celebrated four years in which the Pankhurst in the Park project has spearheaded an initiative committed to providing a platform for women in the Arts, including a dedicated commitment to cultural exchange with U.S.-based artists in NYC.”
— By Art 511 Mag staff

The Merry Wagtail Jades, The Breeches They Do Carry

Pankhurst in the Park 2018 artist Anna FC Smith has done a write up about the work she created for our NYC adventure EMINENT DOMAIN, read about it here

The Merry Wagtail Jades, The Breeches They Do Carry: Impudent women and cuckold’s horns.

BY ANNA FC SMITH

“The title of the work I exhibited at Eminent Domain derives from the broadside ballad ‘A new summons to all the merry wagtail jades that attend at horn fair.’ Printed and sold by J. Pitts in England in 1802 and 1819, it reads: “Come all you wagtail jades, Who love to play the game: And whilst your husbands are abroad, To have some of the same”… “The breeches they do carry, And swear they will them wear, And have their sparks when they please, Though husbands jealous are.”

I exhibited three sculptural banners capped with cuckold’s horns “tipt (sic) with silver” as the broadside ballad describes. The banners themselves were Edwardian bloomers made from a fabric printed with colourful splattered eggs. Their accompanying film echoes with the dissonant sound of crashing and banging pans as the spirit of the impudent women of the past blows through the bloomers.

I was commissioned by Alexandra Arts as part of their Pankhurst In The Park centenary celebrations to explore the history of the Suffragettes and their relevance to contemporary radical feminism. I decided to explore older forms of female carnivalesque, unruly behaviour to draw comparisons with the actions of the Suffragettes and how they were perceived. My work aims to highlight a chain of symbolism in the raucous practices of dissent. My research began with the actions of spitting, pelting and egg throwing undertaken by and against the Suffragettes and led me to rough music and the phenomenon of the Horn Fair.”
— Anna FC Smith @ art511mag.com

Below is the video artist portrait that we commissioned of Anna FC Smith for the Pankhurst in the Park 2018 season

Alien Armageddon, Empathy & The Vine of the Soul

A conversation with Melanie Bonajo

BY KATIE CERCONE

“In terms of plant meditation, I allow plants to be my teachers, they take me to a place of silence and I access portals that are usually only opening with an intensely deep, probably monastery meditation practice”
— Melanie Bonajo

Melanie Bonajo, Night Soil - Economy of Love, 2015, film still courtesy AKINCI

This article is now live over at Art 511 Magazine! This piece was commissioned by Alexandra Arts and first published in the special print edition of Art 511 Mag celebrating International Women’s Day and the centenary for UK women’s suffrage [funded by ARTS COUNCIL ENGLAND] during the Pankhurst in the Park 2018 season. You can download the digital version of the full mag here

Spiraling Smoke

BY CLAIRE ZAKIEWICZ

Is now live over at Art 511 Magazine! This article was commissioned by Alexandra Arts  and first published in the special print edition of Art 511 Mag celebrating International Women’s Day and the centenary for UK women’s suffrage [funded by ARTS COUNCIL ENGLAND] during the Pankhurst in the Park 2018 season. Plus, you can download the digital version of the full mag here

“I met SOL KJØK in May 2017 at her loft in Brooklyn when I became one of her artists in residence. Her studio is the size of two tennis courts, and you can see both the Empire State and Chrysler buildings through a pair of factory windows. Acrobatic swings, harnesses and platforms dangle from 20ft ceilings. A full-sized tipi sits off-centre in the space where a Shaman performs drum journeys. World-class physicists, artists, academics and eccentrics regularly pass through. Her world is an inspiring, cross-pollinating place of collaboration and interaction. From the roof you overlook one of the most polluted pockets of America’s post-industrial wasteland – a mad dystopian scene set against one of the most inspiring skylines in the world.”
— Claire Zakiewicz

Amy Clancy in conversation with Helen Wewiora

Helen Wewiora became the Director of the Castlefield Gallery in central Manchester at the end of 2016. Here she speaks to Amy Clancy about Manchester’s place in the art world, addressing challenges and a new artistic exchange program.

