David Cotterrell News from the website of artist David Cotterrell. http://www.cotterrell.com Copyright 2024 cotterrell.com Tue, 19 Mar 2024 04:22:09 +0000 en-us DC4709 Blavatnik Galleries At Imperial War Museum - 10.11.23 David's work, Gateway II, has been selected for inclusion in the inaugural Blavatnik Art, Film and Photography Galleries exhibition, at the Imperial War Museum (IWM), London. This is the first time in IWM’s history that a permanent gallery space has been created to display the three collections together - visual art, film and photography. Stepping into the Galleries, visitors will learn how the museum has been collecting and interpreting artistic responses to conflict since its inception during the First World War.

Objects on display will include Peter Jackson’s award-winning 2018 film They Shall Not Grow Old, which transformed original archive footage into colour for a reimagining of the First World War. Artworks from renowned artists from the First and Second World Wars will include works by Paul Nash, John Lavery and Laura Knight’s Ruby Loftus Screwing a Breech-ring, one of the most inspiring artworks to come from the period. More contemporary works include Paul Seawright’s Mounds, commissioned by IWM in 2002 to respond to the war in Afghanistan and photographs from John Keane who recorded the war in Iraq in 1991. Together, these objects reflect a century of seismic change culturally, socially and politically.

The Blavatnik Art, Film and Photography Galleries will open at IWM London on 10 November 2023.

Location : Imperial War Museum, Lambeth Rd, London SE1 6HZ, United Kingdom

Access: Open Monday to Sunday: 10am – 6pm. Also open bank holidays. Closed 24 - 26 December. Free admission.

Press Information : Rhodri Cole (Communications Manager) rcole@iwm.org.uk / Elin Evans (Communications Officer) eevans@iwm.org.uk

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http://www.cotterrell.com/news/4709/blavatnik-galleries-at-imperial-war-museum--101123/ Tue, 24 Oct 2023 11:30:46 +0100
DC4708 Spooky Action At A Distance - 22.09.23 - 29.09.23 Spooky Action At A Distance is a group installation of two films with an independent surround sound work centred on the politics of the landscape. The exhibition is presented as part of DeptfordX 2023.

The installations address the past and present of human drama as seen through a sense of place within the landscape. Cotterrell & Altheimer’s two-channel installation addresses the contemporary issue of migration at the US border, while Ducker & Thompson’s film evokes military history at the MoD site on Orford Ness, Suffolk.

Location : Empathy & Risk C.I.C. 1 Borthwick St, London, SE8 3GH

Private View: Friday 22nd Sept, 7-9pm

Opening Times: Friday, 22nd – Sunday 24th & Friday 29th – Sunday 1st , 2-6pm

Closing Drinks: Sunday 1st, 4-6pm

Description of Works:

Cotterrell / Altheimer’s two-channel video installation, Mirror VI : Border, shows two strangers in darkness, separated by undefined distance in untrusting environments; but somehow held together through the fragile beauty of an intermittently blinking light and the powerful human curiosity of the unknown. Set against the dramatic topography between La Rumorosa, Tecate and Jacumba Hot Springs, California, against the fluctuating paranoia of the Southern US Border; the region’s deep historical experience of migration for work, opportunity and exploitation;

Mirror VI references the restrictions, censorship and disruption that the Bracero men experienced when trying to write to their families, the artwork involved broadcasting an archive of letters, which the US Postal Service had failed to deliver. The project explores the longing of a thwarted conversation and the poetry in imagining another.

Portable encoding devices were fabricated to enable broadcast via focussed spotlights in Morse Code. This form of communication has been used traditionally to convey a situation of human emergency but also offers the potential for messages to be shared without defining the recipient. To the layperson, the language offers the possibility of discovering and interpreting coded meaning in distant flickering lights, mirrors, reflections and beacons. It raises the possibility of chancing upon a broadcast or sharing in a silent language.

Ducker / Thompson’s project, The Accurate Perception Available When Our Eye Becomes Single, is a non-narrative film evoking the emotional specifics of place, Orford Ness on the Suffolk coast that explores the elasticity of time, history and myth.

