PAUL CARTER

Imp’: Replace word ‘models’ with ‘Constructions’ Fiction and metaphor, Limits of possibilities of expansion and contraction in architecture and its use. Limits of in figure in architecture Limits of objects in architecture Possible spaces Metaphoric spaces Proposal is to build a construction Practice involves expanding and contracting, constructing and sculpting within models and actual architecture.  Imaginary impossibilities Limits of metaphor, possibilities of movement Activities of this place Fiction of blowing the walls apart Expansion , contraction and friction Model constructions incorporating lift and lift shaft placed next to life size lift with opening and closing doors. Movement, inertia Lift potential of movement within architecture to other levels but in this instance not immediately accessible. Models suggesting imaginary possibilities  shaft   deposits  ‘Window Seat’ window work seat bed, window work seat bed placed in lift House clearance  Relocation Interests lie with the potential of immersion within constructed spaces and the referencing of something outside, elsewhere. Traversing architectural thresholds and the possibilities of movement in and out, physically and metaphorically. Expanding, contracting, forming, sculpting with models through architecture. Replace word ‘models’ with ‘Constructions’  

PHIL COY

Phil Coy’s longstanding fascination with the representation of land and property is the basis for a series of pieces he describes as Landscape Prototypes. The artist takes elements of the digital landscape and reproduces them in low-fi materials before placing them back in the landscape they originally represented.

The latest in the series Provincial Landscape was made earlier this year during the Finnish winter. The work began as a search for a ‘typically Finnish’ landscape via conversations with local people. It was decided that an area close to the village of Lieto, 15km east of the City of Turku best fitted the description. A map of this area was matched to an autumnal satellite image from which a line of 17 pixels were chosen. These pixels were colour matched and carefully reproduced at 1:1 scale using paint and board. The resulting monochromatic paintings were then installed and photographed in the exact place they had once represented so that a digital autumnal landscape was placed into a real winter landscape.

Like the first work in the series a walk in the park (2001), once described as ‘a cross between Carl Andre and Teletubies’, Provincial Landscape (2007) makes a clear visual reference to the Minimalist and the Land Art movements. What differs with Provincial Landscape and earlier works in the series is its placement within an idealised landscape and it’s allusion to the genre of landscape painting.

Provincial Landscape was first shown at DiY a survey show of digital art at Ars Nova Museo, Turku, Finland (2007). Phil Coy’s other recent exhibitions include Incommunicado, Cornerhouse, Manchester (2004); Real Estate, ICA, London (2005); Omega, ev+a Biennial, Limerick (2006); Hannah Rickards: Thunder / Phil Coy: Test Signal, South London Gallery, London. (2006); Phil Coy / Dave Carbone, Andrew Mummery (2006). Lives and works in London.

SHAHREM ENTEKHABI

The main premise of my work is the transportation of ideas via live art and performative, elements, fusing video, architecture, sculpture, drawing and photography. In particular, my work is always framed within an urban setting and inspired by Charles Bauderlaire’s writings on the 19th century concept of the Flaneur and diffusing the idea of urban space being reserved for the practice and performance of the white, middle class, hetero-sexual male. Instead I choose to highlight those individuals who would ordinarily be marginalized, made invisible or forced into self-ghettoisation from the urban domain such as migrant communities and their culture, particularly the communities from the Middle East and their diaspora. The question of visibility and invisibility, therefore, has been a situation that I actively explore within my practice. With reference to my earlier video works.

I transport this confrontation also in my sculptures and para-architectures. In installation “M” (based on five lockers which four of them content the outfit and equipments of my performed different migrant figures and an empty one, and five large mirror framed by lights bubbles) I construct a sculpture of memories of myself and the others, trans-identity, xenophobe, and Sinophobe. In the par-architectures series Caution-Place, is the abstractive-sculptures build during the performance series like “Attenzione’ or “Caution” developed in a useable architectures building made of the caution taps. This Par-architectures/public-spaces give a temporary platform for different performances uses by myself, other artists, and public.

LOTHAR GOTZ

Lothar Götz makes artworks in both interior spaces and on the outside of buildings, creating expanses of vivid colour in either bands or other geometric shapes. These minimalist designs are made specifically for the spaces they occupy, and highlight architectural features and details that would otherwise go unnoticed. He challenges the boundaries that exist between painting, architecture, sculpture, design and decoration. He has produced his work in many different kinds of spaces, both private and public – from domestic flats and offices to churches and schools.

Götz uses colour to define the architectural qualities and spirit of a space and is interested in the way decoration and colour can have an immediate impact on us, exploring how different shapes, dimensions and colours can influence the way we think, feel, and behave. He is inspired not only by Modernism and Minimalism, but also Bavarian Baroque churches, Renaissance paintings and architecture of all periods. Lothar Götz was born in Germany and studied in Wuppertal and Düsseldorf, followed by an MA at the Royal College of Art, London. He has exhibited internationally as well as having solo shows in London at The Economist, Chisenhale Gallery and Gasworks. Forthcoming projects include exhibitions in Dusseldorf, Salamanca and Prague.