This interview is now live over at Art 511 Magazine! This piece was commissioned by Alexandra Arts  and first published in the special print edition of Art 511 Mag celebrating International Women’s Day and the centenary for UK women’s suffrage [funded by ARTS COUNCIL ENGLAND] during the Pankhurst in the Park 2018 season. You can download the digital version of the full mag here

Hannah Leighton Boyce. Studio view, work in progress

Banner image - Hannah Leighton-Boyce, More energy than object, more force than form, 2018 [detail] Courtesy ® Drew Forsyth

Feminism is For EVERYONE

EMINENT DOMAIN OVERTAKES CHELSEA

The EMINENT DOMAIN recap article is now live over at our Pankhurst in the Park 2018 partner ART511 Magazine website

Photo: Elena Kendall-Aranda, site-specific performance, “Quests from the Virtual Age.” Courtesy the Artist

“EMINENT DOMAIN evolved out of Art 511 Mag’s recent partnership with the Manchester, UK-based Alexandra Arts, when this past Spring, we teamed up to produce a limited edition, 74-page full-color print commission celebrating International Women’s Day and the centenary for UK women’s suffrage (funded by ARTS COUNCIL ENGLAND). The edition, available as a free download online here, was made available for purchase during the reception, and features critical essays, interviews and artworks by Marilyn Minter, Narcissister, Melanie Bonajo, Samantha Conlon (Bunny Collective), Go! Push Pops and Anna FC Smith among others. Artists included in the EMINENT DOMAIN show were mostly selected by a competitive open call submission process organized by head curator Katie Cercone.”
— Art 511 Mag

Read the full article here

Anna FC Smith in the news

Pankhurst in the Park 2018 commissioned artist Anna FC Smith has made it into the news today, read the full article in Wigan Today here,  about her NYC debut at EMINENT DOMAIN in West Chelsea. This exhibition featured over 90 feminist artist from around the world and was a collaboration between Alexandra Arts and NYC based Art 511 Magazine

The Sick Role by Samantha Conlon

Samantha Conlon’s The Sick Role, 2018, is part documentation and part ritualistic photography accompanied with text composing a contemporary portrait of the mundane reality of mental illness. From a new body of work developed in Kuvataideakatemie, Helsinki, The Sick Role interrogates the experience of physical and mental illness in female bodies and the institutionalized gender politics at play within the care systems from which females seek healing. The development of systems of Western Science and Medicine displaced the age-old lineages of female practitioners. Midwives with generations of healing knowledge connected to the kingdom of plants and collective spiritual life were ousted from clinics, if not brutally violated in earlier eras involving mass genocide of women healers. Women in general were made victim of segregation, and limited access to higher education marginalized their work, making it unlawful to practice holistic healing modalities that carry important insight into women’s complex systems.

Read the full article here

This article have now been published on the art511mag.com site and was commissioned by Alexandra Arts for the special print edition of Art 511 Mag celebrating International Women’s Day and the centenary for UK women’s suffrage [funded by ARTS COUNCIL ENGLAND] during the Pankhurst in the Park 2018 season.

Or download the full mag here

Sertraline gaze v, 2018

EMINENT DOMAIN 12-14 July 2018

ART511MAG in partnership with Alexandra Arts PRESENTS: EMINENT DOMAIN - A DYNAMIC, INTERSECTIONAL FEMINIST ART EXHIBITION IN THE HEART OF THE CHELSEA GALLERY DISTRICT. This 3-day flash feminist art exhibit features over 90 artists from around the world. 

The exhibition concludes Saturday, July 14 with a moderated panel discussion titled: Women in the Arts - Sisterhood & Sustainability

Our concluding panel comprises of a diverse cross-section of thought leaders in the International Art World playing the fluid roles of curator, organizer/activist, gallerist, artist and arts administrator.

PANELISTS

Lotte Karlsen, Alexandra Arts
Kate Gilmore, Guggenheim Fellow ’18
Kristen Dodge, SEPTEMBER gallery
Vei Darling, Artist
Hein Koh, Artist

Moderated by Katie Cercone, Ultracultural Others

For Immediate Release

In response to the International Women’s Movement that has captivated the Worldwide Collective Conscious and Unconsciousness of so many people, ART511 Magazine has acted and is presenting a groundbreaking collection of women artists from around the World.

ART511MAG PRESENTS: EMINENT DOMAIN EXHIBITION A DYNAMIC, INTERSECTIONAL FEMINIST ART EXHIBITION IN THE HEART OF THE WEST CHELSEA GALLERY DISTRICT.

A 3-day affair featuring the artworks of over 90 women artists from around the world. The exhibition concludes Saturday, July 14 with a moderated panel discussion titled: Women in the Arts - Sisterhood & Sustainability, July 12-14, 524 West 26th Street, NYC.

