Archive - 2011

Raoul's Film Club presents...

Three Monkeys (Nuri Bilge Ceylan/2008)

Tuesday 13th December 2011

A politician kills a man on a road accident and pays his driver to endorse the responsibility. With the release of Once Upon A Time In Anatolia, we look back at Bilge Ceylan’s previous picture. A rare director who, like Tarkovsky, has a magical ability to get close to his characters.

THE MEANTIME CULTURAL INTERROGATION #3

The Xmas Quiz

Saturday 3rd December 2011

MEANTIME's fundraising quiz-night returns, courtesy of our very own Cultural Attache. This seasonal cockle-warmer circled the themes of Dante's Inferno, with guest musical interlude from Mike Adcock.

FILM SCREENING: Cave Of Forgotten Dreams (Werner Herzog/2010/90 mins)

Tuesday 29th November 2011

Werner Herzog gains unprecedented access to the Chauvet caves, discovered in 1994 in limestone cliffs beside the Ardeche river in Southern France, and containing the oldest known pictorial creations of humankind.

THE MEANTIME MULTIPLEX 2011

5th - 25th November 2011

The MULTIPLEX returns, with a selection of artists' film & video that explore representations of being in public and the revealing of private behaviours. Works are positioned in dialogue, in close proximity to the viewer, presenting an opportunity to re-view recent MEANTIME residents' video-works alongside invited contributions including Roelof Bakker, Wanderlust (2011); Shelley Davis, Red Coat (2010); Jamie Quantrill and John Walter, Untitled Movie (2011); a re-working of Richard Whitby's, Of Horses, Hooves and Hippophagy (2011); and Zierle & Carter, Spilled Measures (2011). Concluding discussion with Roelof Bakker. The selection also includes a rare screening of Eugene Doyen's Quiet Lives (1982), an 11 minute 16mm film featuring Tracey Emin and Billy Childish in an intense portrayal of the domestic life of Ian Brady and Myra Hindley. The film was introduced by Chris Cundy, who inherited a copy of the film and discussed his experience of growing up around the influential scene at Medway College of Design in the 1980's.

MEANTIME OFF-SITE... @ THE LOMBARD METHOD

21st - 30th October 2011

In October MEANTIME relocated its residency activity to Birmingham, joining with artists and organisations from across the country, including BRISTOL DIVING SCHOOL, David Dale Gallery, g39, Generator Projects, Ikon, John Walter, Malgras|Naudet, Rhubaba and S1, in dialogue at The Lombard Method artists' studios in Digbeth, as part of The Event city-wide visual art festival. Photos from the launch here.

MEANTIME presented audio and visual documentation relating to Jonathan Kelham's Art & Education research project in June. Whilst in residence, Jonathan found himself distracted by the resumption of his artistic practice and began work on a new series of letters between, and drawings of, amalgams of historical figures. These works were displayed alongside texts and an audio edit of the A&E discussion event (see below) that took place at MEANTIME in June.

LIVE EVENT: AIR + ELECTRICTY, Katrin Bethge and Robert Curgenven

Friday 14th October 2011

Overhead-projection artist Katrin Bethge and sound artist Robert Curgenven explore the relation between the physical and immersive nature of light and sound - mediated only by the air and electricity which amplify their movement. The performance space is transformed into shifting constellations of physical vibration, producing a unique response from the room. Photos from the event here.

Raoul's Film Club presents...

Mondovino (Jonathan Nossiter/2004)

Thursday 6th October 2011

Driven by his passion for wine, J.Nossiter travels the world to meet the most famous wine makers and unveils, with humour, the consequences of globalization, drawing a picture of a fierce industry that becomes a metaphor for a new world order.

LIVE MUSIC: XPOSED CLUB presents...

WEAVELS with support from the Flying Down Trio.

Saturday 1st October 2011

"Weavels manage to eke out a bizarre sense of trickery, prizing open knotted wooden sounds from the medieval tones of two low woodwind instruments, while guitar lends an essential poison to their serpentine improvisations." Weavels is Chris Cundy on bass clarinet, Mick Beck on bassoon & whistles, and Alex Ward guitar.