Orford Ness is an eight-kilometre shingle spit, used for secret military testing during the First World War until the end of the Cold War in the 1990s. The site is now desolate but the decaying architecture from seventy years of military occupation remain. These strange elemental structures are formed out of an alien landscape that resembles a lost movie set. The film is mostly shot slow motion black and white inviting the viewer to slowly absorb the extraordinary landscape and ruined buildings that appear like post-apocalyptic ancient burial sites. Intercut with this are sections in colour, shot with a handheld smartphone camera and telephoto lens as a deliberate counterpoint. The film’s slow tempo sustains a narrative tension without ever revealing it, inducing a sense of arrested curiosity. The telephoto shots, by contrast, suggest a sniper’s view through the sight of a gun looking for targets, or information, revealing details of the place in the process.

The soundtrack is a spatialised arrangement of prevailing features in the Orford Ness soundscape: sea, stones, and structures. It accompanies the imagery but is not synchronised to it. As such, sound and image combine to create constantly shifting counterpoints. The sonic elements characterise a specific sense of place before, during, and after military occupation, expressing the relative permanence of the Ness and its soundscape heard across many centuries.

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http://www.cotterrell.com/news/4708/spooky-action-at-a-distance--220923--290923/ Tue, 19 Sep 2023 14:41:00 +0100
DC4707 The Saltley Geyser - 07.09.23 - 10.09.23 Totally Thames’s artistic commission for 2023 is the extraordinary Saltley Geyser by the installation artist David Cotterrell. Located in the Royal Docks,

As one of the key events for the London-wide Thames Festival cultural program, this represents a dramatic return for one of Cotterrell's first public projects. 25 years after its original installation (in a small park in Birmingham), it will be witnessed again in East London's Royal Albert Docks. It will be viewable from the IFS Cloud Cable Car, the dockside near Canning Town and the streets and nearby buildings around the new City Hall.

Dates and Timings:

  • Thursday 7th: 1pm, 3pm 5pm and every 15 mins between 6.15pm and 8.00pm.
  • Friday 8th: 1pm, 3pm, 5pm, 7pm.
  • Saturday 9th and Sunday 10th: Every 15 mins between 12.00 and 7.00.

Location:

27 Western Gateway, London, E16 1FA

Further Information:

For additional information and press materials please contact the Thames Festival Trust, email the Totally Thames programme manager or follow links via social media.

 

 

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http://www.cotterrell.com/news/4707/the-saltley-geyser--070923--100923/ Thu, 17 Aug 2023 16:47:39 +0100
DC4706 Jump - 07.07.23 - 06.08.23 David's video work, 'Babel' is being presented in Los Angeles as part of the Pastor Projects exhibition, 'Jump'.

The exhibition takes place in the iconic El Nopal Press studio and venue in the downtown area of the city. The show incorporates an experimental format and explores the power struggle between artists and ai in claiming authorship, subjectivity and critical agency.

The features the work of Bedwyr Williams, Lindsay Seers, David Cotterrell, Michelle Williams Gamaker, Tessa Garland & Adam Chodzko and is curated by Thomas Vann Altheimer and hosted by Francesco Siqueiros

Opening Event : Friday, 7th July 2023 : 6pm (PST)

Location : El Nopal Press, 109 W 5th Street Los Angeles, CA 90013

Opening Hours : Daily, 7pm - Midnight (PST), until 6th August, 2023

Further Information : For more information and materials please contact Thomas Vann Altheimer (Pastor Projects)

 

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http://www.cotterrell.com/news/4706/jump--070723--060823/ Fri, 07 Jul 2023 20:01:01 +0100
DC4703 Wunderkammern - 17.05.23 - 26.11.23 To coincide with this year Architectural Biennale, David is presenting a series of impossible assemblages of artefacts, vignettes and insects questioning the appropriation of culture and the trade in knowledge and power at Danielle Arnaud gallery, Venice. Using three auto-stereoscopic screens and projectors, David will exhibit his latest experiments in holographic illusion and shadow projection imagining the virtual repatriation of artefacts.

