The Apartment Project

Studio 309 Netil House (Westgate street)- A project by Lou, Kay, Sarah & Maude

2010-01-10T22:57:00.000Z

Kay presented their project during the Apartment Marathon on Saturday 11 December on Broadway Market. Following onto this talk they conducted a photo shoot in their studio, the results of which can be found below...

Sarah

Kay

Lou

Maude

This series of photographs, taken on the 11th of December 2009,
provides one answer to the question of how to document a transitional
moment. The worldly possessions of studio 309, Netil House, assembled
and impounded, form a kind of group portrait – the human form is
absent though, replaced and represented by bean bag filling, a
gramophone horn, three pairs of laced leather boots, cardboard boxes
bearing the logo and imprint of a premium banana brand, knots of
steel, bags of durable plastic, a chair missing its third and
purpose-defining leg …

On the 11th of December 2009, the question, much discussed, much
deferred, of definition – as in ‘what the hell do we call this thing
that we are doing’ – is answered again. This time by the random
selection from a blue plastic crate of a 1981 vinyl pressing of Boz
Scaggs’ ‘Hits!’. The song on which the finger randomly alights, ’Lido
Shuffle’ is added to a growing list of possibilities:

the riots
a smile to remember
gamblers all
what make?
crate of wet hens
chalk faces
born into this
le mer et la nuit
…

Teetering arrangements of boxes and bags and words on a page; slumped
stacks of second-hand clothing, art supplies and of text that devolves
into nonsense and riddle; we expand to fill the space that is ours –
the blank page, the raw and reclaimed studio. After accumulation, the
urge is to purge and to reduce

The question of how to create a statement/ an inventory of this
transitional moment – a kind of portrait in which the human body is
removed, or rather replaced/ represented by their belongings.

The process is one that when confronted with the teetering pillars and
slumped stacks of one’s personal belongings, encourages/pushes one
towards a type of minimalism – a life reduced to essentials …

Order within chaos – ordering and structuring a space that has been
physically transformed, torn down, reduced to rubble and built up
again.

Texte by Katrina Schwartz
Photo by Lou Marcellin
Kay Marcellin

The Apartment Project on Thingsmagazine.net

2009-12-14T17:31:00.000Z

http://www.thingsmagazine.net/index.htm

for this weekend only, The Apartment Project, in Broadway Market, London.

The Apartment Project on MurmurtArt

2009-12-14T17:17:00.001Z

http://www.murmurart.com/news/the-apartment-project-at-35-37-broadway-market

The Apartment Project at 35-37 Broadway Market an exhibition in the form of a three-day event from 11th - 13th December 2009 in a private flat......

Ian Giles will participate in The Apartment Project, a three-day event in curator Laurence Dujardyn's residence on Broadway Market. The event will comprise of an opening on the Friday night at 6pm followed on the Saturday by a 12 hour 'Apartment Marathon' of artist conversations, public debates, film screenings, performances and live-events and a closing party at 6pm on Sunday.
For more information see the Apartment Project blog here.
"You are kindly invited to The Apartment Project, an exhibition taking place in the form of a three-day event, from Friday night 11 until Sunday night 13 December 2009 in a private flat on Broadway Market in London E8."
Private View
Friday 11 December 2009
6-9pm
The Apartment Marathon
12 hours of artist conversations,
public debates, film screenings,
performances and live-events
Saturday 12 December 2009
Noon-Midnight
Finissage Party
Sunday 12 December 2009
6-9pm
PARTICIPATING ARTISTS:
Jonas Vansteenkiste, Sven Overheul, Aukje Dekker, Kristian De La Riva, Rinus Van de Velde, Ian Giles, Filip Gilissen, Frederik Van Simaey, Lou Marcellin, Maude Mathieu and Sarah Medvewsky.
To see Ian's profile click here.

Alex Loves The Apartment Project!

