Pankhurst in The Park

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.

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

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

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.

Tasha Whittle Commission Announcement

Alexandra Arts are thrilled to announce that interdisciplinary Manchester artist Tasha Whittle will be joining us as a commissioned artist for 2018’s Pankhurst in the Park project.

Tasha Whittle has built a reputation in the Manchester art scene as the founder of Outhouse, an Outdoor Project Space for Public Art, which operates primarily in the city’s Northern Quarter. She is a visual artist and has created the installation of murals, pop up artist shop SWAG, handcrafted homewares, jewellery and clothing, interactive pieces both alone and collaboratively. In Australia she ran an art gallery and studio space in the heart of Melbourne’s creative quarter. Tasha has worked as a VJ and a promoter in the local DIY punk scene of Norfolk before moving to Manchester. 

Whittle’s contribution to the Pankhurst in the Park initiative will involve a visual-sonic performance, performed on “Glyn”, a handmade analogue synthesiser constructed with her collaborative partner Darren Adcock. Together the pair work under as ‘Coatic Sequence’ and currently utilise drawing to manipulate the sound from Glyn. Though many elements are yet to be decided (and this is an openness and element of surprise we heartily welcome!), she will perform with Glyn to manipulate vocals, collaborate with other musicians and possibly even the audience themselves, not to mention the manipulation of sound through the live production of images. It will be a spectacle at once highly technical, whilst also being very physical, dynamic and organic.

Speaking to Tasha, her commitment to music is expressed with such passion it is moving to hear. "I find solace in art and salvation in music" she claims.  It is only recently, however that she has "felt confidence to present this publicly". This shift she attributes partly to the influence of female artist and musician friends in Manchester and Melbourne who have inspired her.  "It's fun to make sounds and work out how something is created" in her collaborative work in Coatic Sequence both members contributions are of equal value and significance. "I'm enjoying including sound into my practice"

Whittle is drawn to the Pankhurst in the Park project in part because of its celebration of the Women’s Suffrage Movement, though she notes women’s struggles with inequality and oppression still persist today.

“The older I get the more I see the inequality of the systems around us, it frustrates me. I am so thankful to all the women before me who fought and pulled women up to the platform where we currently stand. I want to become a part of that climb, to raise ourselves up further than the sky.”

It is a perspective that binds itself well with the ultimate goal of Pankhurst in the Park, to tackle the lack of representation of women in the art world itself by taking an opportunity to joyously celebrate the talent and ingenuity local female artists have to offer.

See Tasha's Artist profile in our centenary edition of NYC based Art 511 Mag here

Congratulations to Moss Side artist Ekua Bayunu

2018 marks the centenary of women’s right to the vote. Today, Alexandra Arts’ Pankhurst in the Park, is proud to honour this historically significant moment by announcing that the position of Artist in Residence for Pankhurst in the Park, 2018, has been awarded to local artist Ekua Bayunu, who will be taking up residence at Alexandra Park between the 14th April and the 9th June.

April 14th, 2018, will mark 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”. An introductory artist-led talk will be held with Bayuna, who will be speaking at the Alexandra Park Pavilion at 2pm. Followed by a women's artists space session, organised in association with the Global Arts Manchester, a group co-founded by Bayunu to ‘encourage people to participate in the visual arts and learn more about diversity.’

The 8-week project will incorporate elements of sculpture and film, and will include the participation of a diverse range of members of the local community; who can get involved with workshops held at Alexandra Park’s Chorlton Lodge and Depot. Dates will be listed shortly.

On June 9th, 2018, to celebrate the close of Ekua Bayunu’s 8-week AIR project, “Women Hold up Half the Sky”, you are invited to participate in a day of events presenting and reflecting on the work. The celebration will host happenings all around the park, all culminating in a closing party at the Pavilion café.

The project draws from a central theme of the Pankhurst in the Park project, the legacy of the suffrage movement and the special significance of Alexandra Park in this history. Emmeline Pankhurst lived just on the borders of the park and 2018 marks not only the centenary of the right of women (over 30) to vote. It will also be a hundred and ten years since thousands of suffragettes marched in Alexandra Park.

