 Coal Salt
Tin - 2004 |
 Strictly
Press Arts Release:Visual artists explore Britain’s post-industrial heritage On the road with CST: Newlyn 05/04, Newcastle 06/04 Leeds 09/04 The current buzzword influencing council leaders in towns and cities up and down the UK seems to be ‘regeneration’. Creating the opportunity for decision makers to put the financial colour back into economic cheeks and to re-inject dimension back into communities who are trying to adjust to economic change. The process of regeneration enables regions to reinvent their civic character and to create a post-industrial essence. It sees the transition of coal mining into leisure and retail and shipyards turning into travel and tourism. Three artists groups from Cornwall (PALP - Penwith Artist-Led projects), Leeds (East Street Arts - ESA) and Newcastle (Multiplus) have creatively united to commission new art works which explore how ideas and location are affected by economic change. They are collaborating under the artistic banner of CST (Coal Salt Tin), to communicate the economic transition from industrial to post-industrial 21st century Britain where knowledge has replaced materials as the basis for economic and social development. Contemporary venues such as Tate Modern in London and the BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art in Gateshead are both housed in converted industrial buildings and stand as icons of this “cultural shift”. (Full statements from each artist can be found on pages 6 & 7 of the feature release). |
| CST will gather creative momentum when
travelling between three locations from May to October 2004, starting
at Newlyn Art Gallery on 1st May running for one week (turn to page three for a detailed preface of this event).
The five commissioned artists are: Roxane Permar (May ’04: Newlyn Art Gallery, Cornwall); Stefan Gec (June ’04: Tyne Bridge Tower – Newcastle upon Tyne); Matthew Shelton (CST Newspaper Leeds – ESA); Les Biggs (9th Sept – 7th Oct ’04: Leeds - ESA); and The Caravan Gallery (all three venues), will produce work which will explore the phenomenon of transformation, drawn from unearthing the ethics behind forgotten histories. They will work in locations which have strong associations with industries which are also essential to the economic development of Britain’s industrial base. CST will create artistic networking opportunities and develop new audiences for their site-specific work. Each regional project will deliver a symposium or ‘round table discussion’ event, using the vehicle of dialogue to put across the various CST core themes, objectives and concepts. The discussions will consider how art contributes to social, economic and environmental change. They will help promote recognition of what artists contribute to the economic development of each region. The dialogue will bring together a range of professionals whose work is crucial to the process of regeneration, such as architects, developers, councillors and planners.  The CST project has enjoyed backing from: Arts Council England’s National Touring Programme, Leeds City Council, South West Arts Board, Alias (Arts Council England, Yorkshire and Newcastle City Council – pending application). |
| The Caravan Gallery: A diminutive mustard coloured caravan will be the lynchpin linking the three CST venues together. Jan Williams and Chris Teasdale will tow their specially adapted caravan, fully decorated with its gallery-esque white interior walls and beech floors, from their Portsmouth base along the 3000-mile arts journey. The Caravan Gallery is the perfect setting for an evolving exhibition of drawings, photographs and specially made postcards reflecting 21st Century Britain. |
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 The Caravan Gallery: Liverpool Biennial 2002 |
| The duo encourages people to have a greater awareness
of their surroundings to question what is going on around them and to
see things in a new light. The Caravan Gallery will be in situ at all
three venues, absorbing the atmosphere and creating an exhibition conjured
up by the public delights. Visitors and contributors to the gallery are
encouraged to complete a survey about the issues raised in their work
and the information collated contributes to the ever-growing travelling
archive. Chris Teasdale describes the galleries’ work as ‘distressingly perceptive and beautifully absurd’. He adds: “The Caravan Gallery is like a chameleon, being able to infiltrate and adapt to a whole range of otherwise inaccessible situations. It’s a people-friendly magnet with an undeniable novelty value attracting people from all walks of life, many of whom would otherwise never visit a gallery or look at art.” CST Tabloid: Matthew Shelton will produce an affectionate but highly political tabloid style publication, which will be distributed at each CST site. He describes the work as a ‘blend of fact gathering and play’ and that the content ‘is what it is’. |
| Newlyn Art Gallery (1st – 8th May 2004): The first leg of CST will kick off at Newlyn Art Gallery commencing on Saturday 1st May with a public participatory work entitled “1100 Rosebuds” led by Shetland-based American artist Roxane Permar and in association with PALP (Penwith Artist-Led Projects). PALP is an artist-led, non-profit making organisation in West Cornwall, committed to creating a professional arts forum, research, development and exhibition opportunities. They aim to create links and facilitate exchanges with professional artists and artist run groups, benefiting both the artists and the local community. The CST project represents a celebration of Newlyn’s industrial heritage achievements and harnesses the attributes of historical figures that sacrificed so much to save people’s civil liberty. |
 Newlyn Art Gallery plays a pivotal role in the town’s community, providing
a creative venue for people to experience the arts and is strongly
involved with the planning and consultation process for Newlyn’s regeneration.
