Are all curators failed television presenters? Are all artists failed celebrities? Are all TV-quizzes intrinsically absurd? Is contemporary art a failed joke?
During October, November and December, Tether will be producing and hosting three episodes of Sideshow’s own art-themed game-show, Black Swans, which will quiz invited contestants and engage them in action-based tasks. Taking inspiration from every TV quiz show under the sun, from Blankety Blank to Pat Sharpe’s Fun House through Shooting Stars, Black Swans will be filmed before a live studio audience, hold regular team captains and reoccurring rounds; all designed to deconstruct the game-show format and celebrate the quirks and curiosities of contemporary art.
For those who want to be part of the studio audience, all places are free, but limited, so booking is required. BOOK HERE
Episode 1 – 29th October, 6pm
Host: Duncan Allen
Team 1: Niki Russell (C), Sarah Farmer, Jermaine Edwards
Team 2: Rob Blackson (C), Jon Burgerman, Sian Robinson Davies
Special guest: Bruce Asbestos
The quiz will also be available in an edited format via Tethervision: a free online “television channel” run by Tether, one week after filming, and indefinitely after that.
Filed under: the wasp room | Tags: 2010, Exhibition, nottingham, the wasp room
Race For The Prize
featuring Paul Lewthwaite, Geoff Diego Litherland & Jonathan Gillie
14th – 24th October 2010, Thursday – Sunday, 12-5pm
Private View: 14th October, 7-9pm
The Wasp Room & Max Warburg Space present the group exhibition Race For The Prize. This collaborative endeavour seeks to expose confluences that have arisen in the artists’ recent work and future direction, which will result in a series of explorative exhibitions.
The artists’ practices are rooted in an ongoing investigation with the processes and formal elements inherent to the media of sculpture, painting and moving image. This understanding of history and technique is not the only overlap in the artists’ work. Recently they have been drawn to the imagery and narratives found within the genres of science fiction. By appropriating these ideologies, which often have pseudo-religious undertones and apocalyptic prophecies, they seek to create an interchange between fantasy and stark reality.
The works aim to exploit the way sculpture and painting can manifest the abstract and intangible into something bordering on reality. Lewthwaite’s sculptures are assembled from laboriously crafted components and ready-made objects. Their stage set qualities and odd forms play with illusions of interpretation, highlighted by the choice of materials and peculiar surface treatments. Litherland’s paintings emerge from dark, geometric backgrounds where painterly abstractions jostle with 3D forms to generate awkward compositions that aspire to enlighten yet offer little resolution.
Together the artworks create an ‘out of the ordinary’ and slightly uncanny atmosphere in the gallery space. Vivid primary and fluorescent colours combine with muted ochres. The detritus of semi-recognisable forms and shapes are laid out ready to be reassembled by the audience.
The exhibition at The Wasp Room is complimented by the digital animations of Jonathan Gillie, whose work references current aesthetics in the visual, as well as the musical avant-garde. His animations are heavily layered compositions in which process and precision play an equal role to instinct and experiment. Attempting to visualize current thinking in science, electronic music and moving image he produces an imagined, exotic environment, as familiar as it is alien and as mechanical as it is organic.
Filed under: .Tether | Tags: 2010, event, screenings, tethervision, the wasp room
Join us on 10/10/10 for the opening of the newest space at Tether, the Tethervision Studio, a live event and production space which will be used for a performances, game shows, talks and gigs over the next few months.
With music from The Elreys
The Black Swan screen curated by Beth Bramich
final chance to catch Stuart Croft – Drive In at The Wasp Room and Alia Pathan – Empty Vessels at Max
Warburg Space
From 7pm
