Marco Palmieri

Algae
Ink, Watercolour, and Gouache on Paper

Marco Palmieri

The Forest
Ink and Acrylic on Paper

Marco Palmieri

Hello Kitties
Watercolour and Gouache on Paper

Hannah Lees editions for sale

Hello everyone!

This is just a quick note to tell you that as of Sunday 1 April you will be able to purchase my small sculpture editions (and other peoples stuff) from 'Shop' (above Chambers cafe), so please check it out!

Word to your mother

Drawing Show Proposal-Horsebridge Centre

Hello to all. This is the drawing proposal for the show we are trying to set up in the Horsebridge centre in Whitstable. The directore of the place, Hannah, has recieved the proposal and images, and really loved it. Unfortunately, the space is booked until mid-2008. But we are high on the waiting list. Basically, if anybody cancels, we get the space. This means that if we get the space, it will be on a very short notice. That is why I am showing you the proposal.

Just have a think about it, and if you are interested, start drawing! Basically, if the show is offered to us, I'll call you up and ask if you have anything, and if you do, you're in the show! This included even the people who have not been included in the proposal. So please give us some feedback on what you think.

Proposal

Drawing is a practice which is carefully embedded in everyday life. From home, to school, to work, and even in our free time, drawing is one of the earliest tools of communication we have at our disposal. It presents itself in various ways, from childish doodles to official architectural plans. Drawing in fine art is but one of many examples.

This show will present various examples of how drawing presents itself in contemporary artists’ practices. The artists who will be exhibiting come from different countries and backgrounds, providing a more varied collection of work.

The Artists:

Ben Fletcher obsessively collects disparate kinds of objects, and meticulously reworks them, transforming them into new precious oddities. Clocks, door knobs, and walking sticks transform to become strange framing devices for little drawings which can be found encapsulated in the pieces.

Kuriko Kraemer fully enjoys the experimental and experiential nature of drawing. Her works evolve without a fixed composition, leaving space for the development of abstract images. Her works reference the primitive nature of drawing. She does not use it as a tool to illustrate an idea, but rather investigates the basic techniques of drawing (contour-line drawing, perspective, etc.)

Ceci Lombardi’s works develop like single-celled organisms. Initially large stains, these amorphous forms gain corporeal solidity by the various marks (lines, squares, circles, notes, shadows) which follow. This organic growth of the image/idea results in the creation of work which borders between painting and drawing, abstraction and rationalizing figuration.

Marco Palmieri’s work investigates the relationship between architecture and ideology. The use of architectural drawings to portray idealized landscapes has been present in city planning for many centuries. He uses these same tools of constructions to illustrate run-down rural areas, to produce anti-ideological scenes.

Maria Søilen Jahr draws large diagrams of odd vegetable/animal hybrids. Reproduction, enclosure, shelter, and survival are some of themes she illustrates in her work, presenting images of alluring organisms. Referencing the current climate of biotechnology, the work aims to investigate how natural shapes relate and interact, questioning the body as a machine and an interdependent or parasitic relationship with the plant/botanical world.

Russell Terry’s sculptures are a result from an extensive number of sketches and diagrams. There is a constant interplay between drawing and sculpture, form and body, pure idea (Plato) and mere physical presence. Through a study of various sketches and maquettes, a sculpture finally takes form, rooted in the very foundations of drawing itself.

Invitation for Grockles at Sea

Grockles at Sea

Exiting!!!!

Everyone!
Attached are the invites for the show Grockles at Sea. It has taken us a few days to come up with an image that would sum up the idea behind the show and a title, but together with extensive google research and me and Marco pulling each others hairs we managed to "fabricate" an image that hopefully give the idea of four visitors (grockles) arriving at a town by the sea such as Folkestone.

The incorporation of objects, fruits, the wallpaper (by William Morris I must add!!), exotic plants and the odd heads,
alludes to the idea of craft making, recreation of objects, collection, redundancy, strangers in a town, the arrival of abandoned and random things that the sea brings (quoting Eleanor)..etc..

For more info on the word Grockle (which I'm quite proud of finding!):

What is the origin of the word 'grockle'?

