Exhibion of work in various media. Artists include -


Henna Asikainen [Finland] & Silvana Macedo [Brazil] Michael Badger [England] Lubna Chowdhary [England] Nick Crowe [England] Hubert Duprat [France] Claire Norcross [England] Paco Rabanne [France] Simon Starling [Scotland] Mare Tralla [Estonia] Jane Wood [England]


Spacecraft is an exhibition which explores the space and associations between traditional and digital craftsmanship. It takes as its starting point our ceaseless fascination with the unknown and unusual and with everything that is alien to us. Set in the context of Video Positive 2000 and presented in a traditional craft display space, 'Spacecraft' showcases an emerging trend - the digital craftwork. Sculpted and moving images, sound installations and computer architecture sit alongside apparently conventional objects, associated artefacts and images, establishing a dialogue between creative engineering, space-age design, craft-working and image-making.


Eschewing the monumental and triumphal aspects of digital media in favour of a more minimal and intimate approach, 'Spacecraft' is an exhibition where scale matters. Its digital or handcrafted mini-objects reflect the smallness of our creation in the face of the vastness of the universe. They allow us to feel that an individual's tale is as big as a planet's story. The artists in the show use 'Spacecraft' as a metaphorical tool with which they investigate the potential for skills transfer and explore the creative universe in miniature; as if they were taking a space journey for a glimpse of the other worlds, wowed by the immensity of the cosmos, the voluptuousness of high spaces. Two works have escaped the gravity of the far reaches of the universe and splashed down to earth.


In 'Animal.Anima.Animus', 1990-1995 the French artist Hubert Duprat holds nature to ransom transforming each insect [trihopterus larvae] into a work of art, each cocoon into a jewellery case. The ambiguous language of nature and the concepts of fertility and lust are embodied in 'Nest' by the collaborating artists Henna Asikainen and Silvana Macedo . In their hypnotic video installation the close siblings of the larvae-the 10 deadliest snakes in the world - can be read as symbols of deceit, seduction and evil or conversely of healing, the sexual and the sensual. Hatching from a pile of eggs the snakes can be viewed through an exclusively designed glass bubble and as a haunting floor projection. Here, the glass relates to scientific observation but also implies superb crafting skills, childish curiosity, an exploration of magical and poetic worlds, a sense of unreality and otherness.


A beautiful, circular 35 mm film 'Short Story, Brief History' by Simon Starling, the widely-acclaimed artist based in Glasgow, encapsulates the possibility of recycling ideas and objects from earlier periods through the captivating once-upon-a-time story about a ...fork. Lingering on the image of an ornate silver Victorian fork we see the fork disassembling until it has reduced itself to a molten mass of metal which begins the reverse process of transformation to regain its quality as a fork, only this time as a simple unornamented design of classical modern appearance. Finally, the sequence ends and begins again, only this time the fork undergoes metamorphosis from modern to Victorian. All this is accompanied by a subtitled story and music narrative built around a Victorian piece by Debussy and a syncopated modern jazz motif.


In 'Becoming' by the Liverpool-based digital artist Jane Wood, the viewer is seduced to engage more directly through a touch screen monitor set in a specially designed medical cabinet. When the viewer reaches out to interact with the monitor via objects such as a disposable razor, a dress making tool and a sewing needle, he/she is confronted with a cascade of disturbing images and annoying soundbites.


Picking up on a number of current obsessions with surveillance and body politics issues 'eyeBlimp' works both in parallel and in contrast to 'Becoming'. Designed and computer-programmed by the visual artist Mare Tralla - the Estonian counterpart of Tracey Emin - 'eyeBlimp' glorifies people's desire to indulge into their self-reflection and mirrored image. Here, the mirror reclaims its meaning both as a civilising and manipulative instrument of culture. Strikingly alien in its appearance 'eyeBlimp'is a bubbly unidentifiable flying object floating around in a micro-universe of its own making.