2009-12-13T11:09:00.001Z

http://alexloves.com/2009/12/the-apartment-project/

Here's what she wrote:

The Apartment Project is the first exhibition curated by 24 year old Laurence Dujardyn. As she prepares to head back home to Belgium after a year of studying in London for her MA at Sotheby’s, Laurence decided to do so with a bang, and she will be hosting and curating her first exhibition in her own apartment on trendy Broadway Market.

She carefully selected 11 recent graduates from art schools in London (Central Saint Martins and Chelsea College of Art and Design) and Belgium (HISK and KASK, both in Ghent) to showcase their works to a varied audience from 11 to 13 December.
Participating artists are Jonas Vansteenkiste, Sven Overheul, Aukje Dekker, Kristian De La Riva, Rinus Van de Velde, Ian Giles, Filip Gilissen, Frederik Van Simaey, Lou Marcellin, Maude Mathieu and Sarah Medvewsky.

The weekend will be jampacked full of events, starting with the private opening on Friday from 6-9pm, followed by the Apartment Marathon on Saturday, from noon to midnight, where there will be guest speakers, a dinner party, live performances and a surprise musical guest. Full details here.
On Sunday, the event finishes with a finnisage party from 6-9 pm.
As I know Laurence very well, I urge you all to attend this wonderful event, which will no doubt be a beautiful gathering of creative, talented people across all fields of the Arts. It is a great opportunity to support young talent. For more details, and more info on the artists, have a look at the blog.

Call for participants for 'Us' by Jonas Vansteenkiste

2009-12-11T15:28:00.000Z

We are currently looking for two girls with similar height and hairstyle who would like to participate in the live-sculpture 'US' of Jonas Vansteenkiste. Anyone who is interested please contact us or come to the exhibition opening tonight (Friday 11december 6pm) and/or the marathon tomorrow (Saturday 12 december) at noon until midnight.

Thank you!

“US” is a relational object; a pillow

which connects two humans and

concurrently detains them together.

The two of them make up this image

and step by step it seems

that their identity fades and they are

seen as one.

This object creates a symbiosis of

these two people in which each

one is depending on the other.

However charming and recognisable

this object is in it’s appearance,

one’s feels the negative tension

this object bears.

The longer these persons are sharing this intimate dialogue the more

they seem to loose themselves and even suffocate each other.

“Us” tells the story about an unseen

space and a social space that is not

pronounced but wears a tangible tension.

About Filip Gilissen and 'The winner takes it all'

2009-12-11T15:23:00.000Z

At first the installation functions as a stationary sculpture, a latent glitter cannon encircled by spot lights. The work does not reach it’s climax in anticipation of a certain amount of visitors. The number at what the machine blasts-off should always be an exaggerate quantity of the expected audience.When the 1000th visitor arrived in the entrance hall, the visitor will be covered with gold by way of one ruthless shot of 100.000 golden slow fall glitters, simultaneously the available light is dimmed, and the theater lights mounted on both walls of the venue, intensify the experience. The golden carpet remains as a proof of the action and consequently creates new expectations towards the rest of the show, space and the rest of the festival. Consequently the golden glitters will disperse in the rest of the exhibitions spaces.

ww.filipgilissen.com

About Jonas Vansteenkiste

2009-12-11T15:20:00.000Z

The works of the young artist Jonas Vansteenkiste are defined by spaces. He uses several media, i.e. installations, video, sculpture, photos and drawings.

He refers and uses – both in a physical and psychological way – architectural elements.

He builds up spaces, or creates situations which can best be defined as “mental spaces”.

Mental spaces have a resemblance with “Denkraum”, a notion mostly found in philosophy and architecture. “Denkraum” can be seen as building walls, not only in but also from the chaos of one’s own perception, emotions and thoughts to express in a clear way these experiences and feelings.

Keeping this in mind, Jonas defines and creates his works.

These works depart from a personal experience where the anecdotal is moved to the background where it is further purified into a “basso continuo” used to build upon.