New York, NY, June 26, 2018, ART511 Magazine is pleased to announce EMINENT DOMAIN, a flash exhibition of intersectional feminist art, opening Thursday, July 12th, with an opening reception art party from 6-10 p.m. in the former Robert Miller Gallery space at 524 West 26th St. for 3 days, concluding July 14 with a Women In the Arts Panel comprised of a diverse cross-section of thought leaders in the International Art World playing the fluid roles of curator, organizer/activist, gallerist, artist and arts administrator.

Addressing the white male western canon’s discourse drawing from exploiting, misrepresenting and objectifying female bodies and the racial/sexual Other, EMINENT DOMAIN occupies a major white box space in the heart of the commercial art world with a militantly utopic “flash flood” of new media, live performance and traditional visual art of every size and stripe, washing away old, derogative archetypes to tell another story about Art, ritual, community and the divine feminine mysteries.

“Artists from all over the globe contributed works of all mediums during a historical moment characterized by the rise of the feminine in all aspects of life, culture and industry. A hand-picked selection of artworks from over 90 women artists from around the world tackle complicated and culturally nuanced issues including sexual violence and abuses against women the world over, xenophobia, body/fat politics, race, sisterhood, the archetypal feminine, colonialism, sex tourism, white supremacy, ageism, religion, gender, sacred art, environmental devastation and repair. Poignant, juicy, sensual, cleverly bittersweet, darkly militant and profoundly magical - whether demanding our horror undivided, reframing an outmoded world view or simply wetting our appetite for a more righteous era of equality and justice - these works engage in challenging, transnational, intersectional dialogue, smash stereotypes and rush boundaries.” The exhibition concludes Saturday, July 14 with a moderated panel discussion “Women in the Arts- Sisterhood & Sustainability.” - Katie Cercone, curator

Our sponsors: West Chelsea Building LLC and Gloria Naftali, who have graciously provided the spacious venue to present this extraordinary collection of art by women artists in the world: We are ever so grateful for the support to make this exhibition possible. Additional sponsors of EMINENT DOMAIN include Alexandra Arts, ARTS COUNCIL ENGLAND, MANCHESTER CITY COUNCIL, PANKHURST IN THE PARK, Public Arts Squad Project, Signature Spirits Group LLC, Miolo Wine Group, Tambour Original Sodabi, Chopper Kings Beer Company, SmuttyNose Brewing Company and others.

For more details, please contact ART511 Magazine press office via call or text: (917) 697-0844 Gia Portfolio at gia.portfolio@gmail.com or Scotto Mycklebust scotto@scottomycklebust.com

###

Turning Around and Speaking Back by Lauren Velvick

For the Pankhurst in the Park centenary edition of Art511 Magazine we commissioned an article by artist and writer Lauren about Hannah Leighton-Boyce and Ruth Barker residency at Castlefield Gallery. Titled 'Turning around and speaking back' this have now been published on the Art511 Magazine site.

"The overarching theme of this year’s Wonder Women radical feminist festival in Manchester has to do with women’s representation and influence in our political and cultural institutions, responding to the centenary of the Representation of the People Act. 1918 was the first time that any women were able to vote in Britain, but as we must be careful to acknowledge, it was only property-owning women over thirty who were granted this basic right with the act. As such, it is important to commemorate and respond with nuance, something that the research-lead art practices of Hannah Leighton-Boyce and Ruth Barker are able to do by virtue of their methods and structure. As part of the festival, Leighton-Boyce and Barker have been commissioned to produce new bodies of work to be presented in a two-person exhibition at Castlefield Gallery, part of the gallery’s long-running ‘head to head’ series, whereby two artists whose work corresponds are placed in juxtaposition. Over the past year, both artists have been supported in conducting research residencies, allowing for the time and space to become embedded within their respective institutions and communities, and to explore unanticipated avenues". - Lauren Velvick

Read the full article here.

Download the full magazine here

Women Hold Up Half The Sky press release

For immediate use: 11 May 2018 

Pankhurst in the Park celebrates Ekua Bayunu’s “Women Hold up Half the Sky”

Pankhurst in the Park is proud to present this year’s artist in residence Ekua Bayunu’s “Women Hold up Half the Sky”, an interdisciplinary project taking place over eight weeks between April 14th and June 9th. This is an invitation to join us on the final date, when we will take the opportunity to celebrate the project and what it’s participants have produced in Alexandra Park. There will be music, spoken words, exhibitions, a sculpture trail, art workshops, and a closing party at the Pavilion Café.

