#vote100

‘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.

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

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