This slightly dismissive term for a 'tourist' was, as several of our readers have noted, first popularized because of its use by the characters in the film The System (1962), which is set in the Devon resort of Torquay during the tourist season. Some older dictionaries suggested that this might be a West Country dialect word. Other scholars have suggested that it might originate in a comparison of red-faced tourists (in baggy clothing with handkerchiefs on their heads) to 'Grock', the famous clown. The word grockle was indeed picked up by the script-writer from the locals during filming in Torquay. However, it was apparently not an 'old local dialect word'. According to research by a local journalist in the mid-1990s, the word in fact originated from a strip cartoon in the children's comic Dandy entitled 'Danny and his Grockle'. (The grockle was a magical dragon-like creature.) A local man, who had had a summer job at a swimming pool as a youngster, said that he had used the term as a nickname for a small elderly lady who was a regular customer one season. During banter in the pub among the summer workers, the term then became generalized as a term for summer visitors. This seems to have occurred in, or only shortly before, the summer in which The System was filmed: we know of no instances of the word dating from before the release of The System (though one or two people from the south-west remain convinced that they knew it before then).

Anyway, it's been a late night so I'll leave you with this.


Ceci

Ceci Lombardi

Work in progress, 2007
I decided to be a bit self-centred and put some images of me working.
I've been working on a new drawing/painting/staining... that is going a bit way from the tea stains.
I put some images of details of the new work so please send me some feedback.
At the moment I'm really suffering a crisis with my work.

My works have been more and more developing in the format of single-celled organisms.

the work is becoming a process between painting and drawing, abstraction and rationalizing figuration.

I feel this new work is more focused on the creation of a balanced composition, and also I am
going away from the direct and innate approach of working around the stains without controlling them by actually being more control and aware of the possibilities of drawing within the process of stain making.
I am bit confused with my own ideas so basically I will not say more and let you analyze them and send me some feedback. thank you!

Eleanor Levett

Technology, detail from 'The Key', 2006

I'm now running my own page for anyone who wants to know more about my work. It will have images, statements and details about up-coming shows.

I hope you'll take a look - any feedback is very welcome!

Marco Palmieri


Deluge
Watercolour and Gouche on paper

Here's a new baby painting I just finished. Very simple, but there's something I quite like about it. Just like the other one, its a little print that I got from some charity shop, and slowly changed it to something else. There is something quite enjoyable about defacing other peoples' work I must say. Gets quite addictive. The next painting I will do will be the cherry on the cake... It's going to be called Michael's Cottage.

Once again, the lightning bolt reappears. It reminds me of Barnett Newman's paintings, and his Zips. I did a lot of reasearch on him during my dissertation, and even though the work is completely different from mine, there is something which just keeps reminding me of him.

The lightning bolt is the central subject of this image. This exhausted symbol (a symbol used for tattoos, motorbikes, rockers, horror films) initiates the minimal narrative of this work.

However, I think the use of 'colourful' colours contrasts with the catastrophe narrative and balances out. Don't know really. Like to know what all of yoy think.

B&B Show

To all

The B&B Show has been set for the 20th April.

At the moment the collective is working on the invitations, newsletter and meetings with the artists to
discuss arrangements of the space, works exhibited and other ideas.

This Sunday we will meet Ben, Eleanor and Hannah to discuss the progress of their work and other elements
concerning the show.

We ask you to keep posting ideas that can be relevant to the show, such as a title and ways of advertising.

Some ideas that are floating at the moment (may or may not happen):

-arrange a coach from ucca to folkestone in order to bring some students and tutors to the show
-arrangements for the private view such as music outside since the space is small and most people will be outdoors
-invites:we are thinking that rather than having just a selected image of one of the artist's work, to create some sort of collage, emblem, symbol that will represent the concept of the work as well as the identity of the collective


anyway..we are just trying to inform you all of what sort of plans we are making and what are the general concerns.


hope this is all clear. post some thoughts!!!!

thank you

ceci

B&B Project Space Proposal

Hello everyone.

We have set our first show!
Will be happening on June 1st at the B&B Project Space.