This presentation is part of an on-going programme of independent projects highlighting recent and new work by the gallery artists. If you are in Venice from 17 to 21 May, please contact Danielle Arnaud at danielle@daniellearnaud.com to join the artist for conversations, aperitifs, lunches or dinners.

Details : Exhibition staged at Danielle Arnaud Gallery (Venice). Viewing by appointment. For further information, please contact danielle@daniellearnaud.com

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http://www.cotterrell.com/news/4703/wunderkammern--170523--261123/ Wed, 17 May 2023 08:00:37 +0100
DC4696 Transports Of Delight Closing Event - 12.11.22 David's new installation work, Bodegon 1, has been included within the exhibition, Transports of Delight at Danielle Arnaud Gallery, London.

The exhibition includes artworks by twenty-three artists responding to themes of colonialism, environment and the collection and display of plants associated with broader historical narratives. The gallery is open 2-6pm Thursday, Friday, Saturday, or by appointment until the 12th November.

A closing event for the exhibition will be held on Saturday 12th November from 4-6pm

At 4:30pm: Edward Chell, artist, writer and curator, will talk about the historical context of this exhibition and its relevance to current times. It will be followed by tea and cakes.

Gallery Location123 Kennington Road London SE11 6SF

Please contact danielle@daniellearnaud.com for further enquiries.

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http://www.cotterrell.com/news/4696/transports-of-delight-closing-event--121122/ Fri, 04 Nov 2022 15:26:33 +0000
DC4681 Side Effects - 16.06.21 - 30.09.21 David has produced a new work in collaboration with Tom Valentine (aka Thomas Vann Altheimer) for the exhibition, Side Effects // Efectos Secundarios, Volume IV

Steppling Art Gallery at SDSU-IV, in collaboration with I21 Espacio de Proyectos, Mexicali is pleased to present the composite film, A Yard for Your Thoughts [The Last Huzzah of British Gunboat Diplomacy] by David and Thomas under their moniker, The Big Bend Film Collective. The work is exhibited alongside projects by Enid Baxter Ryce, Andrea Carrillo Iglesias, Obpr - Pierre Aubert, Omar Guerra, Marisa Raygoza, Aldebaran Solares, Mezil Vega Osorno and Lino VIte.

Gallery Venue:
Steppling Art Gallery, SDSU-IV
720 Heber Ave., Calexico, CA 92231

Online Exhibition:
https://i21-steppling.com/

Curated By:
Luis G. Hernandez and Adrian Pereda Vidal

Supported By:
Mexicali Biennial

Additional Information:
For more information please email luis.hernandez@sdsu.edu

Exhibition Text:
Side Effects / Efectos secundarios is a series of exhibitions that is born out of a collaboration between I21 espacio de proyectos in Mexicali, Mexico and Steppling Gallery at San Diego State University in Calexico, CA. Like many others, I21 and Steppling Gallery felt the need to continue doing programming while their brick-and-mortar locations remain closed due to the pandemic, and they decided to join forces to create this binational effort. The series Side Effects / Efectos secundarios consists of four exhibitions each with the subtitles Volume I, II, III and IV and invites artists from both sides of the U.S./Mexico border to participate with work to be presented on this digital platform.

Fifteen months after COVID-19 was declared a pandemic, Side Effects launches Volume IV, the final in the series of exhibitions that began in September 2020 in response to Covid. As restrictions ease and places start to reopen, both in countries that increasingly have Covid under control as well as in some where the coronavirus still remains a threat, this concluding exhibition recapitulates in the form of snippets what many of us experienced in the past year’s events. It asks one to think about how we’ll move forward, and to assess and reflect on what we just lived through, endured and lost.

Some of the projects presented in Volume IV take us back to the earlier months of the pandemic, as in the case of “Covid Test, 2021” by Pierre Aubert - Obpr, which consists of video clips of people receiving PCR tests for diagnosing Covid. At some point in the pandemic these communication videos were ubiquitous, but seeing them now all compiled in a single place, they create an almost obscene effect that is opposite to that initially intended. The work “A Brief History of a Cry” was made by Marysa Raygoza” as an attempt to cope with uncertainty and to make sense of the tragic and absurd situation during her early confinement. In it, Raygoza uses a play-on-words to create a story just as nonsensical that is about car tires; both male and female, as well as baby tires and weeping. Two other artists that deal with the absurdity of the last months are Lino VIte with his series “Strange Loop” that consists of gifs that repeat in cycles and that do not seem to have an end, and Aldebarán Solares’ “What We do for Living”, a video that ‘explores the moving image and the relation between the notions of perceptual coherence and cognitive dissonance’ that bring to mind the distorted sense of smell and taste that many experience as Covid symptoms.

