Friday 16 August 2013

Festival of Thrift

The Transporter Project will be part of the Festival of Thrift at Lingfield Point in Darlington on Saturday 21st and Sunday 22nd September so we thought we would start by sending out some info about the festival. Transporter will be hosting a stand which will encompass several different ways for you to engage with the project......
  • a chill out zone where you can find out more about the Transporter project through access to our Flickr site, read through books and articles that have inspired the project, find out more about the artists and organisations we have worked with so far and what we have learnt....all in a comfy surrounding with free tea and biscuits!!
  • access to artists workshops where you can learn some traditional skills and how artists are utilising these skills in a contemporary way to create their artwork. SEE WORKSHOP DETAILS BELOW
  • take part in the creation of a large scale artwork by artists Sam Taylor and Suzanne Hutton

Workshops available -

SATURDAY 21st SEPTEMBER -
 
Artist Iolanda Rocha will show you how to recycle jute yarn, fabric and plastic bags into different weaved forms using a straight forward, easy to learn technique based in traditional weaving.
 
Iolanda will show how she uses these traditional techniques in her contemporary arts practice. Workshop spaces are strictly limited so please make sure you book! 
 
Times 11.30am – 1pm and 2pm – 3.30pm on Saturday only!
Location Studio meeting room 4
 
 
SUNDAY 22nd SEPTEMBER -

Engage your senses with textures and learn the simplicity of old techniques by learning the types of elegant sculptures that can be created with paper, with expert Yvette Hawkins.
But you better be in quick as spaces in this free workshop are limited.

Times:11.30am – 1pm and 2pm – 3.30pm on Sunday only!
Location: Room 4 Studios

For further details on our other workshops and to book visit -

www.festivalofthrift.co.uk 




Friday 21 June 2013

Places we are visiting this month in the North East!


House of Objects
For four Saturdays in June, House of Objects Creative Recycling Centre at the Rising Sun will open its doors for visitors to come and explore its Aladdin’s cave of weird and wonderful recycled materials and get creative in its specialist studio space. The theme for each week will be a particular object of significance that was invented or developed in the North East. For more information click here.
NOTE - House of Objects receive old/waste/unwanted (but still useable!!) materials, so if you are a company, shop or artist clearing out your studio then get in touch with them!!

Heritage Skills Festival
Heritage Skills Festival returns to Tynemouth Station on 28th-30th June, offering visitors a chance to try their hand at a wide range of heritage crafts such as stonemasonry, green woodworking, blacksmithing, lime mortar, leather working and much, much more.  Working with professionals, you’ll also get the opportunity to get advice and learn more about the heritage of the North East. Event information

Baltic Artist’s Book Fair
Festival of the North East event – the artist’s book fair at the Baltic in Gateshead, on 14th & 15th June.  further info 

Tuesday 14 May 2013

Skyping Lima - update!

We held the skype session between Newcastle University 2nd year Fine Art students and Pontificia Universidad Catolica del Peru Industrial Design and Graphic Design students on Friday 3rd May.

The session allowed the students to hold a live discussion based around their own art work, how their course is structured and what they plan to do after uni. Suzanne gave an overview of the Transporter project and why we were working with the 2nd year students, Kitty Langton (student) gave an overview of the 'Strand' module and what they had learnt so far and how it was helping them develop their artwork and Ella Dorton (student) gave an overview of the Fine Art course and how it is taught in England.

This led onto the Lima students giving an overview of their projects and they both compared the differences with the courses i.e. lima study for 5-6 years and specialise in a specific artform and are not able to work cross artforms like in England. Lima students however have a much stronger focus on learning their skill and perfecting their craft before focussing on their own personal ideas development whereas Newcastle students are much more focussed on the concepts of their artwork and tend to learn specific skills as and when they need to.

The students asked specific questions about each others work and posted comments on the Flickr site which you can find here - http://www.flickr.com/photos/67813410@N05/

We are keen to explore the potential for students to take part in an exchange at each other's universities so that they can benefit from the different approaches to art courses.


regards
Transporter project!!

Sunday 28 April 2013

Skyping Lima!


As part of our 'Strand' project with students from Newcastle University we will be doing a skype exchange with students from the Pontificia Universidad Catolica del Peru in Lima this Friday (3rd May).

Suzanne and I visited Pontificia Universidad Catolica del Peru during our residency in Peru in 2011. During our visit we met with some of the tutors who gave us a tour of the different departments and we talked about various projects that they were working on with their students and local communities  and how these might link with our Transporter project- an example of which can be found at - https://www.facebook.com/ArteSurChincha


The skype exchange will consist of the students commenting on each others work, prior to the skype session, through our Flickr site - http://www.flickr.com/photos/67813410@N05/ with further dicussion during the skype exchange itself. We will also be exploring how the students programmes compare and differ and learn about each others culture and how they approach artisitc projects.


Here are some examples of the students work and we will post another update on this once the skype session has taken place!!!





Until next time.....
Transporter project!!

Thursday 28 March 2013

Interesting projects!

Hello again, a quick update from the Transporter Project with a list of projects and websites which you may be interested in....