At the moment the artists considered are Ben, Hannah and Eleanor but we are hopping to extend it to more.

We are just on the preliminary stage of the arrangements but we just wanted all to know that things are happening. And slowly more shows will happen for everyone.

Exhibition Proposal

The exhibition will present works which explores issues of redundancy, recycling, regeneration, failure, and desire. For this reason, Folkestone would be a perfect space in which to explore these issues. Folkestone can be perceived as a redundant town. The image it portrayed of an idyllic, picturesque seaside town is out of date, and is no longer required from it. It is currently in a run down state, and there are many attempts to regenerate its centre. But what is the goal of this regeneration? To reconstruct the town into the picturesque postcard image it was, or into something new? Is it not questionable to reconstruct the image of Folkestone using a redundant ideal?

The works presented unravel many of these thematic issues, which find their roots in England’s Romantic past.

Eleanor Levett uses the craft of cross stitching to make her work. She explores various redundant symbols, with the intention to raise issues of fallacy within our visual language systems.

In the work Hope a phallus is presented with the word ‘hope’ below: “Hope may appear to be an example of the latter, but this ancient symbol of fertility reflects the instinctive hope for survival and growth that drives the human race. As genetic sciences and IVF develop the phallus is an image infused with conflicting meaning - redundancy vs potential.”

Hannah Lees constructs sculptures out of second-hand materials, which vary from driftwood to fake diamonds. She uses a complex language of materials to create hybrid ready-mades.
In the work Three wishes, the materials are carefully selected to resemble a maquette of a lakeside landscape. The dichotomy between the materials and the Romantic imagery in the work raises many issues relating to the failed picturesque, kitsch materiality, and aesthetics.

Benjamin Fletcher obsessively collects numerous kinds of second-hand objects, and uses these as materials to construct new curiosities. This act, however, is a purely selfish one, done in order to satisfy his personal desires.

Objects can be seen as an extension or articulation of a consumer’s desire. In this case, the artist’s practice can be seen as a second-hand form of consumerism. The old unwanted (privy of consumerist desire) objects are secretly collected, broken down, dissected, and reconstructed, in order to create new objects of desire. “They are made – solid and unjust, with desire above all reason.”

Nina Finnerud

Nina Finnerud

Untitled
C-type print

Nina's photographs investigates human emotions through the interaction between figure and space.
Nature and interior are used as metaphors for the state of mind and used as a space on which to protect human moods and feelings.




Kuriko Kramer

Kuriko Kraemer

Kuriko Kraemer fully enjoys the experimental and experiential nature of drawing. Her works evolve without a fixed composition, leaving space for the development of abstract images. Her works reference the primitive nature of drawing. She does not use it as a tool to illustrate an idea, but rather investigates the basic techniques of drawing (contour-line drawing, perspective, etc.)

Marco Palmieri

Marco Palmieri

Cunt
Watercolour and gouache on paper


This is one of my new works i recently completed. I worked on a cheap print of an owl which i found in a charity shop, and slowly started adding layers of paint and new information, until the old image slowly started to dissappear.
I am currently exploring various forms of imagery which have become redundant, and incorporate them in strange landscapes.
I am also fascinated by the idea of organic growth and creation. Let me explain: there is a theory of creation that states that before any organisms existed, the planet was filled with amniotic puddles, where there was a rich concentration of DNA/Information/Potential for the creation of organisms. Then a lightning bolt hit one of the puddles, activating the DNA to multiply. This set up a chain reaction which lead to the creation of the first organisms. Although this is probably not a valid theory, i find the idea interesting, and try to consider the development of a landscape in those terms. Electricity, Neon, lights and flourescent colours are slowly becoming a reoccuring theme in my work for that reason. I think the visual outcome is quite interesting. Feedback is kindly requested!

Maria Soilen Jahr

Maria Soilen Jahr

Reproduction

My artworks explore ideas of enclosure, protection, demarcations, symbiosis, parasitism, and transformation. This often through the investigation of different types of containers that have in them a possibility to function as a shelter (a protection either genuine or false), or those being part of closed circulation systems (as inside the body).