He approaches the medium “installation” as one of reference and experience. He thus places the spectator in an active role: he invites him to step into the work and situate himself – both mentally and physically – in it.

The artist also leaves room for the spectator to add his own personal experiences in these installations, which are not only the “relevant” place for the artist, but also for the spectator.

The same exercise is repeated in his drawings: these spacer are more personal so a spectator is only invied by a gaze…

Frederik Van Simaey on his work

2009-12-10T01:15:00.001Z

For those who are not so familiar with my work, it is about relationships between light, shadow and gestures of turning things in & out, upsidedown front to back. It's about me and the other, about both visible and invisible forces... It speaks for itself.

http://www.frederikvansimaey.hi-ka-sk.be/

Aukje Dekker

2009-12-10T01:02:00.001Z

Aukje Dekker experiments with a range different media such as film, performance, photography, spatial installation and painting. As she says herself "I prefer to take a situation as the starting point rather than laying the starting point within a certain situation. This can be a feeling, an event or a thought, whatever is keeping my mind busy at that moment."

For one of her previous projects she made 24 paintings of the exact same image in collaboration with Jack Lewis. As such questions of authorship were put forward, the relationship between the viewer and the art work as well as the inherent value of a work. On a second level the issue of uselessness arose, the act of making art as a compulsive reflex?

In the Apartment Project Aukje Dekker will present a video work engaging with similar issues as well as the notion of physical endurance. Next to that a print will be shown from her MA degree show at Central Saint Martins. This consisted out of the room-sized video installation 'Verwend Ongenoegen (Spoilt)', where a series of men were projected against the walls while continually vomitting paint in all the colours of the rainbow in glitters.

Kristian De La Riva on his work

2009-12-09T23:28:00.003Z

My images and animations focus on habitual patterns of human behaviour where simplicity belies subtle layers of complexity. In my work I use a minimal black line drawn style which is used to animate the actions of male and female figures. The characters for the work are taken from real footage often of myself, yet all detail, clothing and facial, is stripped away to create generic representations of a man or a woman. Such a reduction in the use of the human form often creates in the work a playful cartoon like edge that sits in contrast to the serious issues addressed.
The foundations for my current practice reside in the 8 year collaborative practice I shared with former partner Emily Russell, which ended in 2008. Together our work centred around the dissemination of the relationship of lovers.
In 'CUT' 2009 a lone male character attempts to cut away various body parts using ever more extreme methods to do so. The ode to relationships is still hinted at alongside an autobiography element but the field of reference is expanded to incorporate the pain and humour of an individuals day to day routine.

Kristian De La Riva is an MA graduate in Fine Art at Central Saint Martins, London. He has been selected for Future Map 2009, which is currently on show until 23 December at 20 Hoxton Square Projects.

I'll show you mine if you show me yours, 2007

Saturday 12 December MARATHON Program confirmed

2009-12-09T22:33:00.002Z

The program for the MARATHON on Saturday 12 December is out!

12 noon: official opening on Broadway market with declaration/banner/speaker.

1pm: curator Sophie Risner talks about the 'Gandt' project www.gandtpresents.com

2pm: screening of the documentary 'Here is always somewhere else' by Rene Daalder about the life and work of Dutch conceptual artist Bas Jan Ader as well as a few of his own films ( a must-see!)

4 pm: artists' talk by Kay & Lou Marcellin, Maude Mathieu on their project in Netil House

5pm: broadway market tour to collect donations for the dinner party

6pm: artists' talk by Jonas Vansteenkiste and Sven Overheul

7pm: Washing Line Productions, an up-and-coming physical theatre and performance art company, presents their new performance piece ‘Lisa Appleby’ www.stubmatic.com/washingline

8pm: the Apartment Dinner Party, a free communal dinner featuring donated food, recipes and labour. Seats will be given away during the opening night on Friday by a mix of raffle and invitation to the Apartment Project supporters and participants. If you'd like to be one of the lucky invitees please email laurencedujardyn@gmail.com with your contact details and tell us why you should be there!

