CALYPSO
Artistic Learning Processes
Curator: Haizea Barcenilla
Bizkaia Executive Council Grants for Artistic Creation 2005-2006
17 April to 22 June 2008
The exhibition Calypso. Artistic Learning Processes draws together the most recent works produced by seven artists and collectives who received scholarships from the Executive Council of Bizkaia in its Awards for Artistic Creation call for 2005 and 2006: Elssie Ansareo, Alaitz Arenzana, David Cívico & recPLAY, Cristina Gutiérrez-Meurs, Amaia Lekerikabeaskoa, Jorge Rubio and Mikel Rueda.
The works they are presenting display very different characteristics, but have the same common denominator: the award signalled the beginning of a creative process that is a continuous learning experience for each artist. This collective show lays special stress on the nature of the artistic process and on its meanings as a definitive part of contemporary artistic practice, the means of transmission being posed through
artistic education.
With the different works and activities in the exhibition the intention is to represent this view of the artistic learning method as a process of emancipation and creation of a singular opinion, from which the conversations arise, another fundamental point within contemporary creation. Accordingly, the artist Chia-En Jao (Taichung, Taiwan, 1976) was invited to interconnect within the exhibition space. His presence is not supposed to create artificial bonds of union between the rest of the works, but simply to represent coexistence and communication between present practices without any need for mutual impositions. His installation Hermanos políticos / Brothers in Law shows the symbolic unions and separations between the cultural variety presented by the processes proper to each artist.
Videotheque
Whilst the exhibition is on show it will be possible to consult the videotheque, which contains approximately 60 videos, comprising work produced in educational contexts in various countries, in centres of higher education and during artists’ residencies. The videotheque aims to serve both as an example of current teaching and learning processes, and as a temporary database for emergent art in international academic contexts. Likewise, it provides a particular attraction in view of the demand for scholarships and
residencies abroad.
Exhibition catalogue
The idea of education will have a strong presence in the catalogue, designed by Ales Landeta. It will include texts written by Paul O’Neill and Mick Wilson and the curator of the show herself, and the artists’ works will also be documented by the following authors: Stephanie Bertrand, Ilaria Gianni, Rían Lozano, Martí Manen, Kepa Sojo and Isusko Vivas. The photographs will be by Begoña Zubero.
Activities
As part of the exhibition, a series of activities will take place. On Thursday, 17 April, at 8:00pm a concert with songs from the soundtrack for the film Txakurkalea / Dogstreet; on Tuesday, 22 April, at 7:00pm a round table with Elssie Ansareo, Alaitz Arenzana, Cristina Gutiérrez-Meurs and Mikel Rueda, chaired by the curator of the show, Haizea Barcenilla; on Tuesday, 20 May, at 7:00pm, a projection of works by Alaitz Arenzana, David Cívico & recPLAY and Mikel Rueda; on Tuesday, 27 May, at 7:00pm a projection of a selection of videos from the videotheque and on Wednesday 28 May at 11:30 the educational activity Links will take place.
From April 17th to May 21st, the Abstract Cabinet of sala rekalde presents The Guide to the Wastelands of the Bilbao River Estuary, a new project by the Spanish artist Lara Almarcegui (Zaragoza, 1972). Taking as its framework of reference the banks of the Nervión River and the constant processes of regeneration and transformation to which they have been subjected over the recent decades, this guide presents a selection of vacant lots that the artist found interesting during her research process in the city.
Bilbao is, in fact, currently going through a time of powerful and accelerated urban transformation comparable even to its experience at the end of the 19th century and the beginnings of the 20th, when it was transformed into a big industrial port city due to the development of the mining, iron and steel industries and ship-building. The industrial crisis of the 1980s caused the closure and modernisation of important industries within the environs of the river estuary, which meant the recovery of the banks of the Nervión once port activities were transferred towards the outer bay.
Lara Almarcegui’s artistic practice concentrates on the margins of constructed urban space in order to explore the possibilities of freedom they might offer. For the artist, in the excessive rationalisation of the contemporary city, wastelands are the only places “open to possibility” and their interest lies on their actual evocative potential. In these spaces, different kinds of processes that the city generally conceals can be experience: entropy, decadence, wild nature and imagination.
For further information:
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