2018 marks both the centenary of women (over thirty) winning the right to vote in England and the third and final year of the Pankhurst in the Park program. We commemorate this historic achievement and reflect on the ongoing issues with the political agency and representation of women today. One of the ways we have responded to this is by using this project as a platform to showcase the wealth and talent that female artists, in Manchester and internationally, have to offer.

Ekua’s proposal led to her being awarded the artist in residence commission by a selection panel of eminent figures within the Manchester art community, among them John McGrath, director of the Manchester International Festival and Helen Wewiora of the Castlefield Gallery. Other commissioned local artists include Anna FC Smith and Tasha Whittle.

Of being awarded this position in the project, Ekua said this:

I was thrilled to hear I had won the residency. It means so much to me to be able to work with Alexandra Arts, with all their passion and creative energy AND it means so much to me to be able to bring the local communities that I cherish, into this creative enterprise.

In between the opening and closing dates of “Women Hold up Half the Sky”, Ekua will be coordinating local community engagement and off-sight female artist studio initiatives in the form of a series of meetings and workshops. Ekua’s project is run in association with Global Arts Manchester, a group she co-founded.

Alexandra Arts teamed up with NYC-based publication 511 Magazine to produce a special edition for this year’s Pankhurst in the Park, published on March 8th, International Women’s Day. It includes an article on Ekua’s work by NYC-based artist Katie Cercone. It also features art, prints, and articles by a number of other artists who are contributing this year including Anna FC Smith, Tasha Whittle, Go! Push Pops (2014’s artist in residence), Marilyn Minter, Melanie Banajo, NARCISSISTER and much more. Printed copies are available at all our events and as a free download.

Find out more at www.alexandra-arts.org.uk.

ENDS

Comments, photos, and interviews are available. Please contact Lotte Karlsen by phone on +44 (0)7816683171 or email press@alexandra-arts.org.uk.

Message from AIR Ekua Bayunu - please share

Hello Park People!

I am just coming to the end of the third official week (of 8) as artist in residence at Alexandra Park! #womenholduphalfthesky

I am immersed in planning the final event on the 9th June. ( and making sculpture, running workshops, interviewing women on video....). I'm having a Walk the Park session on Sunday 13th May to help interested people understand the 9th June and how they might contribute, meeting at Coffee Cranks at 11am. Maybe you fancy coming down and finding out more about it then and understanding it in the context of the whole event? 

Here's some opportunities I’m offering local people, including you and your teams, to get involved in. 

In the Lodge, I will have a small exhibition in the 'conference room', themed around 'Our Mothers' , I will present a cabinet of items, made, found, owned by our mothers or about our mothers. If you have a small thing you could contribute, I’d love to talk to you about it. 

 Sound Artist , Danielle Porter will be making a sound scape of sounds from the park to play alongside the cabinet. She will be popping in to introduce herself this week and talk about how she would like to capture the sounds of your locations within the park.

Interviews. I’ve just completed 10 interviews with a very varied group of women in the Lodge. In the Sky Women’s studio, throughout May, I will continue to interview women about their feelings about voting and other ways we can shape our worlds. Email me for the address if you would like to join us there. We will also be making the sculpture there for Baby Sculpture Play area and the Woodland Walk.

Art Workshops are happening in the park, in the Community Room in The Depot at the bottom of Russell Street on Thursday 3rd May, 17th May and 24th May. 11.30 - 2.30pm.

I am currently looking for acoustic musicians and spoken word artists to perform. I know many of you are multi talented and if you'd enjoy sharing these skills with others in the park on the 9th June, please let me know and please share this invitation across your networks.

Heres some blurb I've put together....

~Womenholduphalfthesky is the name of my residency in Alexandra Arts as part of the Pankhurst in the Park 2018 programme initaited by Alexandra Arts.

The residency launched officially on the 14th April with the support of Global Arts Manchester and will conclude with an interactive celebration event in the park on the 9th June..

The theme of the residency has been an exploration of and a celebration of women taking an active role in shaping our communities, from the home, to the local , national and international.

I would really like to involve as many people as possible in the park on that day.

There will be  exhibition spaces, temporary sculpture in the woodland walk, an acoustic music space, a spoken word space, a planted installation , a baby sculpture play area, workshops......maybe even a table tennis tournament!!!

The idea is for as many creative people as possible living near or with a relationship with the park to come along and participate.

Hope this gives everybody a good insight into some of the things that are happening? Do let me have any questions about the event or any other areas of the residency.