The work investigates the body as a container/shelter and the plant/botanical world as mechanisms of growth and nutrition. Combining elements from the two (organs/carnivorous plants), closed imaginary systems are formed. They seek to explore the fragility, vulnerability and order of different natural mechanisms, networks and processes. Contrasting life-giving organs with carnivorous plants also introduces ideas of life and continuity opposed to death.

My works deal with the beauty of what is often experienced as repulsive. The beautiful, protective and pleasant are often contrasted by an aspect of its opposite: the fright lurking that can call upon the uncanny.

Referencing the current climate of biotechnology, the work aims to investigate how natural shapes relate and interact, questioning the body as a machine and an interdependant or parasitic relationship with the plant/botanical world.

Hannah Lees

Hannah Lees

Three Wishes

Hannah Lees constructs sculptures out of second-hand

materials, which vary from driftwood to fake diamonds. She

uses a complex language of materials to create hybrid ready- mades.
In the work Three wishes, the materials are carefully selected to resemble a maquette of a lakeside landscape. The dichotomy between the materials and the Romantic imagery in the work raises many issues relating to the failed picturesque, kitsch materiality, and
aesthetics.

Victoria Foster

Intersperse (Detail)

Victoria Foster is primarily concerned with facilitating situations through the medium of art that are conducive to the creation of shared experience and community; place-filling and place-fixing. This is enabled by the offering of accessible objects that require interaction and exchange. The need for participation makes the viewer an integral part of the artwork, therefore the art objects can be viewed as props within events.
She investigates these ideas through the creation and exhibition of handmade ‘gifts’, mostly in the form of delicate, small sculptures inspired by everyday objects and things of nature. Meaning is implied through the use of subtle metaphor and material narrative. The act of repetition is a constant thread throughout all of her work as multiplication intensifies meaning, and more importantly removes the art object’s autonomous, precious and unapproachable nature. The appearance of the work is open to change as it is in constant flux with objects dispersing among participants.
To date, she has attempted to create objects that will be recognised, understood and accepted in the true spirit of the gift by those who encounter them, thus demonstrating that art can be accessible and relevant. Currently these concerns are predominately centred round the East Kent seaside towns, exploring what it means to be an artist and resident there, and how the local community respond to contemporary art made with them in mind.

Ben Fletcher

Ben Fletcher

If one questions motive, absolute desire stands above all reason. A things reason for being is held in its’ want for being made, whether this warrants its making is another question entirely. Yet when faced with the decision, to do or not to do, when all compelling forces are stripped to the bone, the choice is left to personal desire. At what point do we serve our wants before our needs? Or in this age do we assume want before need - which compels us more? Under the assumption that help is always there, through government aid, family, talent, we are more willing to take the risk of perhaps forgoing meals in order to satisfy a mantle piece.

Things are readily available to us, these objects that must become ours, extensions of our bodies, something else to own as trash-to-be or perhaps treasure in waiting. These value systems placed on objects due to their rarity, material, craft, antiquity or function are a part of what compels the artist in this current climate, persuaded by personal experience as a collector, an assembler and a maker.

The lives of objects, their narrative through history and present placement have been the concern of the artist for much time now. This has shown itself mainly in the form of assemblages, which are dependant on the viscera of said objects. Though lately, this method has decreased in favour for the creation of miniature curiosities. These pieces are rooted still the lives of objects, yet instead of using ‘real’ objects, they are depicted as semiotic archetypes, chairs, shoes, scissors for example. These things are intended for use by man, recognisable to all of us and therefore drawn from memory. These drawings are then set in new objects made by the artist and their narrative is as open as the works before them.

The artist’s obsession with objects governs the work, the pieces exist due to the artists own desire to see them realized. They are made – solid and unjust, with desire above all reason.

