Hannah Palmer Solo Show

16th – 21st May 10-6pm
Location: Gallery & Project Space

Up and coming artist Hannah Palmer presents a series of hand printed photographs in her latest solo exhibition.

With a bold mixture of both colour and black and white landscapes and black and white portraits she explores the lines and shapes created in both natural landscapes and the human face. Hannah has brought together images that would not usually be displayed side by side to bring a new perspective to the delineations between landscape and portrait. Hannah still uses the original art of film photography and prints all images herself in the darkroom. Although a much more time consuming method, she believes that the results are worth it, creating not only better quality but a more personal and artistic prints. Hannah also works from a studio in Fulham where she enjoys taking portraits for a wide range of clients.

External links: www.hannahpalmerphotography.co.uk

Alien Nation: The art of blending in.

15th March – 29th April 2011
Location: Gallery & Project Space

Additional events: Literary Evening, April 14th
M1GRATION: March of the Aliens, April 15th featuring PIKY and Sheffield bands The Tivoli and The Cartels

Alien Nation, a month-long exhibition including art, music and more, will take place this spring at Great Western Studios.

Inspired by George Mikes’s book How to be an Alien and curated by Soapbox Events, Alien Nation is a one-off group show by a collective of London-based artists, photographers, writers and musicians.

Alien Nation celebrates the way George Mikes brilliantly captures the extraordinary transition that many people experience when first moving to London. From the weather to the incomprehensible social niceties, there’s a lot to adjust to; in spite of these things, foreigners and other ‘aliens’ continue to flock here.

A number of high-profile artists have produced their take on George Mikes’s influential book. Their inspiration has come from a chapter, scene, sentence or single phrase within it – and their pieces reflect the individual’s take on the topic of being an ‘alien in London.’

The collection includes: painting, photography, poetry, murals, furniture and a unique collection of illustrations from the Central Illustration Agency (CIA) who have been invited to visually recreate the book.

Whether you’re an alien or not, the capital’s cultural diversity affects us all. This exhibition will be a celebration of that diversity – and the community of aliens who call London home.

External links:

Exhibition review on The Guardian
www.soapboxevents.co.uk

International Women’s Day Talk

8th March 2011
Location: Gallery & Project Space

As part of International Woman’s Day on 8th March 2011, Great Western Studios will celebrate with a talk with three woman artists using three different media. Painter, Kate Bright; video and printmaker Suky Best and photographer Bettina von Kameke will take part in an informal talk, looking at their practice and answering questions about their methods and ideas.

External links:

www.katebright.net
www.sukybest.com
www.vonkameke.com

Wormwood Scrubs: Photographs by Bettina von Kameke

15th February – 11th March 2011
Location: Gallery & Project Space

Great Western Studio’s is pleased to announce a new and exciting set of exhibitions, talks and screenings starting with Bettina von Kameke’s photographs of Wormwood Scrubs. Her work explores enclosed communities and in these her most recent photographs, she investigates a community of male prisoners in HMP Wormwood Scrubs. Observing the daily rituals of the inmates, she was keen to present the human aspects of their everyday routine, common to all human life, both outside and inside the prison, rather than portraying them in the traditional way as victims of society.

This is a collection of photographs, which looks at every day rituals with an investigating yet sensitive eye. As she says about her work: “I question and explore the interior and exterior conditions, means and forces, which make a communal life sustainable. My photographs disclose the individual aesthetics of an enclosed community, which I carefully observe through the viewfinder of the camera. The camera, either still or moving, creates a distance but at the same time allows me to enter the subjects’ space. The camera functions as an interface between myself and the world outside.”

Von Kameke’s previous work includes sailing with 31 Burmese merchant seamen from England to South Africa. She has also taken photographs of Benedictine Nuns in the Tyburn Tree Convent in London and travelled with the famous Circus Humberto through the Czech Republic. During the autumn of 2008 she was invited to an artist’s residency at Christ Church College in Oxford. Her photographic project involved the production of 101 portraits of the academics, the domestic staff, the choristers, the clerks as well as the Cathedral staff, which form the Christ Church Community.

External links: www.vonkameke.com

Open Studios

4th & 5th December 2010
Location: Whole Building

Join us for 2 days of Open Studios by resident and guest exhibitors. Meet and buy from the artists and makers, explore this unique concentration of talent spanning the creative industries…

Over the weekend:

80+ open studios
Curated exhibitions over 2 floors
Contemporary sculpture
Christmas art market
Children’s art trail
Café open both days

Great Western Studios holds its Open Studios events twice a year; once at the beginning of December and again in either May or June. These events are the only occasions when the entire building is open to the general public. They provide an opportunity for the artists, designers and craftspeople within the studios to invite their friends, colleagues and clients to see their work in the environment in which it is made. Our Open Studios events attract a wide variety of visitors; from clued-up design aware individuals to people from galleries and arts institutions.