10pm: live performance by Ian Giles www.iangiles.net

11-12pm: Surprise guest musical performer!

Washing Line productions presents LISA APPLEBY, live at the Apartment Marathon Saturday 7pm!

2009-12-09T18:31:00.006Z

6 'Lady[ies] in Red' stuck in a Chris De Burgh time warp.
The six female performers all play Lisa Appleby, a girl singing her heart out in the vain hope that she will make it BIG. The six Lisa Applebys believe they are Los Angeles singing sensations, they umm, ahhh and rap to the audience: "Ahhhhhh Push it, Push it. Watch me work it. I'm perfect. Perfect. Perfection. Ha Ha". Lisa wants fame, Oprah, the husband, the golden retriever, the two blonde blue eyed baby twin boys, a waffle maker and the perfect dick.

She wants you.

See Lisa Appleby live:

December 15, 16, 17 December
Stoke Newington Airport, Stoke Newington, London.

December 18th
Russian Club Studios, 340–344 Kingsland road 

Doors open: 7.30
TICKETS: £5 www.stubmatic.com/washingline

But you can see her first at The Apartment Marathon on Saturday 12 December at 7pm, don't miss it!!!

Gandt will be performing Saturday 1pm!

2009-12-08T19:45:00.002Z

http://www.gandtpresents.com

Ian Giles about Ian Giles

2009-12-08T19:43:00.011Z

Working centrally with the performance, my practice is driven by both physical and aesthetic imperatives. My pieces often see the fusing of subject and object and use the body as a ‘ready made’. My work often demands a total physical concentration and can involve an element of danger or chance. I am interested in working with objects, such as the body, which can be choreographed. My work balances between the humorous and poetic. I hope to highlight the human condition – suggesting that we are all struggling towards inevitable failure.

Ian graduated from Chelsea College of Art, London 2008. He has exhibited at galleries including: Oriel Davies Gallery, Wales; Paradise Row Gallery, London; Battersea Arts Centre, London and the Arnolfini, Bristol. In 2009 Ian took part in an international residency of visual art and performance at the Academi di Belle Arti, Macerata, Italy. In 2007 he received the Chelsea Arts Club Trust Travel Bursary Award, travelling across Russia and China. Ian was awarded a Wandsworth Arts Grant in September 2009.
www.iangiles.net

Ian will be performing during the Marathon on Saturdayat 10pm!

The fiction of Rinus Van de Velde (by Koen Sels)

2009-12-07T22:38:00.010Z

Document yourself

For the Belgian artist Rinus Van de Velde (b. 1983), drawing means imposing order on a stubborn reality. The point of departure for Van de Velde’s mythology, however, is not the “unprocessed” reality itself, but the staged world of photographic representation. His drawings, in fact, hearken back to a personal archive of photographs derived from vulgarizing scientific magazines such as National Geographic, from biographies of artists and scientists... These images serve as wellspring for a host of drawings, with as primary point of contact the recognizable form of the source material itself. What the photographs have in common, after all, is not so much what they show, but how they show it. The photographic sources may pretend to be perfectly natural images of a realistic state of affairs, but must in fact be seen as a conscious or unconscious arrangement of signs, brought into play as elements in an all-embracing narrative.

The form lying at the foundation of Van de Velde’s drawn world is that of the myth as a unique system of signs, as described by Roland Barthes in the theoretical section of Mythologies. According to Barthes, the myth arises “on the basis of an existing semiological chain: it is a semiological system in the second degree.” Within this meta-language, all sorts of signs are applied as sub-terms within a greater system, a given construct or ideology that is not explicitly illustrated, in which each element is placed in a specific light. A similar process takes place in Van de Velde’s act of appropriation by parasitizing upon the photographic image. By using the photograph as material for a drawing, and by providing – by means of text captions - a different context from that which is represented, Van de Velde lays aside the original facts in order to create space for a new and personal story. The goal, therefore, is not to make visible the reality “behind” the photograph, but to create a myth in the third degree. The contents are dismantled and discounted; only the form – the image language – remains the same.