RESIDENCY: John Walter

'The Tarot Garden'

5th - 30th September 2011

John Walter's work combines strategies from Post-Modernism with metaphysics, religion, pseudo-science and pop culture, and a Maximalist aesthetic, at the root of which is painting and drawing.

The Tarot Garden was conceived as a test-site for a series of works that transformed MEANTIME into a Maximal environment. John Walter's installation immersed viewers in the elements and iconography populating his work, creating a vivid and exaggerated stage-set of saturated colour, over-sized objects, and bespoke tarot cards, whose imagery formed the backdrop for a performance by Masonic Yoda, a key character in the artist's cosmology. Photos from the residency event here.

Talk and screening: 'The Girl Can't Help It' (1956)

Thursday 8th September 2011

An introduction to the work of artist-in-residence John Walter, followed by a screening of The Girl Can't Help It, selected by the artist.

RESIDENCY: ALEXANDRA ZIERLE AND PAUL CARTER

4th - 31st July 2011

Zierle & Carter undertook a month of public performance events and interventions in locations around Cheltenham, including the Midsummer Fiesta in Montpellier Gardens, the High Street and town centre, Sandford Park, and Pittville Boating Lake, continuing their investigation into the role love plays in our daily lives following their residency at the Banff Centre in Canada, and performances in Virginia and New York. Photos from Cheltenham activities here.

FILM SCREENING: ROBINSON IN RUINS (Patrick Keiller, 2010)

Tuesday 5th July 2011

Following recent MEANTIME screenings of London and Robinson in Space, Patrick Keiller's latest film-essay "contrasts past English radicalism and reaction with the 2008 banking collapse... an ironic and witty comment on the sustainability of market forces and a profound tribute to the power of nature." BFI

FILM SCREENING: Welcome (Philippe Lioret, 2009)

Tuesday 21st June 2011

With its politically controversial stance, Welcome is an ode to the abandoned immigrants trapped on the shores of Calais and those who risk arrest for helping them. Introduced by Raoul Dyevre, and with presentation of photographs by Tom Wharton, BA Photojournalism and Documentary student who spent 3 months documenting life in the illegal migrant camps at Calais.

RESIDENCY: Jonathan Kelham

Art & Education Research Project

7th - 22nd June 2011

The research project and discussion event investigated how artist-led project-spaces consider and respond to the often ambiguous relationship between art and education, and considered the differences between a formal art education programme and one that is intentionally undefined, exploring the problematic nature of defining and evidencing the opportunities for successful art educative practice. The project culminated in an open discussion between arts programmers, artists, educators and students which examined the state of current arts education and the role of artists and arts institutions in educative practice.

FILM SCREENING DOUBLE-BILL: LONDON and Robinson In Space (Patrick Keiller, 1994/1997)

Tuesday 24th May 2011

"London is neither feature film nor documentary but a provocative essay in the form of a journal, recording fictitious journeys through a very real city. In Robinson in Space Robinson returns with his travelling companion to undertake a journey to investigate the 'problem of England', exploring the cultural and economic landscape." BFI

THE MEANTIME CULTURAL INTERROGATION #2: Mayday! Mayday! Mayday!

Saturday 21st May 2011

The return of the Cultural Interrogation fund-raiser, like a pub-quiz but with better, more constructive questioning set by our very own Cultural Attaché, this time with a general theme of radicals, rebellion and resistence. With musical rabble-rousing courtesy of Chris Cundy.

RESIDENCY Pt 2: Louisa Fairclough

3rd - 14th May 2011

Song of Grief is a film installation developed during Louisa's MEANTIME residency in February 2011. Working with performer Nancy Trotter Landry and sound recordist Christine Felce, they form part of a body of work made along the River Severn.

"With film I attempt to describe distance, time and emotion in physical terms: the filmstrip as a measurement of the width of a river, the time it takes for the bore tide to pass, the length of a shout and the weight of grief. From field recording to final print, I have used only analogue processes. I am drawn to working with the analogue medium primarily for it's physicality: this work could only exist on film. However I am also fascinated in the medium of film at this very moment of time when it's on the edge of obsolescence." Louisa also showed new drawings made at the same time as the films.