Bayuna’s work will expand beyond local concerns to build on the themes of global women’s leadership and consider culture, the arts and creativity as tools for active citizenship of central significance.

Already with significant experience as an artist, Bayunu moved to Manchester in 1993 and has since then produced several high-profile works around the city (“Sensory Garden” in Hulme Park, “Anansi Mosaics” at Royce Primary School), worked in outreach support at Manchester’s Contact Theatre between 2001 and 2006, worked from her studio at Artwork Atelier in Salford, and organised exhibitions celebrating Black History Month in collaboration with Global Arts Manchester in 2017. Ekua started 2018 with her solo exhibition titled “Re:Birth” at Manchester’s Chuck Gallery. She has lived and worked as an artist and tutor with a keen sense of community participation for several decades.

 Follow Ekua @ekuabay & @globalartsmcr #WomenHoldUpHalfTheSky

Image credit - Rod Leon

Arts Award

Pankhurst in the Park Arts Award 2016-17

It took us a whole year to complete our Pankhurst in the Park Arts Award pilot, with students from year 4-6 at St Mary’s Primary school in Moss Side. Although It took much longer then anticipated, It’s been so worth it tho, because of our young student artist. Who designed and made some really funny, cool and poignant t-shirts. We also found time to laugh, dance and write poetry. 

“If the mind is a key,
to all of creation.
It can destroy or heat,
by input of information.
What control do we have?
Plotting our life’s direction...
It is a simple changing,
Our belief and intention.”
— Poem by Manal, year 6

On the day, they left school for summer holidays, we had the Arts Award certificate ceremony. We are so proud of their creative achievements and wish them all the best. 

Bunny Collective in International New York Times

This years, Pankhurst in the Park Artist in residency Bunny Collective is making waves in the art world, with a full page interview by Ginanne Brownell Mitic in the International New York Times. In connection with their Frieze art fair edition. Both in print and online. We could not be happier for them!

Lotte Karlsen solo exhibition 'Sound of Silence' in New York

Press Release

Shimmering Sound of Silence travels across the Atlantic

On Thursday 8 September, Norwegian Artist, Lotte Karlsen will officially open her solo exhibition 'Sound of Silence' in West Chelsea Art studios, New York City, as the final installment of an arts programme connecting female artists across the Atlantic.

Highlights:

  • Manchester (UK) based collective, Alexandra Arts, celebrates the final installment of Pankhurst in the Park 2016 arts programme in New York City.
  • The solo show entitled 'Sound of Silence' will showcase a glass installation  - by Norwegian artist, Lotte Karlsen.
  • The pop-up exhibition will launch on Thursday 8 September 6-8pm at Studio 511, West Chelsea Arts Building, West 26th St. New York, NY, and runs until 24 September.
  • The exhibition will be housed inside a small white cube nestled inside artist Scotto Mycklebust's studio - executive producer of the Public Art Squad Project. Visitors will have exclusive access to this private artist studio, which is based in the heart of West Chelsea's Arts district.
  • Sarah Gavron, director of award-winning 2015 film, Suffragette, was one of several female artists to have taken part in the Pankhurst in the Park programme, which has also involved New York artists collectives Go! Push Pops and Legacy Fatale.

With an exhibition housed inside a white cube entitled ‘Sound of Silence’, Lotte Karlsen returns to her specialist medium of glass for what will be her first solo show in New York, to create a site specific work which explores and deals with her relationship to her own mortality.

Lotte Karlsen, Artist, founder of Alexandra Arts and curator of Pankhurst in the Park, commented:

“For this final installment of Pankhurst in the Park 2016 in New York City, I’m delighted to have my work showcased in the heart of the west side of Chelsea; NYC’s premier contemporary-art district.

 'Sound of Silence' is an opportunity for me to return to the beginning of my career and specialist medium - glass - which I feel best reflects the fragility of the subject matter. I felt it was time for me to delve deeper and create work that deals with some of the more difficult and darker aspects of my life but through a medium that quite literally shines a light on the more positive outcomes.”