In its seeming objectivity, that image language might be considered naïve by the contemporary viewer of ironic bent. That, of course, has to do primarily with the source material: the photographs Van de Velde collects are not critical of the medium of photography itself or of representation in general: they intend merely to stand for what they stand for, and are not characterized by assorted qualms about the medium. For a critical viewer, many of these photographs would be seen as intrusive bearers of a story which might often be found dubious, at the very least. Many of the photographs Van de Velde refers to, after all, are part and parcel of an ideology that is suspect or that hasn't stood up to the test of time (or of art): a deep-rooted belief in the myths of the authentic or autonomous artist, scientific progress, a paternalistic exoticism, a phallo-centrism marked by adulation of adventurers and other stalwart menfolk…

Van de Velde’s objective is not to unmask those myths: the photos unmask themselves enough as it is. His artistic practice is primarily a constructive one: by arranging drawings in nonlinear installations, linked by ambiguous and often incomplete textual references, it becomes possible to weave a new narrative, that suggests a whole world in which a number of recurrent characters live and move. In this way, out of a great number of scattered myths, an illusion of unity is created, which points both to the artist (who brings the images together) and to the viewer (who must ultimately dream up both the connections and a linear narrative). The result is a sort of ordered mirror universe, peopled by courageous alter egos who chart the world around them and serve as ideal representatives of the actual artist. At the same time, this drawn world is staked out and delineated by its own subjectivity: it can be nothing but a fantasy, a fiction, and so beyond its borders lies the great nothingness of the “real” world.

In essence, therefore, van de Velde moves through the borderland between system and reality, between self and ideal, between the ordinal subdivisions of the I and the Other. His artistic practice is characterized not only by a personal desire for self-actualization, control and structure, but also “shows” us something; namely, that fiction and reality need and even imply each other. Van de Velde’s necessary fictions serve to counter both a meaningless world and the totalistic myth, and so – in paradoxical fashion – are anchored in that “real” that cannot be related.

Koen Sels

Rinus Van de Velde is a postgraduate student at the Higher Institute for Fine Arts in Ghent, Belgium. His work is currently exhibited at Tegenboschvanvreden in Amsterdam until 19 December. www.tegenboschvanvreden.com

About Sven Overheul

2009-12-07T22:33:00.004Z

Sven Overheul is a gifted young artist. The past two years I’ve had the privilege to follow his evolution in the arts at close quarters. Sven’s multi-disciplinary art practice includes video works, text works, sculptural objects and installation works. In general his works have a cinematic nature; he combines still and moving images and objects with language in an intelligent narrative manner. Sven’s works are surprisingly mature for his age. On a formal level his works appear to being rather minimal and spare. The poetics and layers are subtly written between the lines. At times the works are a bit more explicit though, but they always have a clever twist. In general the works question our social habits and conditionings. Therefore one could label Sven a silent philosopher employing a language of modest and discrete images to question the human condition.

Best regards, Hans Op de Beeck (2009)

http://svenoverheul.carbonmade.com/

Looking for Rachel Whiteread

2009-12-07T21:42:00.019Z

Dear all,

I'm looking for the address of the studio of the London based artist Rachel Whiteread to complete my work “a dollhouse for Rachel Whiteread”.

When I was physically confronted with one of her casted stairwells, I was astounded. The work left a lasting impression on me and I wanted to know more about this artist and her work. When I set out to read about her work, I saw resemblances between how we both experience the relation between human beings and space. I began to see Rachel as a mentor guiding me in my own artistic quest. In this manner she gave me insights in my own perception and experience. I have the impression that Rachel has given me a lot through her work and thus I wanted to give something in return.