A great community project building a greenhouse from plastic bottles
http://www.the4csne.com/greenhouse.html

Go back to basics and make your own book!
http://theresaeaston.wordpress.com/2013/03/13/print-book-making-36-lime-street/

Uniting new and old technologies, Yvette Hawkins and Susannah Pickering - whose work incorporates books, poetry and traditional crafts - will start a poem thread on Twitter with clothing as the central theme.
http://www.bookapothecary.co.uk/#!blog/cs0g

An interesting article about sustainability
http://www.guardian.co.uk/culture-professionals-network/culture-professionals-blog/2013/mar/18/environment-reporting-arts-council-sustainability

Northeast Permaculture - Since January 2005, permaculture activists throughout the Northeast have been meeting and actively creating a network for mutually supporting each other and advancing permaculture solutions among the wider public in our area
http://northeasternpermaculture.wikispaces.com/

A link to a great project one of our Newcastle University Fine art students recently attended
http://www.felinuchaf.org/

Enjoy the Easter Weekend!
Transporter Project

Friday 22 March 2013

Newcastle University 'Strand' Project



We are working with 15 Newcastle University 2nd yr Fine Art students as part of our creative exchange element of the Transporter project. The 'Strand' project, which runs alongside the students studio practice, allows us to share information, knowledge and skills learnt during our time in Peru and Berlin (as well as the developments within our arts practices), with the students to help them develop ideas and new skills.




They’ve had some great ideas and are inspiring us with new ideas too- we are encouraging the students to learn a new skill or develop a body of research on a new area during the Strand. They are responding well to this and some are integrating the project into their studio practice as they discover a new interest or area they wish to work in.

We are uploading images of the students work onto our flickr photostream so please have a look and comment to give them feedback on their ideas so far! http://www.flickr.com/photos/transporterproject/sets/72157633054505042/ Any signposts to artists, books etc to help them with their research is welcomed too!

The Student project aims and learning outcomes are - 

•Develop an understanding of different crafts and skills, what role they play in cultural heritage and whether they can inspire contemporary art
•Gain a greater understanding of other art forms
•Experiment and collaborate with other artists/peers.
•Learn, share skills in arts and crafts such as weaving, paper making, pottery, woodwork etc
•Learn new ways of seeing and doing through cultural exchange and researching their own cultural heritage
•Understand issues surrounding sustaining local and international traditional art forms and cultures
•Develop understanding of sustainable arts practise and broader environmental issues
•Question and explore their relationship to their environment.
•Self direct their studies and research
•Group work and critical feedback
•Create a body of research, ideas and experiments which explore new ground for the student
•Create a ‘resolved’ new art work/design/prototype (either individually or collaboratively) for public showing.



Tuesday 4 December 2012

SOAPBOX at BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Arts



We were recently invited to deliver a talk at Baltic as part of the programme for The Encampment of Eternal Hope, which is a major new sculptural installation by ZoĆ« Walker & Neil Bromwich. The exhibition 'extends their enquiry into the role of art as an active agent for transformation in society.  Taking apocalyptic predictions for 21 December 2012, the end date for the Mayan Calendar, as an imaginative catalyst, the project envisages a post-apocalyptic utopian community, a kind of ‘garden of earthly delights’.

Our talk was part of Soapbox events where 'diggers, dreamers, survivalists, optimists, pessimists, slackers, thinkers, doers, creatives, philosophisers, alternative life stylers, environmentalists, freeganers..... could step up on The Encampment of Eternal Hope Soap Box and help shape a better world.' People could voice their opinions, demonstrate a survival skill, create an event, speak, sing, perform or meditate to show how can we live in a better way with our environment and our fellow beings.

SO... we decided to talk about the Transporter project and invited people to answer questions to contribute to our research. We also had a discussion with the audience after our presentation which was really interesting and covered subjects which ranged from; guerrilla gardening, the disconnection of man and nature and specifically the waste which artists create when making work and whether pieces/materials should be reused/remade in an effort to be more sustainable. We also discussed up-cycling waste materials and whether it is more interesting to try and recreate something which disguises the materials' former use (such as creating something using plastic bottles which doesn't scream 'plastic bottle sculpture') and also the boundary between a functional object, craft and art.



Here is a copy of our soapbox script! We'd also invite you to comment on the blog post with your answers to the questions at the end...

'We are here today, not because we know much about Mayan culture or that we believe the world will end on the 21st December but that we are interested in the Encampment project and how it is highlighting different, creative ways of living and questioning how connected we feel to the world, Mother Nature and the environment. The idea of being more ‘in tune’ with the world around us and being more resourceful is something that appeals to us and connects to our philosophies we have currently been developing within our own art work.

In 2010 we had a discussion about the fact that, although we called ourselves artists, and sculptors, we hadn’t crafted or made anything with our hands for a very long time. We decided that we wanted to learn more about making, working with materials and being more resourceful. We wanted to learn and improve as artists and share these skills and knowledge with others- the way it used to be in cultures when stories, skills and crafts were passed from one generation to the next. It is this interest in getting back to basics, valuing tradition, learned art forms, being resourceful by working with the environment around us that has led to the development of our TRANSPORTER project.


TRANSPORTER is a multi cultural creative project and involves the exchanging and transporting of creative skills, ideas and crafts. It aims to highlight the idea of sustainable arts practise, looking at people’s relationship to their environment and the value of cultural heritage. As part of our research in 2011 we worked at an eco village in Northern Peru and learn traditional craft and building skills. In 2012 we worked in an art waste resource centre in Berlin and made art using only scrap materials.
At this stage, the Transporter project is covering broad subject matter of sustainability, the environment and traditional skills and knowledge which will be further defined and explored as the project and the artist’s interests develop. Transporter has its own blog and flickr websites as a Knowledge Bank to document the skills, crafts and ideas discovered by the project so far- anyone can access this. Sessions are delivered with universities, groups and other artists as a way to pass on knowledge and skills learnt whilst developing the artists. 

As further research for Transporter we’d like to ask you some questions which will help us gain insight into your point of view on creativity, resourcefulness and waste. It would be great if you could take part by answering the questions on the wall. Maybe the 21st December could mark the beginning of a more sustainable, thoughtful and resourceful era rather than the end of the world!'


QUESTIONS:
How resourceful do you think you are on a scale 1-6?
What have you reused/up-cycled recently instead of throwing out - and what was its new function? What was the last thing you made with your hands and your imagination?
What do you throw away the most of?