ANDREA GREGSON

Recent works continue to explore the evolution of manmade objects and their constructed environments. Formally, the works are a series of wood boxes that loom from the ground on tall legs with complex miniature interiors weaving functions, events and stories together. The contents and ideas for each room are a complex set of narratives taken from real life places both domestic and institutional, however they are hybrid in the sense they merge the imaginary with the real. Headspace is a white upholstered corridor surrounds a collection of white ceramic forms reminiscent of sterile medical vessels used for cleansing, bathing, collecting bodily fluids. Displayed inside an elongated box, these handmade objects, paradoxically juxtapose the sinister with the seductive, by their placement in this subliminal contemporary interior space. Since the miniature space is physically out of bounds, I am interested in their transformative effect on the viewer, from miniature set to psychological trigger of places once remembered, or the imagined experience. As the viewer navigates the interior by peeping through the various viewpoints, the spatial awareness of the room becomes understood through the visual sense rather than a physical experience of entry.

ANDY HARPER

My practice is engaged with the idea of evolutionary theory. Predominantly an exploration in mark-making, the paintings develop an ever changing vocabulary. Earlier paintings relied on the repetition of a single and simple brush stroke to yield a mono-cultural field of grass. Over the last three years this simple process has diversified. The marks and combinations of marks form into images of a much more fantastical terrain. As the paintings adapt and change over time, each manifestation depicts an unnamable world, with the most recent works attempting to picture the future natural.

Through exhibitions and artist talks my practice examines the relationship between the visual arts, nature and the environment. It seeks covert methods through which art can impact on our current models of thinking about the natural world.

CHARLIE JEFFERY

British artist Charlie Jeffery's artistic output through video, performance, sculpture and installation is very much based in the real physical and raw world where themes of language and word play, working with organic materials and the notion of indeterminacy and chance, are central along with the use and representation of the body.

He recently took part in La nuit Blanche in Paris and in November 2006 he showed several new works in the exhibition Horizon sythemtique organised by L’ambassade. His practice shifts between individual, collaborative and curatorial projects. His current ventures are a series of video programs called Vidéoïsme which have been shown in Paris, Medellin, Colombia and Marseille, the most recent of which is entitled Phase de transition de phase, in collaboration with the art critic and curator Maxime Theiffine. He is currently working on a publication sculptural hommage to the black soul singer Barry White. He will be in residence in Medellin, Colombia at the end of 2007 as part of ongoing transatlantic co- operative project El Puente involving artists from South America and Europe, he will be present a large scale public performance as part of his residency.

CHRISTY JOHNSON

FEAST PROJECT 

This artist’s project represents four years of research (in part funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council, the British Council, UCR California Museum of Photography, and University College for the Creative Arts, UK (formerly Kent Institute of Art & Design). The work has developed across platforms and resulted in a number of linked pieces, which extend and expand Johnson’s interests in the interface between the archive, the book, the screen, and the museum.

The project has three distinct components: photographic site-specific installation, video triptych (projection/dual monitor work) and a published artist’s book distributed by Art Data, London. The Feast Project was previewed and launched in April 2007 in the Oculorium Gallery/Project Space at the UCR California Museum of Photography in the USA http://www. cmp.ucr.edu/.

This work represents a convergence of three strands of inquiry: identity and the body, sites of memory, and the archive. The work as a whole aims to explore how the female body is socially and sexually constructed through transformative religious ritual; contemporary practices of intervention and the museum; collecting, re(collecting) and the relationship of artefact and memory; and the archive as a site of reclamation and narration. Through critical intervention, found material has been mobilised and the ‘record’ put in question. The Feast Project operates as a set of interchanges between then and now, and reclaims a space for the reactivation of identity.  See www.feastproject.com.

FIONA MacDONALD

Fiona MacDonald produces fictional worlds and details constructed from found objects, living organisms, natural and artificial materials. Her sculptures and paintings portray the desire for - and the necessary failure of - new spaces of the imagination. Unashamedly beautiful, but never without dark undercurrents, MacDonald’s work evokes sensations of overabundance and stagnation. Alternately seduced and brought up against the kind of wrongness that only occasionally appears in nature (in such ways as the duck-billed platypus looks stuck together with glue), she positions us at the edge of illusion and materiality. Fiona studied at Leeds Metropolitan and Chelsea College of Art. Solo shows include Habitat 2006, (Phoenix, Brighton) and upcoming at Long and Ryle, London, June 2007. She is a finalist in the Celeste Art Prize 2007. Fiona has exhibited her work in solo and group shows in the UK and abroad and is at present a director and curator of Standpoint Gallery in London.