Cruel and Unusual: Prelude to Forgotten Spaces
The smallest dungeon cell featured in this series of work is from Chester city walls, and, as with all of the dungeons featured, is hidden deep underground. There is an interesting contemporary account of the size of this cell by someone who visited it as a gruesome tourist attraction, long after it was last used. They described it as a small space, carved out of the rock to fit the dimensions of a man. It had room for the head, and became wider to fit the shoulders and chest. When the door was closed on the person inside they had no room to sit or lie down.
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Summer Snow. Winter Skies. First Day of Spring.
Being forced to consider how certain events have made us feel allows us a way to deal with and potentially make peace with our past. For Khan the process of setting up a performance necessarily means setting up an air of disquiet in which to work, for him this is the past colliding with the present.
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From Infinity to Beyond . . .
“A Study of Aperiodic Tiling With Special Reference to the 3rd Dimension” underscored how the curation of the space is capable of moving quickly, following up on previous work and exhibitions and providing a valuable mechanism for artists to explore themes over time.
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Living With It
I love having the mind of the artist around, and the work ethic; contrary to what lie you may have been fed, there is a lot of hard slog behind what may be described as ‘ I could do that’. I especially love that a space in my house can be transformed and I can venture down with glass of wine in hand and feel that transformation for the first time, along with both friends and strangers.
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The Way You Are is The Way You Are (The Soft Rains of England)
" I come out of a different frame, that frame relates to stories that don’t exist in the neat tropes, themes and intellectual and historical properties of what we may like to call the dominant culture." Sohail Khan. Cape Point. Gambia. Inscribe Literary Festival 2008 prior to performing his seminal Live Art work " Who is the Ninka Nanka?"
" Artists as special kinds of people?... we have to rid of all that crap."
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In Conversation: Phill Hopkins
I have learned to value and cherish my playfulness and to recognise where it comes from. I have to guard and protect my boy inside me as he is the driver of my creativity. I am naturally very playful… when I was a small boy I made things all the time and really nothing has changed.
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Beyond Photography
RightNow Studio launched this project to provide a space for young artists to showcase their work in the emerging field of post photography. “ Beyond Photography features 15 artists who really challenge the limits of photography today”, explains co-director Ryan Blackwell.
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Underneath the Arches
Thinking back, it’s actually quite refreshing that we only ever thought about starting our own thing from scratch as opposed to joining an already established studio group somewhere.
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Pleasure
Growing up by the seaside, there is a constant reminder of a physical corner you cannot turn, the ocean, which creates an awareness of ones own mortality.
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Newsletter | January 2018
Happy New Year to everyone. We at BasementArtsProject hope you all had a lovely Christmas and hope to have the pleasure of your company again at some point in 2018.
As we bring the 2017 programme to a close with the final month of the current exhibition Jill and Josh and their Dead Petz, we can also announce elements of this years forthcoming programme
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