Curated by the Manchester-based, artist-led collective, Alexandra Arts, Pankhurst in the Park 2016 is inspired by Alexandra Park - a Victorian Park in Manchester - and it’s rich historical connection to the Suffrage Movement, whose iconic leader, Emmeline Pankhurst, was born and bred yards from the Park in the neighbouring Moss Side Estate.

This exhibition, Sound of Silence, marks the end of the Pankhurst in the Park 2016 programme, which aims to empower the local communities around Alexandra Park and beyond through engagement with their local environment and social history, and to promote the wealth of talented female artists in Manchester and beyond by providing a platform for their work.

'Sound of Silence' represents a collaboration with Lotte Karlsen, West Chelsea artist Scotto Mycklebust, and artist and feminist writer Katie Cercone, co-founder of NYC radical artist duo Go! Push Pops. Go! Push Pops were artists in residence for Pankhurst in the Park 2014.

'Sound of Silence' will celebrate its opening on Thursday the 8th of September, from 6-8pm, with a public launch and drinks reception. The exhibition is free and open to the public from 8th - 24th September 2016. Opening times are 12-6pm from Tuesday to Saturday, and 6-8pm on Thursdays.  In conjunction with the exhibition, on Thursday the 22nd of September, a new online-based magazine, called ART 511, will also be launched.

For more information, visit: www.alexandra-arts.org.uk.

ENDS

For further information, images and interviews please contact:

Amy Clancy

press@alexandra-arts.org.uk | www.alexandra-arts.org.uk | @AlexArtsMCR   #pankhurstinthepark   

 NOTES TO EDITORS

 Lotte Karlsen

Lotte Karlsen FRSA, born 1974 in Hammerfest, Norway is a multidisciplinary artist working fluidly across the boundaries of fine art, social practice, sculpture and craft. Currently living and working in Manchester, UK. Karlsen earned an early degree in glass blowing from the world renowned Kosta Glass School in Sweden's Crystal Kingdom. Later obtaining an MA in Art as Environment at Manchester Institute for Research and Innovation in Art and Design (MIRIAD), her work in recent years has blurred the lines of conceptualism, artivism and craft. She has exhibited her work in London, Milan, Tokyo, Seoul, Barcelona, Paris, New York and throughout Scandinavia.

http://www.synchronizedliquid.com/#lotte-karlsen

West Chelsea Artist Studios

'Sound of Silence' will be exhibited inside a small white cube inside artist Scotto Mycklebust's studio, which is located in West Chelsea Artist studio complex in New York. The building houses galleries, multiple artists and art dealers, and resides close to the far west side of Chelsea — the city of New York's premier contemporary-art district — which is home to high-profile spaces including Gagosian Gallery and Gladstone Gallery.

http://westchelseaartists.com/

Alexandra Arts

Founded in 2010 by Norwegian Artist, Lotte Karlsen, Alexandra Arts is an artist-led collective based in Manchester's Alexandra Park. The collective aims to empower the local community around the park through engagement with their local environment and social history, and to promote the wealth of talented female artists in Manchester, and beyond, by providing a platform for their work. In 2014, Alexandra Arts established Pankhurst in the Park to highlight Alexandra Park’s rich historical connection to the Suffrage Movement and its inspiring socio-political heritage, which has until now has left no trace locally. 

Pankhurst in the Park 2016

Pankhurst in the Park 2016 is an Arts Council England and Manchester City Council funded, public programme of artist commissions, an international artist in residency and outreach and educational programme, which took place in Manchester from March – May, 2016 and will arrive in New York between August - September, 2016.

Curated by the Manchester-based, artist-led collective, Alexandra Arts, Pankhurst in the Park is inspired by Alexandra Park’s rich historical connection to the Suffrage Movement, whose iconic leader, Emmeline Pankhurst, was born and bred only yards from the Park in the neighbouring Moss Side estate. The 2016 programme, builds on the hugely successful events of 2014/15.

