I have been invited to take part in an exciting new project organised by North East based artists Catherine Bertola and Jo Coupe. I will be taking part in the first discussion day on the 25th March with a focus on time. Here is some information about the project -
"3 degrees of Separation is a series of three one-day discussion events, taking place in Spring 2011 and organised by Jo Coupe and Catherine Bertola, both artists based in Gateshead.
Each event will have a different emphasis, based on commonalities within our work. The ‘focus’ for each of the three events is:
Time exploring the relationship that works have with time, in relation to how the work is experienced, how work changes and evolves over time and the association with history and a sense of mortality
Materiality looking at the importance of materials and process in the making and in the meaning of the work, potentially touching on ideas of beauty, craft and the importance of authorship in the work
Site and Context examining how works are developed in response to ‘sites’, from specific places to the use of more personal and found objects in the work, and how works is transformed by the context in which it is experienced
The selection of artists is based on the principle of degrees of separation – there being apparently only 7 degrees of separations between any two people on Earth. For each event, we will start by inviting one artist each from the region, someone with whom we feel some affinity or resonance with our own practice in relation to the focus of the event. These two artists will then be asked to invite an artist on the same premise, and finally that artist will be asked to do the same. This chain connection will create three diverse groupings of eight artists, brought together purely on the basis of their work. By adding an element of chance, we hope to cut through different generations, geographical boundaries and existing networks of artists in the North East."