Much Love,

Ekua

The Ritualistic Healing of the Suffragettes

"The suffragettes’ militant activities were shocking for their time. June Purvis describes them as ‘transgressing the gender expectations of Edwardian society’; they unconsciously drew on a history of riotous actions and ritual behaviour that Julius R. Ruff portrays as ‘almost instinctual conduct’.1 Their rebellious behaviour can be read in the context of both early modern riot and festive inversion.  

The historical popular protest drew on the symbolism of ‘the world turned upside down’ – a phrase used by the early American women suffragists and anti-slave campaigners, Sojourner Truth and Angelina Grimke, in the mid 1800s. This carnivalesque concept would flow in both directions. As Ruff says, ‘festival mocking satire and ritual violence’ could quickly turn to ‘direct hostility, mass violence, riot and rebellion’, and riots employed rituals to reorder society"

- Anna FC Smith

For the Pankhurst in the Park centenary edition of NYC based Art511 Magazine, Alexandra Arts commissioned Anna FC Smith to write this article. It’s now been published on the Art511 Mag site, read the full article here. And download the full magazine here

EMINENT DOMAIN press release

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Contact: Scotto Mycklebust, 917 697-0844, scotto@scottomycklebust.com; Gia Portfolio, 201 248-6756, gia.portfolio@gmail.com

ART511MAG EMINENT DOMAIN EXHIBITION

OPEN CALL FOR INTERSECTIONAL FEMINIST ART

(New York, NY, April 24, 2018) - ART511 Magazine is presenting EMINENT DOMAIN: a 3-day Flash Art Exhibition in the former Robert Miller space in West Chelsea. The exhibition is a curated selection of radical feminist art by female artists, eco-femmes, ghetto brujas, elders, queer/trans artists and other magical gender nomads reclaiming their rightful space in the Art World. The flash exhibition will occur July 12-14, 2018. 

Addressing the white male western canon’s discourse drawing from, exploiting, misrepresenting and objectifying female bodies and the racial/sexual Other, EMINENT DOMAIN occupies a major white box space in the heart of the commercial art world with a militantly utopic “flash flood” of new media, live performance and traditional visual art of every size and stripe, washing away old, derogative archetypes to tell another story about Art, ritual, community and the divine feminine mysteries.

EMINENT DOMAIN opens July 12th for 3 days in Chelsea, concluding with a Women In the Arts Panel comprised of a diverse cross-section of female thought leaders in the International Art World playing the fluid roles of curator, organizer/activist, gallerist, artist and arts administrator.

EMINENT DOMAIN was an impulse seeded by ART511 Magazine’s recent partnership with the Manchester, UK-based Alexandra Arts collective. This Spring, ART511 Magazine and Alexandra Arts teamed up to produce a limited edition 74-page, full-color print commission celebrating International Women’s Day and the centenary for UK women's suffrage (funded by ARTS COUNCIL ENGLAND) for the 2018 Pankhurst in the Park season.

The edition is available as a free download online here

EMINENT DOMAIN flash exhibition will be presented Thursday, July 12, 2018: Opening Reception 6-8 p.m. & after Art party from 8-10 p.m. The exhibition will be open to the public Thursday, Friday & Saturday, July 12-14, from 10-6 p.m. ART511 Magazine will host a moderated panel discussion “Women in the Arts” in the afternoon on Saturday, July 14, 2018. 

Artists interested in being considered for this show can submit work or proposals for performance online at ART511MAG.com/submissions.  

We are seeking video, installation, new and mixed media as well as painting and sculptural objects, performance, music, spoken word and new genre time-based pieces. 

*Artists are required to provide all tech for video and multimedia works

See the open call here & SUBMIT work for the exhibition @ ART511MAG.com/submissions 