CHELTENHAM IMPROVISERS ORCHESTRA, LIVE @ MEANTIME

Monday 2nd May 2011

Part 2 of two CIO events for Cheltenham Jazz Festival Fringe. This time the 20-piece orchestra, which comprises musicians from Bristol, Cheltenham, Oxford, Stroud and London, are directed by special guest John Bisset to perform a series of specially devised ‘quiet symphonies’.

RESIDENCY: Richard Whitby

4th - 30th April 2011

In partnership with Cheltenham Art Gallery & Museum, MEANTIME invited Richard Whitby to develop, produce and present new work in response to the Cheltenham Festival racing event.

With video and audio obtained at the 2011 Cheltenham Festival, Richard Whitby and Ed Atkins produced a film juxtaposing filmed footage with fictional narratives, and a specially created soundtrack. Additionally, Richard produced a text on horse domestication, available from MEANTIME. Stills can be seen here.

CHELTENHAM POETRY FESTIVAL EVENTS:

Sunday 3rd April 2011

Poetry and the Visual Arts - performance, readings and film screenings, curated in association with PLaCE Research Centre at UWE Bristol. Curated by Suze Adams and Anna Saunders. The Sound of Poetry - Cheltenham Improvisers Orchestra play an experimental soundtrack to home movies and archived audio poetry clips.

RESIDENCY: Patrick Lowry

9th March - 2nd April 2011

Selected from the 2011 Open West shortlist, MEANTIME welcomes back Falmouth-based artist Patrick Lowry. Patrick was the first MT/OW resident in 2009 when he constructed a life-size reproduction of the basement stairwell at The Exchange, Newlyn (photos here), in the upper space at MEANTIME.

Patrick Lowry’s new work for MEANTIME, the construction of replicated accommodation offered by international budget-hotels, based on research and recollection, provides an opportunity to consider the concepts surrounding such places – travel and temporality, distance and proximity, architecture and design, collisions of domestic/personal and public/impersonal space – and suggests how form can come to displace the ideas they purport to represent. Photos here.

FILM SCREENING: FISH TANK (Andrea Arnold, 2009)

Tuesday 8th March 2011

"FISH TANK is the story of 15-year old Mia, whose life is turned on its head when her mother brings home a new boyfriend. Set in the decaying landscape and council estates of Essex, director Andrea Arnold creates an original and unsettling tale for our age."

RESIDENCY Pt 1: Louisa Fairclough - Deep Grief

31st January - 7th March 2011

"I will be experimenting with a series of film loops that use the architecture of the project-space. Using tidal water, light and voice as material, the films draw on a number of cycle journeys along the River Severn, sleeping each night on the water's edge. I am interested in the use of one thing (a film strip) as a measurement of another: the width of a river, the time it takes for the bore tide to pass, the length of a shout and the weight of grief. I see the loop functioning as a drawing and am concerned with the physical and aural experience of a line of film, a beam of light and a channel of sound." Photos here.

http://www.louisafairclough.com

LIVE MUSIC: Monk's Dream - performed by Chris Cundy

Saturday 29th January 2011

Chris Cundy presents the music of Thelonious Monk in a series of solo transcriptions for soprano saxophone and bass clarinet spanning many of his famous pieces from the 1940’s, 50’s and 60’s as well as some lesser known compositions. An informal concert, Chris talked about some of the origins of the music and the challenges presented by performing it. Photos here.

RESIDENCY: Felicity Hammond - Constructed Reality

6th - 29th January 2011

This body of work aims to encourage discussion about the validity of the archive as performance art, and to engage the viewer in conversation about photographic truths. If the act of taking the photograph changes the meaning or alters the truth of the moment, then surely it is just as valid to further exaggerate the representation of that reality, especially if that ‘reality’ never really existed in the first place. Text from Felicity's self-produced booklet here. Photos here.

FILM SCREENING: Synecdoche, New York (Charlie Kaufman, 2008)

Thursday 13th January 2011

The tragi-comic tale of the unravelling of hypochondriac playwright Caden Cotard's (Philip Seymour Hoffman) life and relationships, and his efforts to reconstruct his existence through the production of his masterwork - an epic, ever-expanding and endlessly rehearsed play, where the individuals and situations in Cotard's life are replicated by a sprawling cast of doppelgangers.