The weeklong event invites local community groups and other members
of the public to join together and produce a collection of work symbolising
Newlyn’s rich sea-faring roots. The fishing industry has long provided
the area with its key source of economy, and in recent times has had
to adapt to the ever-changing tide of the European fish market. The
artwork draws upon the historic Newlyn clearances and the ‘heroic endeavour’
of The Rosebud, a fishing vessel that travelled from Newlyn to Westminster
in 1937 crewed by local fishermen carrying a petition to Parliament
signed by nearly 1100 householders. The petition voiced the residents’
plight in trying to halt the demolition of local houses that had been
condemned as ‘slums’. 67 years after the residents’ stance, the issue
of affordable housing is paramount for a community investigating the
process of reinvention. |
| The practical focus of Newlyn’s CST project will be
to produce 1100 tin rosebuds, using the material that has played a significant
role in
the industrial history of Cornwall. The project will evolve over the
seven days, progressively filling the gallery with a sense of communal
endeavour created by people’s shared stories and memories. Roxane Permar has sourced various different elements associated with Cornish life to provide inspiration behind the work, and has knitted together topics including: agriculture; maritime; landscape; literature; drama; and industrial archaeology. Roxane bonds the inspirational mix together with the facet of tin, a material used to package salt-preserved pilchards in their transit to different countries across the world. She describes the work as a ‘socially engaged practice’ and finds affinity between the maritime communities of Cornwall and her current Shetland home, especially in the identities of dialect. Roxane said: “People have been a great inspiration to me in preparation for CST, either people I’ve talked to, or people brought to life through my reading. Their Cornish spirit has inspired me; in particular, the story of the Rosebud. I’ve come to realise the importance of issues related to the relationship between history and memory, identity and place. I want the work to use and evoke processes of memory and commemoration, reinvention and regeneration.” |
| The Regeneration of Newlyn: A good
example of how the arts and regeneration has fused together as part
of Newlyn’s future is the Newlyn Fish Industry
Forum. It encompasses the fishing industry, business community and residents
of Newlyn and has ambitious plans for the regeneration of the port. The
action plan “Regeneration of a Cornish Fishing Port – Newlyn” describes
radical schemes to upgrade the port and to attract visitors and new industries
to the area. The plan is to create a modern fishing port with the facilities to support a thriving fishing industry for the 21st century. It also incorporates and works closely with artistic and cultural strands within the village and aims to diversify further into the water sport, leisure and tourist industries to provide new job opportunities and secure the future of the area and its fishing heritage. The action plan drawn up for the Newlyn Fish Industry Forum involves harbour development, affordable housing, community facilities and transport improvements. It is hoped that the scheme will safeguard 750 jobs directly connected with the fishing industry, creating more both in fishing and with the move into leisure and arts industries. Tony Woodhams, Fisheries Project Officer said: “Newlyn Fish Industry
Forum is delighted to learn about this exciting project, the artistic
community is an important part of the decision making process of the
Forum and is acknowledged to be one of the main contributors of the
regeneration strategy. The Rosebud has a special place in the heart
of Newlyn and represents the very essence of the free and independent
Cornish Sprit.”
|
| On tour with CST in 2004: Watch this space… Newcastle and Leeds. Newcastle - June 2004 (exact date tbc): Multiplus will play host to multi-media artist Stefan Gec, as he aims to evoke through a sound work a period in Newcastle’s recent history. ‘Warehouse’ will take place inside the landmark North Tower of the Tyne Bridge, which opened in 1928. Its iconic form spans the river connecting Newcastle and Gateshead, its arched frame is recognised the world over. Multiplus was set up in November 2001 and their projects include site-specific interventions in conventional art galleries and retail environments for public-based projects. Multiplus aims to create opportunities for artists and artist led groups to collaborate regionally and nationally. Leeds - 9th September – 7th October 2004: East Street Arts (ESA) will house Les Biggs’ integrated exhibition and installation that explores a museum setting to display tools and equipment worn and cared for during their useful life (Modified Hand Tools from the Wunderkammer Collection). The exhibition will take place in ESA's newly opened project space at Patrick Studios in Leeds. The building itself has just gone through a regeneration process from parochial hall to contemporary visual art space and CST is an appropriate first project to be housed at the venue. ESA is an organisation that aims to focus on providing creative space, opportunities, services and resources to visual artists and those working with artists to ensure the development of a strong network and infrastructure. CST Action: For further details about CST and the various community events please contact Karen Watson of ESA on 07967136142, alternatively use the ‘media contacts’ section to source the relevant individual you require. |
Garry Smith |
Strictly Press | (0191) 2461614 or 07899910823 |