'The Citizens' by the Manchester-based artist and curator Nick Crowe is another 'Spacecraft' object-defined project marking a particular moment in the development of the internet. It is a tribute to people's constant desire to participate in the beginning of the future. The artist has worked with the web sites of private individuals, downloading hundreds of homepages, translating some of them from digital code to simple line drawings that have been traced onto typographic detail paper, and then returned back to code again - electronically 'gathered and bound' and released back on to the internet. The resulting work-a book of homepages exists in two formats -a single work on paper as a beautifully crafted artist's book and a limited digital edition with all the hypertext links fully restored.


'The New Medium' is another recent work by Nick Crowe which takes the round trip to internet and back. It draws upon an emerging culture of obituaries and funeral ceremonies on the web and consists of a series of custom computer monitors and tombstone-size glass panels with memorial web sites etched onto them. Presented as illuminated line drawings 'The New Medium' examines a growing spiritual investment in cyberspace through the adoption of the computeras a medium with which to speak to the dead.


'Spacecraft' takes a short journey backwards excavating a vintage handbag and rare out of print book by the Parisian couturier Paco Rabanne, branded as the 'godfather of the space-age style' who remains one of the major innovators in body jewellery using pliers and wires to hinge together circles and squares of plastic into garments. Now, when we are celebrating 30 years of the first Moonwalker, the one and only Neil Armstrong, Paco Rabanne claims in public that he is leaving Paris genuinely convinced that the city will be be soon destroyed by aliens.' [ Iliyana Nedkova ]


Presented at Bluecoat Display Centre.


'Spacecraft' is conceived and developed as a pilot launch of an on-going research project. Projects presented with the support of the following organisations, agencies and individuals:
FRAC, Montpellier, MITES, University of Sunderland, National Glass Centre, Sunderland, Partridge Films Ltd, Afterall Publication, Dundee Contemporary Arts, Site Gallery, Sheffield, Centre for Contemporary Art, Tallinn, Aldham Roberts Resource Centre, Liverpool John Moores University, Channel, Artec and Book Works, London, as well as Maureen Bampton, Eddie Berg, Stephen Emmott, Jo McGonigal, Samantha Rhodes, David Wood.


'Spacecraft' environment is designed by Andrew Small [Eng]


Financially supported by North West Arts Board.

[LESS]
Exhibion of work in various media. Artists include -


Henna Asikainen [Finland] & Silvana Macedo [Brazil] Michael Badger [England] Lubna Chowdhary [England] Nick Crowe [England] Hubert Duprat [France] Claire Norcross [England] Paco Rabanne [France] Simon Starling [Scotland] Mare Tralla [Estonia] Jane Wood [England]


Spacecraft is an exhibition which explores the space and associations between traditional and digital craftsmanship. It takes as its starting point our ceaseless fascination with the unknown and unusual and with everything that is alien to us. Set in the context of Video Positive 2000 and presented in a traditional craft display space, 'Spacecraft' showcases an emerging trend - the digital craftwork. Sculpted and moving images, sound installations and computer architecture sit alongside apparently conventional objects, associated artefacts and images, establishing a dialogue between creative engineering, space-age design, craft-working and image-making.


Eschewing the monumental and triumphal aspects of digital media in favour of a more minimal and intimate approach, 'Spacecraft' is an exhibition where scale matters. Its digital or handcrafted mini-objects reflect the smallness of our creation in the face of the vastness of the universe. They allow us to feel that an individual's tale is as big as a planet's story. The artists in the show use 'Spacecraft' as a metaphorical tool with which they investigate the potential for skills transfer and explore the creative universe in miniature; as if they were taking a space journey for a glimpse of the other worlds, wowed by the immensity of the cosmos, the voluptuousness of high spaces. Two works have escaped the gravity of the far reaches of the universe and splashed down to earth.


In 'Animal.Anima.Animus', 1990-1995 the French artist Hubert Duprat holds nature to ransom transforming each insect [trihopterus larvae] into a work of art, each cocoon into a jewellery case. The ambiguous language of nature and the concepts of fertility and lust are embodied in 'Nest' by the collaborating artists Henna Asikainen and Silvana Macedo . In their hypnotic video installation the close siblings of the larvae-the 10 deadliest snakes in the world - can be read as symbols of deceit, seduction and evil or conversely of healing, the sexual and the sensual. Hatching from a pile of eggs the snakes can be viewed through an exclusively designed glass bubble and as a haunting floor projection. Here, the glass relates to scientific observation but also implies superb crafting skills, childish curiosity, an exploration of magical and poetic worlds, a sense of unreality and otherness.