Whereas Raygoza decided to alter one of the few sites she frequented during confinement and her walks became incidental to the understanding of her work, several other projects in the exhibition make the walk and the stroll as well as the landscape more prominent and become the subject. In “Between Light and Matter”, Omar Guerra creates contemplative spaces by subtly modifying the landscape during his long and lonely walks through the woods. Guerra placed circular mirrors and other reflective and absorbing materials at the bottom of trees that function ‘as sort of bridges between life and death or a passage to eternal life’. Enid Baxter Ryce’s photos, videos and hand painted images in “Ghost Forest” also provide a poetic, yet darker representation of the forest. In Baxter’s work, expressive and lyrical qualities are implicitly interwoven with history, personal experience, climate change and nature reclaiming it all back over.

Other projects in the exhibition more explicitly depict human presence in the landscape. In the video “A Yard for your Thoughts [The Last Huzzah of British Gunboat Diplomacy]” by the Big Bend Film Collective, the bottom half of a split-screen never shows people, but in most frames, we see portions of bridges, buildings and other man-made structures - those of the city of London. And in the top half of the screen, a more deserted and arid landscape is presented to us, but a lonely character appears here and there among nature - that of Baja. During the pandemic, those few that had the means left big cities and relocated to rural areas, a privileged mobility that has occurred throughout history, nationally and trans-nationally, just as when Europeans journeyed to America, for among other more powerful reasons, to escape disease. “Diaporama chileno” by Mezli Vega Osorno is a work that rarely leaves the urban landscape. This is a multi-image slide show that recounts the movements of the artist through Valparaiso during the course of a month, and presents the city as a vibrant place despite movement restrictions due to the measures taken because of Covid - restrictions that up to June of 2021, are still in effect in parts of the country. This could be why it is evident that while all the images in“Diaporama chileno” are of outdoor scenes, post-production occurred indoors.

A different type of landscape is the audiopiece “Rise to the Sky” by Andrea Carrillo. This is a ‘soundscape’ collage of audio documents selected from the CAVS Special Collection at MIT that focuses on space explorations, both scientific and fictional, and that speaks of our desires, dreams, fears and of human’s colonialist impulse - if we can conquer space, we should be able to have the pandemic under control. It is no surprise that Biden, in his first primetime address as president, expressed his goal to beat the virus and celebrate COVID Independence by July 4, and more recently, during the G7 meetings, remarked that “America will be the arsenal of vaccines in our fight against COVID-19, just as America was the arsenal of democracy during WWII”.

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http://www.cotterrell.com/news/4681/side-effects--160621--300921/ Fri, 18 Jun 2021 17:53:08 +0100
DC4680 Dear Aliens, We Are Ready - 09.04.21 -20.06.21 David's work, Mazar, Texas will be shown at the Galeria de la Ciudad, Tecate, Mexico. The exhibition, Dear Aliens, We Are Ready, curated by PASTOR PROJECTS, includes new and existing works by the artists: MARIEL MIRANDA (MX), DAVID COTTERRELL (UK), IRMA SOFÍA POETER (MX), GRO SARAUW (DK), ALEJANDRO ZACARIAS (MX), RYAN GANDER (UK), MÓNICA ARREOLA (MX).

To coincide with the exhibition, the director of Pastor Projects and curator of the show, Thomas Vann-Altheimer, with the support of LOOKING FORWARD and Empathy & Risk, will be in conversation with the artists for video interviews to be premiered during online live events in the second half of April 2021. The public programme will offer insights on the practice of the seven artists involved in the show.

