The following film and video works illustrate the collaborative outcomes of OutsiderXchanges project and artists working together to create new work through inter-responsive visual arts practice. These films were exhibited in a series of happenings, events and exhibitions including The Manchester Contemporary, BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art and The Whitworth art gallery for Thursday Lates event.
Jane Louise Graham and Simon Raven, Invisible Gallery at Midnight Part 1&2, 2016
This collaborative work of three short films grew from a discussion about disability and invisibility. Jane and Simon decided to establish Invisible Gallery as a fictional institution that might represent disabled artists who would not gain visibility without our support. In doing so, they compared the relative invisibility of disability as a subject in contemporary art with conceptual art practices in which an idea takes precedence over material form. Following playful and spontaneous discussions, they staged a curatorial conversation to camera (Invisible Gallery at Midnight) and made a farcical TV news bulletin about the opening of a new Invisible Gallery in an unnamed city centre, imagining that our concept had been turned into a successful franchise (Invisible Gallery News).
I was the Assembly hall, 2016 by Juliet Davis, Sophie Lee and Horace Lindezey
This video is the result of several weeks of online and field research and acts as a celebration of Horace’s memories of Cambrian School in Ancoats, Manchester, which is due to be taken down and turned into a car park in the near future. But it also acts as a ritualistic ceremony of letting the school and the memories “go”. They created scenes where They physically interacted with objects associated to school, creating abstract or figurative shapes relating to Horace’s memories. Some scenes only involve hands and small objects, some others involve the hall body, as if they were making dens/being swallowed by the school. In the ‘wall paper’ scene they tried to impersonate the school and match its architecture (left: class room, middle: assembly hall, right: dinner ladies room). The soundtrack is an edited recording of a discussion about some of Horace’s school memories, and has a sometimes literal and sometimes more abstract relationship to the action on screen.
The Pearlescent Party of Iridescent Energy, 2016, by Matt Girling with all artists
Taking the premise that the artists are blowing their art budget on a party, this film brings together in a theatrical way the art works produced and insight into the processes that inspired them. Each artist creates and inspires their own art story within the wider narrative. With a riotous and anarchic flavor, representing the relationship between artists, the film takes its name from artist David James who described trying to capture “iridescent eyes” and “idyllic eyes” using “pearlescent paints”.
Conversations Series I - OutsiderXchanges 