Back Lane West
Directors: Alison Sharkey, Steven Paige, Patrick Lowry
A recently initiated space/place/repository whose vision is to host and present national and international artists' works and projects in Cornwall and to reverse this relationship to work nationally and internationally. The potential uses of the existing project space are not limited and a variety of outcomes and events are planned for the foreseeable future, including invited artists, residency programmes, artists talks and exchanges.
The three directors, Patrick Lowry, Steven Paige and Alison Sharkey will present exhibition projects along with invited artist curators. Each director contributes content to the Back Lane West exhibition programme, generating a continuous, rapid succession of new projects. Founded in the summer of 2009, Back Lane West’s initial aim was to set up a project space which was artist-run and where programming would maintain a direct relationship to practice. The aim is to maintain close links between the production and exhibition of work, and the discourse that informs it.
Rather than acting as a ‘curatorial’ entity, the group’s directors are developing exhibition projects based around concerns emerging from their own practices; offering these projects as frameworks within which other artists can, through participation, respond to or engage in dialogue around the concerns being discussed by the group. Through these processes, Back Lane West aims to create a context that fosters productive dialogue between artists and the exposure of ambitious new work.
In the first show 'Two Is One, One Is None' the three founding members collaborated with artists Ben Rowe, Clare Thornton and Alex Schady to create new works. The results were exhibited in the project space over a weekend in August 2009. There was also discussion to accompany the show chaired by Megan Wakefield.
In the second show 'BLW Video' Oliver Sutherland selected videos that he had bookmarked whilst trawling the Internet. The show included works by Øyvind Aspen, Adam Cruces, Daniel Eatock, Chris Grygiel, Morten Norbye Halvorsen, Oliver Laric, Jack Killick, Beth Richards Chris Hayley Silverman and Peter Sutherland and sought to function as a form of 'show and tell' using the dialogues between the works to construct meanings as opposed to a formal mode of curation.
The 2010 programme starts with invited artist Jacqui knight working in collaboration with Morten Norbye Halvorsen and Jessica Warboys to develop a new work within Back Lane West that will be presented in the space on February 19th, 20th, 26th and 27th, with an opening night on Thursday Feb 18th.
For more information: www.backlanewest.org
Links:
Patrick Lowry - Axis Web
Steven Paige - www.stevenpaige.com
Ben Rowe - www.benrowe.org
Alison Sharkey - www.alisonsharkey.com
Alex Shady - www.animateprojects.org
Clare Thornton - www.clare-thornton.blogspot.com
Oyvind Aspen - www.oyvindaspen.com
Adam Cruces - www.adamcruces.com
Daniel Eatock - www.eatock.com
Chris Grygiel - www.youtube.com
Morten Halvorsen - www.mortenhalvorsen.com
Oliver Laric - www.oliverlaric.com
Slade Degree show 2008
Beth Richards - www.vimeo.com
Chris Sherron - www.chrissherron.net
Hayley Silverman - www.hayleysilverman.com
Peter Sutherland - www.petersutherland.net