In June 2021, Empathy & Risk, with the support of Sheffield Hallam University and the Global Challenge Research Fund will curate a three-part symposium, THE OTHER Dialogues, articulating inter-disciplinary debate exploring the limitation of international understanding that can be reinforced through distance. The three parts will relate to the topics of nationalism, labour, and gentrification. A press release with the program of the symposium and registration modalities will follow separately.

Images from the exhibition, critical texts, and contributions from THE OTHER Dialogues interdisciplinary symposium will be collated in a book published by Abismos Editorial Empathy & Risk, edited by Carolina Lio and Sidharta Ochoa.

Press Viewing:
​Friday 9th April 9.30am – 1pm
contact info@pastor.mx for details

Gallery Venue:
Galería de la Ciudad, Instituto de Cultura de Baja California
Pte. Ortíz Rubio s/n esq. Callejón Libertad, Centro CP 21400, Tecate, Baja California
Tel.: (665) 654 14 83

Gallery opening times:
Tues-Wed, Fri-Sat: 10.00-18.00 / Thurs: 10.00-22.00
Sun: 11.00-18.00; Closed Mon
Opening times may vary, please confirm via phone before visiting.

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http://www.cotterrell.com/news/4680/dear-aliens-we-are-ready--090421-200621/ Mon, 05 Apr 2021 21:41:11 +0100
DC4679 Ubumuntu - 17.07.20 - 19.07.20 David & Ru will be contributing to the 6th Ubumuntu Festival of Humanity through the presentation of a new art work – Transmission, and an in-conversation event – COMMONS Dialogues.

TRANSMISSION

David Cotterrell and Ruwanthi de Chickera’s new video production, Transmission will be presented at the main Ubumuntu Festival of Humanity in Kigali, Rwanda this July. Transmission is performed by Christopher Sherwood and Tara Nadun and designed in collaboration with Ian Gouldstone and Malshani Delgahapitiya.

Transmission is a meeting between two strangers in a real or imagined future – where the human race or human contact may well be a thing of the past. A solitary man interrupts his isolation by obsessively searching the internet for someone like him who may also be looking for evidence of humanity. Through a million failed attempts at creating a connection, he remains focussed on the hopefulness of the task that offers him meaning to time and life.

The short film Transmission follows a solitary man’s occupation of an ambiguous space as he tries to engage beyond his own world and begins to fear what he might find if he is successful.

COMMONS Dialogues

The COMMONS Dialogues – the 5th in the ER Dialogue series will be featured as a live session in the UN CONFERENCE section of the Ubumuntu Festival.

Drawing inspiration from the 6th Ubumuntu Festival theme of “Breathe” the COMMONS Dialogues will explore the literal and metaphorical reach of the concept of ‘Global Commons’ (defined as the deep sea, sky, space and the internet) – the earth’s shared natural resources, accessible to all, too valuable or vast to be owned by any single State or market force.

The COMMONS Dialogues will interpret and expand the concept of the Global Commons to explore the limits and definitions of the “shared” human experience and resources against the backdrop of the Global Pandemic. How are these concepts and values being re-defined by individuals, communities, governments and pan global entities? The COMMONS Dialogues will feature David Cotterrell in conversation with Senior Fellow at The Institute of Policy Analysis and Research, Lawyer and Author, Gatete Ruhumuliza Nyiringabo.

TICKETS & TIMINGS

The conference and festival is being held online this year. Registration is free and via the link: https://whova.com/portal/registration/ubumu_202007

  • The panel discussion is taking place on Friday 17.07.20 at 16:39 UK time
  • The film is being broadcast on Sunday 19.07.20 at 14:29 UK time.

 

 

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http://www.cotterrell.com/news/4679/ubumuntu--170720--190720/ Thu, 16 Jul 2020 18:13:17 +0100
DC4675 Mis(sing)-Communication - 27.04.20 David and Ru's two channel video project, Mirror III : Horizon, is being screend from 27th May to 3rd May as part of the six week online programme curated by Tess Charnley.