Deadline to Apply: May 24, 2018

For more info contact scotto@scottomycklebust.com

OPEN CALL FOR INTERSECTIONAL FEMINIST ART

EMINENT DOMAIN: A Flash Art Exhibition in the former Robert Miller space in West Chelsea is a curated selection of radical feminist art by female artists, eco-femmes, ghetto brujas, elders, queer/trans artists and other magical gender nomads reclaiming their rightful space in the Art World. We can unpack Feminism here and define it, as critical theorist and activist bell hooks does - “a movement to end sexism, sexist exploitation and oppression” - at the roots of which is gender stereotypes and narratives perpetuated by heteronormative white male capitalist patriarchy, not men themselves. Based on the logic that the white male western canon has always revolved around a discourse drawing from, exploiting, misrepresenting and objectifying female bodies and the racial/sexual Other, EMINENT DOMAIN seizes a white box space in the heart of the commercial art world for a militantly utopic “flash flood” of new media, live performance action and artworks of every size and stripe that explode the old derogative archetypes and tell another story about Art, ritual, community and the divine feminine mysteries. Intersectional, post-colonial, queer, social-justice oriented and community-minded works of Art from folks that defy the status quo and get knee-deep in the paradigm shift will overwhelm the space and stake ground for new dialogue, new ideals and new marketplace tactics. Visionary video, installation, new and mixed media as well as painting and sculptural objects will snake through the gallery space animated by the din of performance, music, spoken word and new genre time-based pieces.  A handful of the contemporary art world’s key non-profit organizations will join us to present what they do and how you can get involved.

EMINENT DOMAIN was an impulse seeded by Art 511 Mag’s recent partnership with the Manchester, UK-based Alexandra Arts collective. This Spring, Art 511 Mag and Alexandra Arts teamed up to produce a limited edition 74 page full-color print commission celebrating International Women’s Day and the centenary for UK women's suffrage (funded by ARTS COUNCIL ENGLAND) for the 2018 Pankhurst in the Park season. The edition, available as a free download online here, features critical essays, interviews and artworks by notoriously brilliant siren radicals such as Marilyn Minter, Narcissister, Melanie Bonajo, Samantha Conlon (Bunny Collective), Go! Push Pops and Ekua Bayunu among others. Included in this curated selection is film stills from the infamous performance artist Narcissister’s first original feature film Organ Player, which reflects on the personal impact of her mother’s illness and death, also a 2018 selection at the Sundance Film Festival. Marilyn Minter’s bush painting gracing the back cover is part of a series partially inspired by a set of photos which were the result of a 2014 photography commission Minter attempted to complete for Playboy magazine. Minter’s editorial was rejected by Playboy for its depiction of women’s pubic hair au natural, and later became a book and subject of the paintings included in our special women’s issue. Meanwhile a narrative photo essay by Bunny Collective director Samantha Conlon explores the relationship between illness, the medical industrial complex and women’s agency.

As Alexandra Arts director Lotte Karlsen and Amy Clancy outline in the forward: “The art world still bows to a model created by white European men. The top three museums in the world, the British Museum, the Louvre, and The Metropolitan Museum of Art have never had female directors. Female artists earn less on average than their male counterparts and make up a fraction of the work in permanent exhibitions and auction market. It’s not enough to be good at their game or even the best; it’s rigged. So, it’s time to devise our own, not just for and by women, but in collaboration with all those whose voices, opportunities and rights are stifled.” In this spirit, EMINENT DOMAIN is a guerrilla exhibition mounted in the global art epicenter of the world which boldly carries the torch for alternative models promoting the power, equality, magic, pleasure, creative self-expression and financial freedom of women, people of color, and gender non-conformers. 

EMINENT DOMAIN opens July 12th in Chelsea followed by a Women In the Arts Panel comprised of a diverse cross-section of female thought leaders in the International Art World playing the fluid roles of curator, organizer/activist, gallerist, artist and arts administrator.

Download full ART 511 Alexandra Arts Commission here

SUBMIT work for the exhibition here

Women Hold Up Half the Sky: A Look at British Artist Ekua Bayunu

Today, April 14th, 2018, marks the launch of the 8-week interdisciplinary, community-oriented project “Women Hold up Half the Sky” led by Ekua Bayunu, this year’s Artist in Residence (AIR) for Alexandra Arts’ “Pankhurst in the Park”. In connection with the launch our partner Art511 Magazine have published on their site an article about Ekua's life and work by NYC based artist Katie Cercone. Alexandra Arts commissioned this for the Pankhurst in the Park centenary edition of Art511 Mag, which is available at our events and as a free download here

Ekua Bayunu just finished mounting her first solo exhibition at Manchester’s Chuck Gallery. Aptly titled Re:Birth, her show centers around a body of sculptural work reflecting women’s power and draws on aesthetic motifs of her African cultural heritage. After receiving a few rave reviews of her show, she was selected in February to be artist-in-residence in Alexandra Park for the final season of Alexandra Arts’ Pankhurst in the Park Program. Recently, I had the opportunity to connect with the artist personally and dive more deeply into her background and the motivations behind her trans-disciplinary, social-justice oriented creative practice - Katie Cercone 

Read the whole article here