A beautiful, circular 35 mm film 'Short Story, Brief History' by Simon Starling, the widely-acclaimed artist based in Glasgow, encapsulates the possibility of recycling ideas and objects from earlier periods through the captivating once-upon-a-time story about a ...fork. Lingering on the image of an ornate silver Victorian fork we see the fork disassembling until it has reduced itself to a molten mass of metal which begins the reverse process of transformation to regain its quality as a fork, only this time as a simple unornamented design of classical modern appearance. Finally, the sequence ends and begins again, only this time the fork undergoes metamorphosis from modern to Victorian. All this is accompanied by a subtitled story and music narrative built around a Victorian piece by Debussy and a syncopated modern jazz motif.


In 'Becoming' by the Liverpool-based digital artist Jane Wood, the viewer is seduced to engage more directly through a touch screen monitor set in a specially designed medical cabinet. When the viewer reaches out to interact with the monitor via objects such as a disposable razor, a dress making tool and a sewing needle, he/she is confronted with a cascade of disturbing images and annoying soundbites.


Picking up on a number of current obsessions with surveillance and body politics issues 'eyeBlimp' works both in parallel and in contrast to 'Becoming'. Designed and computer-programmed by the visual artist Mare Tralla - the Estonian counterpart of Tracey Emin - 'eyeBlimp' glorifies people's desire to indulge into their self-reflection and mirrored image. Here, the mirror reclaims its meaning both as a civilising and manipulative instrument of culture. Strikingly alien in its appearance 'eyeBlimp'is a bubbly unidentifiable flying object floating around in a micro-universe of its own making.


'The Citizens' by the Manchester-based artist and curator Nick Crowe is another 'Spacecraft' object-defined project marking a particular moment in the development of the internet. It is a tribute to people's constant desire to participate in the beginning of the future. The artist has worked with the web sites of private individuals, downloading hundreds of homepages, translating some of them from digital code to simple line drawings that have been traced onto typographic detail paper, and then returned back to code again - electronically 'gathered and bound' and released back on to the internet. The resulting work-a book of homepages exists in two formats -a single work on paper as a beautifully crafted artist's book and a limited digital edition with all the hypertext links fully restored.


'The New Medium' is another recent work by Nick Crowe which takes the round trip to internet and back. It draws upon an emerging culture of obituaries and funeral ceremonies on the web and consists of a series of custom computer monitors and tombstone-size glass panels with memorial web sites etched onto them. Presented as illuminated line drawings 'The New Medium' examines a growing spiritual investment in cyberspace through the adoption of the computeras a medium with which to speak to the dead.


'Spacecraft' takes a short journey backwards excavating a vintage handbag and rare out of print book by the Parisian couturier Paco Rabanne, branded as the 'godfather of the space-age style' who remains one of the major innovators in body jewellery using pliers and wires to hinge together circles and squares of plastic into garments. Now, when we are celebrating 30 years of the first Moonwalker, the one and only Neil Armstrong, Paco Rabanne claims in public that he is leaving Paris genuinely convinced that the city will be be soon destroyed by aliens.' [ Iliyana Nedkova ]


Presented at Bluecoat Display Centre.


'Spacecraft' is conceived and developed as a pilot launch of an on-going research project. Projects presented with the support of the following organisations, agencies and individuals:
FRAC, Montpellier, MITES, University of Sunderland, National Glass Centre, Sunderland, Partridge Films Ltd, Afterall Publication, Dundee Contemporary Arts, Site Gallery, Sheffield, Centre for Contemporary Art, Tallinn, Aldham Roberts Resource Centre, Liverpool John Moores University, Channel, Artec and Book Works, London, as well as Maureen Bampton, Eddie Berg, Stephen Emmott, Jo McGonigal, Samantha Rhodes, David Wood.


'Spacecraft' environment is designed by Andrew Small [Eng]


Financially supported by North West Arts Board.