For its first online exhibition, Danielle Arnaud gallery presents a screening programme of video and film works by Kihlberg & Henry; Neville Gabie; Oona Grimes; David Cotterrell; Paulette Phillips; and Suky Best, curated by Tess Charnley. This presentation will occur over the course of six weeks with a new work made available for streaming each week. The works explore ideas of spatial and bodily interiority and exteriority, solitude, communication and the elasticity of time; topics that resonate in this time of altered living (within and without our selves). They allude to the possibilities of healing, as well as the complexities that arise with this repair.

Each work will be available to stream on the gallery website and also through the gallery mail out.

Screening Schedule:

W/C 20th April: Oona Grimes | u.e u.
W/C 27th April: David Cotterrell | Mirror III: Horizon
W/C 4th May: Kihlberg & Henry | This Building, This Breath
W/C 11th May: Neville Gabie | Experiments in Black and White XXX
W/C 18th May: Suky Best | The Sea House
W/C 25th May: Paulette Phillips | The Quoddy Fold

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http://www.cotterrell.com/news/4675/missing-communication--270420/ Mon, 27 Apr 2020 17:21:52 +0100
DC4674 Truth.lie.lie - 13.09.19 For his sixth solo exhibition at Danielle Arnaud gallery, David Cotterrell presents a selection of recent and new works considering the mediation of evidence. Installations devised in eclectic contexts in collaboration with artists, actors and news agencies, are brought together within one exhibition to consider common threads of media scepticism, narrative betrayal and structural prejudice.

At a time of deep uncertainty and eroded confidence in local and global politics, Cotterrell has continued his long-term collaboration with Sri Lankan playwright, Ruwanthie de Chickera to create a range of speculative investigations into the mediation of truth.

Private view:
Friday 13 September 6 - 9pm

Location:
Danielle Arnaud gallery, 123 Kennington Road, London SE11 6SF.

Exhibition continues: 14 September - 12 October
(Thursday, Friday & Saturday 2-6pm or by appt.)

About the works:
Mirror IV: Legacy (2018) explores the dynamics of inherited memories of violence through the performances of six young Rwandan actors who belong to the post-Genocide generation. Three of the six actors are told that their character’s father was a victim of the Genocide. The remaining three actors are told that their character’s father was a perpetrator. They were not aware what the other actors had been told. When watching these performances, we question if it is possible to distinguish between the actors playing the children of victims and the children of perpetrators, in turn raising questions of memory, empathy and intergenerational storytelling.

Reverse Images : Brexit (2019) considers the evolving meaning of evidence. The installation involves the presentation of one of Getty Images’ most syndicated images of the polarising referendum campaign - the image of Boris Johnson speaking in front of his pledge, promise or aspiration to return £350M per week from the EU to the NHS. The exhibit features extracts from over 100 articles that claimed the same image as their evidence for diverse and divergent editorial comment. The continuous referencing and recontextualization of this image has reflected the anguish and anger of a contemporary struggle for truth. The exhibition provides an audio snapshot of a Machiavellian narrative of manipulation and populism.

Shock and Awe (2019) is a short video work constructed from the collated documentation of a seminal media(ted) event. The breathless documentation of the long-anticipated commencement of the second Gulf War was broadcast globally on March 20-23, 2003. The narrative overlay and ident branding of this display of ‘neo-con’ power varied from network to network, but there was a strange limitation of view demonstrated as the majority of networks carried footage recorded from the roof of the Al-Rasheed Hotel in Baghdad. Flocking to recreate the CNN exclusive views of the 1991 bombardment, global outlets found themselves mirroring each other with near identical claims to unique testimonies. The abstraction of the horror of the bombardment was made palatable for live-viewing international voyeurs through the abstraction of its illumination of the night sky.

Mirror V: Translation (2019) is the latest of the Mirror installations (2015-present). It offers an experiment in partial translation. Two Sinhala monologues, filmed in Sri Lanka, are presented consecutively in the gallery. The ambient noise of Colombo and the original voices of the actors is audible. Orientated around the space, ultrasonic speakers create zones of sound, which present a translated narrative to the gallery audience. Three similar but distinct translations are available to recontextualise the direct-to-camera monologues. Through, error, omission and interpretation, the installation focussed on the subjectivity of translation, the power to objectify and our ability to perceive threat.

