Sara Pakdel-Cherry recalls performing M.Lohrum's participatory work 'You are It'

It hurts.

It really hurts my arm, my right arm.

I am drawing circles in full length of my arm.

It hurts.

My arm feels heavy.

Is my arm dying?

Is it going to fall off?

All these questions circulating in my mind, but I still do not stop.

I cannot stop.

I am in a trance.

Draw, circle, draw, circle. 

Who am I sacrificing my arm for?

Why am I doing this?

This is not me; I want to stop.

Make it stop.

I followed 5 step instructions written by M.Lohrum on the wall.

Who is that?

Secret agency? Government?

Who am I?

Why can't I stop?

It hurts.

It really hurts.

Photo by Eoin Carey

______________
M.Lohrum's participatory artwork You are It 2009 is on show at Cooper Gallery as part of the Trinity Buoy Wharf Drawing Prize 2020 exhibition. 

Sara Pakdel-Cherry is a DJCAD student. 

Responses to A Prompt for a Drawing — Postal Art project by Nina Chua

Trinity Buoy Wharf Drawing Prize 2020 shortlisted artist Nina Chua is inviting participates to take part in her Postal Art project A Prompt for a Drawing as part of the events running alongside the Trinity Buoy Wharf Drawing Prize 2020 exhibition at Cooper Gallery between 13 November – 19 December 2020.

Participant Responses

Judy Scott

Mary Low

Mary Hayes 

Alison Robertson 

Sarah Davis 

Yoko Isami 

Ruth Richmond 

Peter McCall 

Donna Coleman 

Janine Laporte

Vivienne Dixon, Storm on The Horizon 

Karen Howse

Jo Lane

Pat Atkinson

Joanna Saurin

Maria Pearson

Prudence Maltby, Pop Art is a way of liking things. Nina's mark, pencil, Indian ink and collage.

Hannah Feuerstein

Mary Low, Transmission

______________
Sign-up to take part in A Prompt for a Drawing here.

Nina Chua was born in Manchester, UK. She studied at Manchester School of Art and completed her MA in Fine Art in 2011. In 2016 she was selected for the Liverpool Biennial Associate Artist Programme. She predominately works in the field of drawing and has exhibited at, amongst others, Castlefield Gallery, Manchester; Baltic 39, Newcastle; DOX Centre for Contemporary Art, Prague and Workplace Gallery, Gateshead. Her work is held in collection at The Whitworth Art Gallery, Manchester; Manchester Art Gallery, Manchester; The Artists' Books Collection Dundee (abcD), University of Dundee, and Simmons and Simmons Contemporary Art Collection.  

This project accompanies the Trinity Buoy Wharf Drawing Prize 2020 at Cooper Gallery, 13 November – 19 December 2020.

Kaya Fraser responds to A is for Avant Garde, Z is for Zero

Shot description and workbook for Riddles of the Sphinx, Laura Mulvey and Peter Wollen, C. 1977
Installation views, Cooper Gallery 2020. Photos by Kaya Fraser

The Familiar

Lockdown domestic viewing rooms

screens + art, screens + talks, screens + films

screens, you will not find in the stream,

missing and embracing the familiar concurrently

the old familiar doors are open, viewing rooms returned

processes of sharing spaces transparently vail the displays

similarities transpire, drawn from their domestic versions

like private viewing to embrace, the room is yours

I took the room for myself, rejoicing in the carefully curated

inside a vitrine a single side of A4 with typed text, spins in my memory,

the words 'SPHINX' and 'KITCHEN' rekindle,

the domestic and institutional collide

I'm at my kitchen table, I have signed into culture

like every scene, her room, it spins, I look up to my room

stationary I sit, still, the walls move clockwise, eyes closed

the projection of the domestic engrained in the memory

familiar

______________
Exhibition invigilators were invited to respond to an aspect of the exhibition A is for Avant-Garde, Z is for Zero

Kaya Fraser is an artist, DJCAD graduate and committee member of GENERATORprojects. Visit her website: www.theeverydayarchivist.com

Jamie Donald responds to A is for Avant Garde, Z is for Zero

Kerry Tribe, Here & Elsewhere, 2002. 2-channel video projection. Install view Cooper Gallery 2020. Photos by Jamie Donald. A is for Avant Garde, Z is for Zero: Notes on ‘here and elsewhere’ When I was about seven years old, a teacher made my class do a drawing exercise. She played us a piece of classical music, which we were to listen to, eyes closed, and afterwards draw a picture of what we had seen while it played. I used the provided crayons to try to depict a sort of glowy, vascular, red/pink/orange texture, that sprawled all the way out to the paper’s edges. The teacher asked if I had misunderstood. The image was taken away, and it was suggested that I draw a river with some trees, and maybe a butterfly, instead. At some point last summer I listened to a podcast on colour and language, on language for colour. A linguist discusses an experiment he undertook, that made a test subject of his daughter and her young and spongy mind: he taught her all the colours, but never told her the colour of the sky. The linguist periodically asked her to name the colours of the things in their surroundings, and other than the large (blue) body above she was largely successful. The first time he pointed upwards, she couldn’t see what he was pointing at. Season one of Westworld uses a series of interviews between a robot and her maker to track her gradual ascension to consciousness. The shots flicker between the parent and the child. Dolores - do you ever question the nature of your reality? “It is editing which produces the alternative world which we imagine behind the screen. It is because there are gaps and differences of point of view that we lend this imaginary world extension, time and space.” ** In Kerry Tribe’s ‘Here and Elsewhere’, Peter Wollen asks his daughter Audrey about the nature of images - about truth, perception, reality. He asks if she has seen herself on film, and when she says yes, he asks her who she saw. Moments before, or after, the film-maker asks her if she, presently, is playing herself or being herself. She smiles, like she has been caught. ** Laura Mulvey and Peter Wollen’s Index cards from Penthesilea, Queen of the Amazons, 1974.

______________
Exhibition invigilators were invited to respond to an aspect of the exhibition A is for Avant-Garde, Z is for Zero

Jamie Donald is an artist fish enthusiast, DJCAD graduate and committee member of GENERATORprojects and wooosh gallery. Visit her website: https://jamiedonald.com/

V. Rivers responds to workshop Rehearsals for the Revolution

Response to Rehearsals for the Revolution
V. Rivers


Slick
confident
repeating
insistent
lies are swallowed down welcoming throats.
It shocks me, so
easy. Now how to respond?

Tempting
to spit my belly’s fire
scorching earth below this high turret
‘It’s them, you see. Not me, not me.’
Purest tones ring
over fruitless dusty soil
as we all sing along
behind our concrete walls
of fear and hurt

Truth is,
my belly hungers for fruit
more than fire. Now how to respond?

I look inside my burning belly
soothe its heat with the balm
of this moment. Challenge
assumptions
prejudices
judgements
I break the rocks of my own defences
one by one, spit
dust from my mouth to sing
new songs.
Listen, make
space
to understand the reasons behind all our defences
Question who profits

Now each time my pain seeks fire
I’ll remember; fruit-filled revolution
requires the fertile soil of
openness

_______
Rehearsals for the Revolution workshops took place as part of Jasmina Cibic's exhibition The Pleasure of Expense, 2019. More info on the workshops and exhibition on Cooper Gallery's website.