The Nunnery Gallery is becoming a NODE as part in NODE.L in March 2006.

The NODE.L projects showcased reflect the digital developments in contemporary art practice and create a discourse for artists, performers, creators and curators.

Mapping Chinese New Year’s Eve Dinner uses digital technology to map the landscape of trans-national Chinese cultural identity.
Creator Wanda Hu .

Oral Tradition consists of a two-screen projection, specially written Speech Recognition (SR) software, two microphones and computers.
Creator Kevin Carter.

APT London (A Piece of Town), a photographic series, maps unimposing objects in the public space of the City of London, which seem to have been not yet commercialised.
Creator Miriam Steinhauser.

For more information on NODE.L please go to www.nodel.org

Entangled Tongues
April 21 - June 4 2006

Open Thurdsay to Sunday from 12.00 - 5.00pm

Bow Arts Trust and the Nunnery gallery is pleased to announce a major joint exhibition award from the Arts Council England and Leaside Regeneration. This award brings to Tower Hamlets a truly international exhibition of European contemporary art, titled Entangled Tongues.

Artists: Pierre Bismuth, Rainer Ganahl, Jens Haaning, Audrey Marlhens, Jonathan Monk, Stephen Prina, Eran Schaerf, and Zineb Sedira.

How do you translate your personal thoughts into a language that others can understand? This is one of the questions asked by the exhibition Entangled Tongues, which takes translation as its theme. By presenting the work of eleven international artists who use the language of visual art combined with over twenty spoken languages, the exhibition tackles issues of cross-cultural communication and the transfer of meaning, whether between foreign tongues or between speakers of the same language. Entangled Tongues highlights the moments when different modes of expression co-exist, when languages feed off one another, when new tales are told.

Takingplace first in the Dordogne – an area of France in which 20% of the population speaks English as a first language – the exhibition will travel April 2006 to Bow, an area where less than 20% of schoolchildren have English as their mother tongue. Through presenting this exhibition in two countries so closely linked in their political, social and linguistic history, yet in two radically different areas – one rural the other urban - the project also examines the cross-pollination between languages and between cultures.

This exhibition is curated by Zoë Gray et Julia Höner (with the support of ADDC, Bow Arts Trust, British Council, Goethe Institut, Arts Council England and Leaside Regeneration) and is accompanied by a tri-lingual publication featuring essays by Sarat Maharaj and Brice Matthieussent.

For further information please contact Vanessa Desclaux at The Nunnery Gallery, 020 870 95294 fax 020 8980 7770. vdesclaux@bowarts.com

Images:
Zineb Sedira , “Mother Tongue”, 2002, video triptych. Installation at ADDC, France.
Photo: Bernard Dupuy.
Audrey Marlhens , “What I Tell You Three Times Is True…”, 1998, video projection. Installation at ADDC, France.
Photo: Bernard Dupuy.
Stephen Prina , (right) “Upon the occasion of receivership”, 1989, 8 pages of laserprints on headed paper; Rainer Ganahl, “Basic Conflicts”, 1999 and “Homeland Security”, 2003, both video. Installation at ADDC, France.
Photo: Bernard Dupuy.
Rainer Ganahl , “Homeland Security”, 2003, video (detail).
Photo: courtesy the artist and Galerie Maisonneuve, Paris.
Pierre Bismuth , “The Jungle Book Project”, 2002, drawing (detail).
Photo: courtesy the artist and Lisson Gallery, London.

Schools in View 2006

An Exhibition Celebrating Art in Schools

Exhibition dates: Friday 9th June – Saturday 17th June

Open 1.00-5.00pmdaily. Free admission.

This exciting annual exhibition provides a rare opportunity to share some of the exceptional artwork being produced by local young people working with 17 professional artists and performers. This exhibition is dedicated to the work of 15 local schools and is supported through the long standing partnership between Bow Arts Trust and St Paul’s Way Community School in Bow.

Whether inventing their own languages, designing and creating gardens from recycled junk, or producing imposing large scale works of public art; what is common to all this work is a core belief in the creativity of young people and the value of their ideas. The inspiring work they have produced when working with artists on the Bow Arts Trust education programme gives a glimmer of the tremendous wealth of creativity and diversity that is present in our East London schools.

This year our exhibition has expanded to include a year 7 competition on the theme of identity for Tower Hamlets Secondary Schools. The young people will be collecting their art prizes as the show opens.

For further information please contact Annie Bicknell, Head of Education at The Bow Arts Trust Tel 020 8709 5292, Fax 020 8980 7770, abicknell@bowarts.com, www.bowarts.org

The Stars Down to Earth

Selected by Andrew Hunt

Alan Bond, Brignell and Raimes, Gordon Cheung, Giles Corby, Deborah Crofts, Robin Dixon, Susannah Hewlett, Mandy Hudson, Daniel Lehan, Maslen and Mehra, Danny Pockets, David Saunders, Dawn Shorten, Ruth Solomons, Tomoya Yamaguchi.

24th June - 22nd July

Private View Friday 23rd June 2006 6.30-9.30

This year’s annual Bow Arts Trust exhibition, which opens to the public at East London’s Nunnery Gallery in Bow on Saturday June 24, has been selected by curator and art writer Andrew Hunt. The show, entitled ‘The Stars Down to Earth’, features the work of seventeen artists picked from amongst over ninety members of the Bow Arts Trust, and will run for one month, closing on July 22.