Blue/Green (2019) is a modest experiment with contradictory framing of identity. Artists and friends from Palestine and Israel have volunteered their travel documents and identity cards to form part of a compromised transitionary format. New lenticular identity cards have been produced, which allow the access and agency of the subject to shift with the angle of view. The subtle changes of serial number, symbolism and colour offer a modest aesthetic study of profoundly impactful institutional shifts in enfranchisement and trust. Musing on the enduring societal acceptance of the abstraction of invented categorisation, value and solidarity, this work forms part of a series of transitionary domestic and international documents of power.

Further Information: danielle@daniellearnaud.com

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http://www.cotterrell.com/news/4674/truthlielie--130919/ Fri, 06 Sep 2019 10:35:05 +0100
DC4672 Ubumuntu - 13.07.19 David and Ru will be presenting their new production, Mother Wall, at the Ubumuntu Festival of Humanity in Kigali, Rwanda this weekend. The play is a collaboration with the actors Nadie Kammallaweera and Akalanka Prabharshawa from Stages, the visual artist, Ian Gouldstone and the composer Ranil Goonawardena. The project is developed with support from Piumi Wijesundara and Nipuni Sharadha. 

The production charts the obscelescence of a great fortification, the decay of the ideology that provoked its manifestation and the disillusionment of its defenders. Mother Wall follows last year’s production, Thought Curfew, as the second part of a visual and performing art trilogy allegorically considering constructs of division and fear.

The project has been produced by Empathy & Risk and realised with support from the Global Challenge Research Fund and Sheffield Hallam University’s Art and Design Research Centre.

 

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http://www.cotterrell.com/news/4672/ubumuntu--130719/ Tue, 09 Jul 2019 18:41:30 +0100
DC4669 Alternate Languages - 16.03.19 The installation works, Mirror IV : Legacy and Mirror III : Horizon will be shown as part of the event, Alternate Languages at the Royal Academy.

Audiences are invited to explore the public and private spaces of the RA with installations, performances, workshops and discussions that ask what unites us and divides us. 

The event provides a critique of our relationship with one another and with our spaces. In a day of free immersive spatial activations, artworks, performances, workshops and discussions in the Royal Academy, we explore isolation and connection, exclusion and generosity, and ask what unites us and divides us.

As disenchantment permeates many aspects of society and polarisation increases, we must transcend difference, overcome prejudices, find ways to understand and connect with one another.

This event is the third in a series by the same name, which was first initiated with the British Council to occupy the empty space of the British Pavilion, for Island, at the 2018 Venice Architecture Biennale. Throughout this event, we hope to expand the languages we have available to express and share ideas, and to create an opportunity for different voices to be heard.

Location: The McAuley Gallery (Mirror III) & The Weston Gallery (Mirror IV). Royal Academy, Burlington House, Piccadilly, London, W1J 0BD

Date: Saturday 16.03.19 

Time: 11am - 7pm

Entrance: Free access to installations (with ticketed access to the Seeking Refuge Event on Saturday 3.30pm - 4.45pm)

Further information: architecture@royalacademy.org.uk

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http://www.cotterrell.com/news/4669/alternate-languages--160319/ Fri, 08 Mar 2019 15:46:42 +0000
DC4667 Human Rights 2018 : 10.12.18 David will be showing new installation works within the 2018 Human Rights Exhibition in Colombo, Sri Lanka. 

In response to the on-going political crisis in Sri Lanka, and to coincide with International Human Rights Day, Human Rights Arts 2018 will be held from the 10th – 15th December 2018, at the JDA Perera Gallery, Colombo. 

Human Rights Arts 2018 is an exhibition and a series of surrounding events created for people to gather, to reflect on and to share the creativity, knowledge and collective power of citizens’ movements that work towards achieving human dignity, democracy, justice and rights. The exhibition proposes artworks as invitations to debate and presents the gallery as a forum to be claimed and occupied.

The 10th of December 2018 is the 70th Anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Human Rights Arts 2018 will celebrate this global milestone within a local context of renewed public urgency to claim concepts of human rights.

A program of events will offer a platform for the current growing national culture of citizen protest in Sri Lanka, providing spaces to host impromptu responses and considered reflections on the wider political crisis. The exhibition will attempt to link the several citizens’ protests happening around the country and within the capital of Colombo, through art, interventions and discussions.