| Susan Bleakley | PALP | (01736) 871797 |
| Roxane Permar | Visual artist | (01595) 859202 or 07711 157451 |
| Karen Watson | ESA | 07967136142 |
| George Heslop | Multiplus | (0191) 4897403 or 07712309107 |
| Newlyn media opportunity: The media are invited to attend the first
CST project and have the opportunity to talk with the Newlyn CST team
and witness first-hand the community aspect of the project. To arrange
the possibility to interview / photograph the CST team please contact
Garry Smith of Strictly Press on (0191) 2461614. There will also be the
chance for the media to attend the ‘round table’ discussion on Wednesday
5 May at the Newlyn Gallery (19:30). Future press releases: CST June 2004: Newcastle – Warehouse (press release date May 2004). CST October 2004: Leeds – Les Biggs & Matthew Shelton (press release date September 2004). CST artist statements: These statements are summaries of how CST artists are approaching the event. (A disk is available on request with all of the artists full CV’s and biographies, alternatively they can be e-mailed directly to your computer, call Strictly Press on 0191 2461614 for further details). The Caravan Gallery: The Caravan Gallery is a gallery in a converted caravan run by Jan Williams and Chris Teasdale, artists on a mission to record the ordinary and extraordinary details of life in 21st Century Britain. They are particularly drawn to the curious transformations that occur when places are forced to reinvent themselves e.g. a redundant public convenience reincarnated as a phone showroom. ‘Traditional farmhouse cakes’ are rustled up on anonymous industrial estates next to motorway exits to cater for ‘the way we live today’. For CST The Caravan Gallery will be making a special study of Newlyn, Leeds and Newcastle as part of a national tour. The artists will produce location-specific exhibitions of photographs, drawings and custom made postcards based on their observations in each area. Visitors to The Caravan Gallery in each location can participate in the project by filling in an unusually entertaining survey about life in Britain today. Stefan Gec (CST Newcastle upon Tyne - June): Title: ‘Warehouse’. The work I am proposing aims to evoke through a sound work a period in Newcastle’s recent history. ‘Warehouse’ will take place inside the landmark north tower of the Tyne Bridge, which opened in 1928. Its iconic form spans the river connecting Newcastle and Gateshead, its arched frame is recognised the world over. The bridge neatly symbolises Newcastle’s once powerful industrial standing when the River Tyne was full of ships from all over the world and a huge work force was employed along its quayside and in the many coalmines in the area. Within a few years of the bridge’s construction, the city’s strong national and international position changed. The advent of the 1930’s brought mass unemployment - its devastating effect on the city lasted many decades into the future. Because of this, memories of the 1920’s are tinged with nostalgia and sentimentality, and the 1930’s with ‘the depression’. It is this sense of nostalgia and retrospection that I’m interested in exploring within the work. I am proposing to play popular music from the era surrounding the Tyne Bridge’s construction and to charge the space with the sounds of lyrics and tunes, now loaded with a poignant resonance, that once filled the ether echoing around homes and dance halls over 70 years ago. By punctuating the space in this manner the merging of music, history and architecture will, I hope, energise this hidden yet major industrial space, its forceful presence a witness to the unfolding changes around it for over seventy years. Les Biggs (CST Leeds Sept 9th – Oct 7th): Modified Hand Tools from the Wunderkammer Collection. “Every image of the past that is not recognised by the present as one of its own concerns threatens to disappear irretrievably.” A thesis on the Philosophy of History by Walter Benjamin. The Wunderkammer Foundation Museum was instituted to “collect, catalogue and archive ordinary and typical objects of everyday life as well as more rare and exotic items.” This has led to a vast, and mostly unseen, collection of specimens – each one charged with its own individual history, from a two hundred million year old fossilized ammonite to a 45rpm vinyl single of Marvin Gaye’s “Too Busy Thinking About My Baby.” The CST exhibition in Leeds, takes as its source the museum’s extensive hand tool collection, focussing particularly on those artefacts that show evidence of adaptation or modification. Matthew Shelton (CST - Leeds): An island of coal surrounded by fish? No longer: The coal (of which we have hundreds of years worth) is sterile without vast investment in training and equipment, it’s continued inaccessibility engineered through policy and assured through corporate complacency. This work for CST is a blend of fact gathering and play. I make that which I would like to see: It is what it is. It is moved and Shaken by a desire to visualise a sense of place and a social continuum. It is also nurtured by a guilty sense of non-participation; the recent travails of mining communities and the disaster of the Great Strike did not pass me by, but were experienced at a distance (the full extent of which I made little attempt to travel). Links: · For further information about PALP (Penwith Artist-Led Projects) please visit www.palp.co.uk · For further information about Newlyn Fish Industry Forum please visit www.newlyn.org · Further information and images from The Caravan Gallery visit www.thecaravangallery.co.uk · For further information on Multiplus projects: www.multiplus.org.uk www.saltburnartistsprojects.co.uk |