The exhibition includes diverse elements, from video documentation and sculpture to formal painting. The title of the show is taken from a collection of essays by Theodor Adorno, and was initially sparked by two separate works. The first of these, Remaking the Planetarium, is a large domed structure made of doors and other reclaimed material by Alan Bond. This will dominate the largest of the Nunnery’s three galleries. The second work by Daniel Lehan consists of a number of framed pages from the artist’s personal diary. Each page contains an entry by Lehan along with a corresponding astrological prediction from a national newspaper.

Around half of the artists present work in the form of installation, mixed media, sculpture or video. These include Giles Corby’s Floor piece Underworld, Brignell and Raimes’ DVD footage of inner and outer space, Maslen and Mehra’s lightbox showing a photograph of a mirrored figure in a Death Valley landscape, Susannah Hewlett’s absurdly theatrical video works and Danny Pockets’ posters featuring blue plastic bags caught in trees.

The other half of the artists are painters. Amongst these is Gordon Cheung, currently featured in ‘British Art Show 6,’ who shows dystopic images of buildings and architecture painted onto a ground of newspaper. Another painter, Dawn Shorten has produced a small series of cloud formations that convey a feeling of suspended reality. Also showing smaller scale paintings are David Saunders, Mandy Hudson, and Robin Dixon, while some large abstract works are presented by Ruth Solomons, Deborah Crofts and Tomoya Yamaguchi, whose repeated motif of white concentric circles on a black ground somehow indicates a cosmic or spiritual concern.

‘It was a real pleasure to select this year’s exhibition’ said Andrew Hunt. ‘And I was very lucky in that a large number of the artists offered up work for the exhibition. If there is a creative side needed in the selector’s role it is the ability to recognise links between works and to allow these qualities to be brought out of their own accord, rather than projecting any existing set of theoretical or formal criteria onto the situation.’

Bow Arts Trust Open Studios

The opening of the Nunnery show also coincides with the 10^th annual Open studios of the Bow Arts Trust, where the work of some 90 artist members can be seen. This is one of the main art events in East London, and around 1500 people are expected to attend this year’s Open Studios, which is open to the public during the weekend of June 24-25.

About Andrew Hunt

Since January 2006 Andrew has been Exhibitions Curator at the International Project Space, Birmingham, UK. His recent exhibitions include ‘Writing in Strobe’, Dicksmith Gallery (2006), John Russell ‘Geniess’, Norwich Gallery, (2005), and ‘Like Beads on an Abacus Designed to Calculate Infinity,’ Rockwell (2004). His publishing activities include the imprint Slimvolume, produced on a yearly basis since 2001. He is also Reviews Editor at Untitled, and a regular contributor to Frieze and a number of other journals.

Catalogue available

Images

Dawn Shorten
Clouds i 2006
Gouache on Drafting Film
25x30 cm Framed

Ruth Solomons
A Brilliant Clutter of Shadows 2005
Oil on Canvas
168x232 cm

Maslen & Mehra
Salt Creek Death Valley Edition 5 2005
Photographed sculpture, re-used advertising displays from the Underground
Courtesy Galerie Caprice Horn Berlin

Danny Pockets
Bermuda Blue 2318 2006
From the Universal Racket Press Bermuda Blue Series
Photographic Image

Gordon Cheung
Wreck of Hope 2006
Financial Times, Ink, Oil, Acrylic Gel and Spray on canvas
Collection of Stéphane Janssen

The Invention of Solitude

21st September - 22 October 2006

Rob Smith
Rebecca Birch
Alex Hudson
Matthew Lutz-Kinoy

The Invention of Solitude is a new exhibition curated by Charles Danby and features the work of four young emerging artists; Matthew Lutz-Kinoy, Rebecca Birch, Rob Smith, Alex Hudson.

The exhibition advocates a collaborative system of curation, showing mediated versions of each artist’s work alongside the original pieces. On entering the exhibition the viewer will be confronted by four park benches each one facing outwards towards the walls of the gallery. In front of each bench a single slide will be projected that corresponds to the work of a single artist.

Each bench will have a plaque with the name of an artist and a text engraving of their choice. The viewer will activate the projection when they sit on the bench, presenting them with an intimate preview of the artist’s work. Starting from this room the viewer will then move through the remainder of the exhibition. The flat mediated slide projections will unfold into physical works, objects, of different scale and material make-up. The viewer will also return through the first room with the benches and projections in order to leave, at this point having experienced the work, the projections will act as a point of review.

In an age of mass media, images in books and magazines often become the most readily available means through which works of art are encountered. The Invention of Solitude aims to examine the way in which artworks are perceived as physical objects and the relationship that they have to the reproductions that are made of them. The exhibition draws on this debate, raising issues of scale and material, and questioning the work as a physical object.

Each artist engages with the contemporary landscape in their practice, exploring its fictional, social and political qualities. The artists challenge sculpturally the boundaries of their media, whether through video, sculpture or painting, each will occupy a very physical space in the gallery.

The title of the exhibition, The Invention of Solitude hints at the conflict of individual and collective practice that the exhibition seeks to explore. The work of the artist as an individual producer of work is juxtaposed with the social interaction, group, and collective nature of collaborative practice. It is from this dual platform that The Invention of Solitude will operate.

12-6pm Thursday to Sunday

Images:
Matthew Lutz-Kinoy
'When I die'

'arrive, depart', polyptych, 2006, direct rho prints on tinplate, 185 x 48 cm each, G.Roland Biermann La morte dell'amore, Alan Graham Dick
Tokyo Nights, (Video Still), Peter M. Cook