Outside of Open Studios we are able to arrange group tours of the studios for individuals or companies that are interested in meeting the artists, craftspeople and designers within the building

Battlespace – Unrealities of War

9 – 30th November 2010
Location: Gallery & Project Space

Battlespace, an exhibition of photographs from Afghanistan and Iraq that brings together the work of twenty photojournalists around the world, comes to London this November.

Photographs by Andrew Cutraro, Ashley Gilbertson, Balazs Gardi, Ben Lowy, Christoph Bangert, Eros Hoagland, Ghaith Abdul Ahad, Guy Calaf, Jason Howe, Jehad Nga, Lucian Read, Luke Wolagiewicz, Moises Saman, Petervan Agtmael, Rita Leistner, Stefan Zaklin, Stephanie Sinclair, Teru Kuwayama and Yuri Kozyrev.

Battlespace: The environment, factors and conditions, which must be understood to successfully apply combat power, protect the force, or complete the mission. This includes the air, land, sea, space, and the included enemy and friendly forces, facilities, weather, terrain, the electromagnetic spectrum, and information environment within the operational areas and areas of interest. US Department of Defense.

The exhibition presents an unsanitised view of the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan to a public that has been shielded from disturbing images of war. Battlespace questions the perceptions, agendas, and narratives of the military and the media, and attempts to offer an unfiltered account from a group of photographers who saw it first hand.

These photographs were made in Afghanistan and Iraq, but they don’t claim to depict either country. They are glimpses of an alternate reality built upon those countries. The images do not provide a comprehensive account of these wars, or an understanding of these nations or their peoples.

They are fragments, seen in off-moments behind the walls of concrete super-bases, or outside them, through night-vision goggles and ballistic eye shields.

Counter insurgency theory, once again fashionable, holds that the prize of modern warfare is not the territory but the minds of the population within. The battlespace is not solely defined by map lines or grid squares, but also in the areas of perception and illusion. In this shifting, human terrain, there are no facts or truths, only competing agendas. Messages are shaped and transmitted, from bunkered press officers to journalists who report from behind blast-walls and cubicle partitions. Unpleasant, complex, or off-message images are filtered by both sides, and war stories are recycled through the echo chamber.

Battlespace aims to present unfiltered and uncensored images and thereby give the viewer a real opportunity to discover, for themselves, the realities of war.

Battlespace will be accompanied by a programme of talks, film, poetry and Q&A events related to the exhibition and its subjects.  Details TBA – for full details visit www.watch-this-space.org

Further information:
www.watch-this-space.org

In association with the Photography Course and Media & Communication Department at Coventry University The Frontline Club.

London Design Festival

20th September – 26th September
Location: Atrium, Gallery & Project Space and selected studios

Great Western Studios will celebrate the opening of their new canalside building with an exhibition of work by some of the UK’s most talented designers. The exhibition also marks the launch of their wider ongoing cultural programme.

This September, Great Western Studios will take part in the London Design Festival for the first time – presenting the work of fifteen designers and design collectives throughout its recently opened new home. The exhibition includes work by Ana Thompson & Tom Higgs, Creative [SIN]ergy, Edward Cotterill,Emilie Voirin, Gareth Neal, Jody Leach, Joe Earley, Martha Freud, Mike Moran, Naomi McIntosh, Tamasine Osher, Venice 2132 and Ulrika Jarl and will cover the various design disciplines from furniture to jewellery and ceramics to lighting, as well as looking into the wider subject of citywide design and architecture.

Amongst the exhibits are Gareth Neal’s Urban Picnic, which he will set up his in the Studios’ atrium alongside Tamasine Osher’s explorative furniture. Creative [SIN]ergy explore the concept of the generic city by creating a photographic conversation between London and Singapore whilst Ana Thompson and Tom Higgs premier their new By-Products range of furniture, which, as the name suggests, are made out of the by-products of British manufacturers’ production processes.

Great Western Studios are also collaborating with Tom Dixon’s The Dock, to create a London Design Festival canalside trail between the two venues. Brompton, who will be exhibiting at The Dock, will offer visitors the chance to borrow bikes for travel between the two venues throughout the festival, and a free canal boat service will also be available on Saturday 25th and Sunday 26th.

The LDF exhibition not only celebrates Great Western Studios’ re-launch at the beautiful new premises on The Grand Union Canal but also marks the launch of a broad, ongoing cultural programme, which encompasses art, film, theatre, music, fashion, photography, architecture and, of course, design. Since its inception in 1994 Great Western Studios has grown into one of London’s most successful, thriving and varied creative working communities. Opening its doors to the public with this new diary of events it is also set to become one of London’s most exciting destinations for indoor and outdoor exhibitions and performances.

External links:

www.londondesignfestival.com