http://www.alexandra-arts.org.uk/pankhurst-in-the-park/

Observing the unobserved with Bunny Collective

Take a peek at the latest exhibition from the all-girl art collective – with I-D

“What We Are Doing is the new exhibition from all-girl art movement, the Bunny Collective, which aims to elevate the insignificant and shine light on all that is disregarded within our consumerist society. The title, taken from a quote by American political theorist, Hannah Arendt, invites artists to consider what it means to emphasise aspects of the human condition that frequently go unobserved. Having completed a two month residency at Manchester’s Alexandra Park, working with local artists and youth groups, Bunny Collective will stage their final exhibition as part of the #PankhurstinthePark Spring Showdown at the park this Saturday. ”
— Tish Weinstock, I-D

See the full article here

What We Are Doing - Bunny Collective

 

After a two month residency at Alexandra Park for Pankhurst in the Park 2016, during which time they worked with school children, artists, youth groups, and many others, Bunny Collective will reveal their final exhibition titled 'What We Are Doing'. Set in Alexandra Park's woodland, the Bunnies will lead guided tours around their exhibition, before interviewing Sarah Gavron, Director of the award-winning 2015 film, Suffragette, as part of the ‪#‎PankhurstinthePark‬ Spring Showdown with Bunny Collective & Suffragette Director, Sarah Gavron. We can't wait!

Join us and them, this Saturday (7 May), from 2pm onwards. All events are free. However, booking is required for the talk with Sarah Gavron (register via EventBrite) and only a few tickets remain.

Exhibiting Artists: Aoife O Dwyer, Camilla Frankl-Slater, Charlotte Cullen, Eleanor Cully, Hannah Le Feuvre, Riika Enne, Sasha Cresdee, Saffa Khan and Samantha Conlon

What We Are Doing - text by Kathryn O'Regan

Taking the title from a quote by Hannah Arendt – "What I propose, therefore, is very simple: it is nothing more than to think what we are doing" – the exhibition, which will be located in the park’s fairy-tale woodland setting, invites the participating artists to consider what it means to emphasise aspects of the human condition that frequently go unobserved, or those acts which are discounted, intangible, insubstantial or fleeting. In particular, What we are doing will hope to explore Arendt’s distinction between labour and work.

For Arendt, labour encompasses the elements of human existence that are characterised by their ephemerality and that which are not physically quantifiable. In Arendt’s view, life depends on these humble acts of labour which do not leave behind a material trace, yet are wholly necessary for human survival. On the other hand, for Arendt, work involves the physical production of consumable things. Work is characterised by its permanence, artificiality, durability and reliance on manmade tools for production.

The goal of What we are doing will be to shine a light on that which may be deemed insignificant or disregarded within a contemporary society that privileges the commercial, the consumable, the physical and the permanent.

Like Bunny Collective’s previous exhibitions, notions of correspondence, connection and collaboration will be paramount. What we are doing asks the artists to consider what these concepts might mean in terms of Arendt’s labour and work divide; industry; history; heritage and political action.

Image © Samantha Conlon, Bunny Collective

Where to find us and how

Where and how to find us

‘Tea Hive’ Pavilion-  The nearest park entrance is on Demesne Road, where it meets Smalldale Avenue. Satnav postcode M16 8PJ https://goo.gl/maps/cJBaAURvkWk

The 85 bus stops along Alexandra Road South where it crosses Demesne Road. https://goo.gl/maps/7Ddhv3RDWxr Bus 101, 104, 015 and 109 stops by the Shell garage on Princess Parkway https://goo.gl/maps/vJDbJDHRsfF2

Woodland exhibition area – Nearest entrance to the woodland is on Alexandra Road South, opposite Range Road. Satnav postcode M16 8ER. https://goo.gl/maps/PNWvvQBRDJ82

Bus 85 does three stops along the parks boarder on Alexandra Road South, get off at the second of three. Coming from town or Chorlton. https://goo.gl/maps/omg1eNdJs3v

Chorlton Lodge – the Parks Lodge house is located on the corner of Smalldale Avenue and Claremont Road. Satnav postcode M16 7JH https://goo.gl/maps/9it2NDv2MAJ2   

Bus 101,104, 105 and 109 stops on Princess Road, where it meets Claremont Road https://goo.gl/maps/D8ZASZRkndE2

The official address for Alexandra Park is 180 Russell Street, M16 7JL Manchester https://goo.gl/maps/QN38NgZVvcn