Tether

Tether Festival – three weeks of events, exhibitions, performances and screenings in November 2007 – represented the first major project by Nottingham based artist group Tether. Under the direction of Hugh Dichmont and Samuel Mercer, Tether’s members curated shows, facilitated collaborations and hosted events which made Tether Festival not only an opportunity for members of Tether to exhibit their own work, but as a means to establish connections with artist groups and practitioners throughout the UK.

The Festival began on Sunday the 4th of November, with a launch party at Nottingham Playhouse’s Cast Bar, featuring live music and a projected slideshow of festival events.

Monday the 5th saw the doors of Tether Studios open to the public for the first time with two shows; one of which being a collaborative performance between Alexandria Clark and Matthew Cooper, “Forecasts”, in which the artists combined their practices over the course of three days, constructing unplanned and uncertain structures from words – written by Clark and projected into the space – and wood – abstract compositions assembled and reconfirgured by Cooper – in a process of exploratory improvised discourse.

Coinciding with Clark and Cooper’s work within Tether Studios was an installation by festival co-director Hugh Dichmont and frequent collaborator Chie Hosaka. The work, entitled “Uneasy Dreams”, featured a stack of cardboard boxes, the uppermost being an open matchbox with its distinctive ship insignia cut out and angled upright. Video footage of a bird-headed human figure appeared within the open box; waiting without reprieve in a state of languid purgatory, stood and sat in a grey miniature room, unfurnished but for a wooden chair.

These two shows began a series of projects, sponsored by Andersons Solicitors, which took place in the front two rooms of Tether Studios throughout the three weeks of the festival.

The evening of Tuesday the 6th saw the private view and opening of “Lost in Pace”, a show of video interviews with Nottingham Trent University Fine Art graduates from the class of 2007, many of whom are members of Tether. This multi-screen installation aimed to give the audience an insight into the minds of young artists, their hopes and fears, the balancing act of managing financial independence and artistic integrity; the videos filmed during the transitional months between graduation and the ‘beginning of their new lives.’ The show was curated by Liam Aitken and Samuel Mercer, and filmed with the help of Jermaine Edwards.

On Friday the 9th and Saturday the 10th of November Benjamin Hargrave and Coventry-based sound artist Arran Poole collaborated in the third of the Tether Festival Projects series. Using the immersive sounds of the Bow Chime (a metal instrument played by manipulating rods and a large metal sheet) and vodka as translucient paint, the artists aimed to create an atmospheric, durational piece in which the paintings – emerging on hung canvases, soaking in and fading back to nothing – mirrored and responded to the resonant bellow of the instrument.

On Monday the 12th the enigmatically titled “Beneath the Tarmac: the Grass”, curated by Kate Webborn, featuring a wide range of book art which infiltrated the shelves of the Bromley House library, opened to the public. Armed with only a map and fetishistic white gloves, visitors were invited to hunt down these one-off and limited edition artist-made books while exploring the beautiful 18th Century Town House. The opening of the show was celebrated in the evening with a public gathering at Edin’s Cafe in Hockley during which limited edition publications were made available for purchase.

Opening on the same day, at Tether Studios, was a dual-screen video installation by artists Aaron Juneau and Jonathan Watts, entitled “A to B and Back Again”. The work reflected upon the natural history of destruction imminent to the Norfolk and Suffolk coast, with the image of a solitary figure rambling through bleakly beautiful landscapes, and representing an imaginary space in the gallery.

On the evening of the 13th was the private view for the Victoria Court Interiors show “Throes”, curated by Alexandria Clark and Charlotte Pratley. Featuring works from, among others, Heather Tweed – her “Anubis School Boys” a particular public attraction, sat facing out into Nottingham’s city streets – and Irish artist Paul Timony. “Throes” was decribed by the curators as “an exhibition exploring the darker side of human nature and the human condition, to provide an antidote to easily-viewed, unchallenging artwork shown in pristine white spaces.”

The penultimate ‘Andersons Solicitors Project’, Benjamin Hargrave and Matthew Cooper’s “Tomasz Jankowiac”, was a one-off performance delivered to a limited audience in Tether Studios, which explored storytelling and music as co-existing ways of telling a tall tale. The artists’ story followed Tomasz Jankoviac, Polish RAF veteran, and his struggle with loss.

The last in the series of projects was a little further afield with sonic artist Amanda Young’s installation at Balloon Woods Adventure Playground. Boxed into a 62ft shipping container “Vortex LW 198kHz”, as the work was known, depicted the far shores of the British Isles in the middle of the British landscape. Hypnotic and melodic speech of shipping forecasts rippled against the steel walls and wooden floor defining the edges of the space and spilling out of it.

The festival’s final week continued with the private view of the exhibition “Pipe Dream”, which used the entire Tether Studio space for the first time and presented a range of works including “performances, singing birds, animation, Johnny Cash, progressive sculptures and paintings.” Challenging the presumption that exhibition set up should be final, “Pipe Dream” utilised the studio space with daily curatorial changes, giving the opportunity for members of the public to work with the curators; altering the function and display of “Pipe Dream” artworks.

Throughout the festival, at the Broadway Media Centre – voted recently as one of the world’s premiere locations for seeing arthouse cinema – a showreel of festival events and the history of the Tether group were featured on plasma screens throughout the building and projected within Broadway’s cafe, alongside an animation, “Bruce and Sheila”, by Chie Hosaka and Theresa Wrigley and a video work by Amy Fish entitled “Lavish.”

Three weeks of exciting exhibitions organised by Tether concluded on Sunday the 25th of November at the Malt Cross on St. James Street with live music from Fists and Dr. Octopus, background tunes supplied by the “Tether Mix Tape” and also featuring the final artwork of the festival: 2+2=5ism, by Apexa Patel and Hannah Phillips, in which visitors to the closing party were given a snowglobe containing a self-eroding object which, before the end of the night, would fade into nothing, leaving the globe bare and hapless.

The festival could not have been possible without the support of Nottingham Trent University, Andersons Solicitors, Orchid Lakes, Baltex and Alan Clarke.

For images of the festival please visit the Festival archive at- http://www.z058.com/tether/projects/festival/archive.html

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