Ceci Lombardi

Ceci Lombardi

Bad Weather
tea and pencil on paper
2006

°°one day I had an ink stain in my sketchbook, and it look rather nice, on it's own, alone...at least I seem to think...
so I thought this is how I can start my drawings, create a story, a narrative between the visual language of unknow marks, stains,doodles and something that grows from that...something that is waiting for me to grab it and scream loud:this is my creation! it's still there, waiting for me to grasp it... among those details that you miss out, but I won't... °°°
°° Bad Weather is part of an ongoing project that deals with the possibilities of drawing in an unknow territory where spointeneity and precision balance each other. There is a necessity of documentation, taking evidence of personal aspects of my life and it's relation to the drawings, but also an idea that remais open to imagination...°°°

Eleanor Levett

Hope, detail from 'The Key', 2006. Cross-stitch.

'The Key' is an ever-expanding work, exploring the connotations of nounal images. Using the format of legends found on maps, a stylised image is presented with a one-word label. The images are drawn from a variety of folk and contemporary colloquial sources. The labels range from the conventional to the seemingly absurd.
Hope may appear to be an exmple of the latter, but this ancient symbol of fertility reflects the instinctive hope for survival and growth that drives the human race. As genetic sciences and IVF develop the phallus is an image infused with conflicting meaning - redundancy vs potential. It is an object that, Germaine Greer argues is attributed too much power by the British legal system. It is an object that is considered humorous and offensive.
As with all the items in 'The Key', Hope is fallible.

O-Collective Launch

December 2006

Hello to all of you,

We hope you are having a good Christmas vacation and everything is going well. We are writing this email to talk to you about a project we are trying to start, and we believe it would be great if you participated in.

We are basically trying to get a group of artists with interesting and valid work, with a strong desire to continue their practice by having shows and setting up various projects, to get together in a sort of collective (not sure if this is the best definition, but it will work for now).

Currently, the following people are being considered:

Marco Palmieri
Ceci Lombardi
Nina Finnerud
Tom Mills
Eleanor Levett
Russell Terry
Benjamin Fletcher
Victoria Foster
Hannah Lees
Kuriku Kraemer

The goal of this collective would be to keep various artist in communication with each other, to promote the development of shows, projects, publications, etc. Any idea you have, we will try to help. During this initial phase which can be defined as the ‘post-degree crisis,’ it is quite hard to get back to work, and find other people to have shows with. We want to make things happen (I know this sounds a little cheesy), and some shows are already being discussed.

For example, to start with, we were already discussing a possible show in Folkestone. Although quite small, it would be quite focussed, not an all-inclusive show. It would focus on a theme, and only the work that would be pertinent to both the theme and the space of the gallery would be chosen. Each project would follow the same idea. Some shows will be group shows, some will be solo shows, or simply projects set up by two or three artists. It would all depend on the necessities of the artist.

Other than organizing shows in the Kent area, we would also want to help promote shows in London, and if possible in other countries. All this will take contribution by everyone.

Some of you will also want to have your own shows, obviously. When possible, we will try to get as many people as possible to help you out. Each one of us have different skills: some might know a lot of gallery spaces, some might be good at advertising, some might be good at setting up shows. It will all work on a helping basis.

So what we are asking from you for now would be first of all an email, saying if you are interested or not. Ask any questions, give us a call, meet up with us. Second of all, if you like the idea, we would need some things from you:

A current artist CV
An artist statement explaining your practice and ideas you are currently working with.
A selection of your work on a CD (high quality images. These can be both TIFF or JPEG)

We will use these to make a portfolio, so we can start trying to organize various shows. The ideas will be developed with you. We will try to find galleries or spaces suitable for your work, and hopefully help you out.

This material will also be used in a website which we will start making in the new year. This website will show the work of the various artists involved, will have information of all the possible spaces which can be used to show work, keep various news information posted , etc. It will be a place to present your work, keep you updated on what is happening, and hopefully more.

There is no absolute deadline for the submission of the material, but the sooner, the better. We are sending this email to you now so you can use the vacation period to get this stuff together. We were hoping to get things going at the beginning of next year.

The CV and statement can be sent to us via email, while the CD can be sent to our house. If this sounds all to impersonal, just give one of us a call, and we can meet up. It would be good to meet up and talk about it.


At the moment both of us are on vacation, so we can only be reached via email. But please reply, telling us what you think. We will try to call all of you when we come back to see how things are going, and hopefully meet up.

Enjoy your vacations!

Ceci Lombardi & Marco Palmieri