I read that Rachel collects dollhouses and this triggered my work. As we all know a dollhouse is a relational object in the best known way: an object between a father and his daughter. As such in the back of my mind I started to make my own dollhouse with my childhood home as the blue-print. My dollhouse has no walls: it is in fact an open structure that refers to a house and its rooms. The only room that is defined is the staircase. This is a hint to the starting point of the project (the experience with a Whiteread stairwell).

The sculpture is the first part of this work. The second part consists of actually giving the dollhouse sculpture to Rachel Whiteread herself.

I would like to thank you in advance for any given assistance.

Kind regards,

Jonas Vansteenkiste

grijzeogen@hotmail.com

http://jonasvansteenkiste.blogspot.com

cell: 0032 474 822746

Wanted!

2009-12-04T22:51:00.025Z

Artists/performers for the Apartment Marathon 12 December 2009 noon-midnight.
[Please email your proposal]

Exhibition

2009-12-04T22:40:00.006Z

The Apartment Project is an exhibition taking place in the form of a three-day event from Friday night 11 until Sunday night 13 December 2009 in a private flat on Broadway Market in London E8. The exhibition focuses on time-based media as well as non-mediated experience, thus presenting a number of performances, live events and debates over the course of three days. As such the realm of the object is left behind in order to detach art from its physical experience and to take it into other realms, taking place within the viewer.

As there is only a limited number of possibilities to show art to an audience, existing structures need to be rethought. The Apartment Project is to be seen in this context, as it presents the object-based and non-object based work of a number of recently graduated students in a flexible situation rather than a fixed gallery-like environment. These works do not correspond to the dichotomy between object-led art and non-mediated experience, but rather they balance somewhere in between. There will be installations, prints, videos and drawings as well as in situ works, processes and situations. Some of these interactions are reminiscent of a previous generation of artists graduating in the late ‘80s from Goldsmiths together, the so-called YBA’s, who went on to hold their initial show in an alternative space in the Docklands. A few years in later in 1993, Tracey Emin and Sarah Lucas opened ‘The Shop’ in Bethnal Green, only a doorstep away from Broadway Market. That same year Rachel Whiteread showed ‘House’, a concrete cast of the inside of a Victorian terraced house at 193 Grove Road, in East London too. As a reply, one of the artists participating in “The Apartment Project” will construct a fantastical dollhouse which will be given to Ms. Whiteread as a present after the exhibition.

The area around Bethnal Green and Hackney has undeniably undergone a huge metamorphosis over the past decade. From seedy quarter to hipster hang-out, Broadway Market stands exemplary for this process of gentrification. Significant changes did not only occur within the physical and architectural realm. Loads has shifted and moved on within the artist’s mind as well, as a new generation of artists has sprung up which doesn’t neatly fit within the boundaries of the generational. Nevertheless a few common properties can be found in the exhibition as a medium for situations and processes, reflecting upon the exhibition format and its scenography. Most of the artists participating are recent graduates from art schools in London (Saint Martins and Chelsea College of Art and Design) and Belgium (HISK and KASK, both in Ghent).

The artists currently participating in the Apartment Project are: Jonas Vansteenkiste, Sven Overheul, Aukje Dekker, Kristian De La Riva, Rinus Van de Velde, Ian Giles, Filip Gilissen, Frederic Van Simaey, Lou Marcellin, Maude Mathieu and Sarah Medvewsky.

The Apartment Marathon

2009-12-04T21:46:00.019Z

In the middle of these 3 days, the Apartment Marathon will be held. This will consist out of 12 hours of artist conversations, public debates, film screenings, performances and live-events. Taking place on Saturday between noon and midnight, the exact content of this Marathon is more or less open.
[Please email your proposal]

The Apartment Dinner

2009-12-04T20:47:00.006Z

One of the events of the Marathon will be the Dinner Party on Saturday night, a free communal dinner featuring donated food, recipes and labour. Seats will be given away during the opening night on Friday by a mix of raffle and invitation to the Apartment Project supporters and participants.