HUMAN RIGHTS ARTS 2018

Preview: 10th December, 5pm

Exhibition: 1th – 15th December, 10am - 7pm
A continuing exhibition of artwork by Chandragupta Thenuwara, David Cotterrell, Ruwanthie de Chickera and Senaka Weeraman will be available for public viewing within the JDA Perera Gallery. The artists have created their artwork in direct response to the surrounding political climate of the country. There will be scheduled curated tours of the artwork. (See programme for schedule)

Ephemeral artwork: – Opening of exhibition – 5.00pm – 7.00pm 10th December
Flashes of performance, dissolving artwork, disappearing acts will take place at specific times within the exhibition. (See programme for schedule).

Protest Art: – 11.00am – 01.00pm Daily from 11th – 15th December
Open spaces for artists engaged in protest art to come and share their work. (Artists need to call and schedule their programmes).

Open Mike: – 11.00am – 1.00pm Daily from 11th – 15th December
Fifteen – thirty minute slots for artists to speak to audiences about anything they want to - from a professional challenge to a personal experience, a failed project to an unrealised dream. Through song, performance or spoken word. (Artists need to call and schedule their open mike sessions)

Citizens’ Forums: – 5.00pm – 6.00pm Daily from 11th – 14th December
Regular scheduled forums for lay persons to ask questions and learn about the history, philosophy and practice of different resistance movements – moderated by experts and open to all. Forums will focus on – Artist Resistance, Women’s Resistance, Resistance through Social Media, Theology of religious resistance, Economic Resistance, Investigative Journalism.

Stories of resistance: Scheduled talks on specific citizen intervention into the current political crisis. Presentations made to the public on legal interventions, journalistic interventions, artistic interventions etc will be recorded and archived.

Wall of protest: Collection of posters, photographs, letters, articles, artefacts used in the different citizen protests.

We call on artists, citizens and groups to use this opportunity to contribute the stories of their interventions to a living archive of citizen resilience within a country under stress. In the midst of the continuing chaos, lets pause a moment to tell our stories and listen to the stories of others, and reflect together on the importance of protecting the principles of the universal declaration of human rights.

We invite the improvised, the organised, the quiet, the chaotic, the flawed, the failed, the banal and the extraordinary testimony of people intervening in a national crisis. Artists, lawyers, unionists, activists, students, women, youth groups, clergy … get in touch with us. Come and share with us the story of your intervention. Come and listen to the stories of other interventions. 

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http://www.cotterrell.com/news/4667/human-rights-2018--101218/ Thu, 06 Dec 2018 07:13:33 +0000
DC4664 TAP - 23.11.18 David's works, OnSilent and The Wall will be shown within the exhibition, ‘The Art Practitioner’ (TAP).

Artist Curators, Jacques Nimki and Stephanie Douet have selected nineteen artists, reflecting the pluralism of contemporary practice, to exhibit within a dramatically derelict setting.

Artists: Gayle Chong Kwan / David Cotterrell / Coco Crampton / John Crossley / Stuart Cumberland / Stephanie Douet / Robert Filby / Lee Grandjean / Sarah Harley / Sigrid Holmwood / Gaetan James / Chloe Mandy / Jacques Nimki / Janetka Platun / Richard Reynolds / Steve Rushton / Chloe Steele / Jonathan Swains / Alice Walton

Preview: 6 - 8pm Friday 23rd November

Opening Times: Saturday 24th - Friday 30th, November 12 - 6pm
Location: St Mary’s Plain, Norwich NR3 3AF

Further Information: info@theartpractitioner.com

About TAP’s founders:

Jacques Nimki studied at the Chelsea School of Art and the Royal academy Schools. He is a full time practicing artist and is based in London & Norfolk. Nimki works from and within the urban landscape, using mainly weeds and flowers as a way of exploring how we perceive others and ourselves within particular environments. He makes a variety of studio/project-based work and site conditioned installations that searches for beauty in the overlooked and unconsidered. These take the form of interventions within natural setting, drawing installations, meadows within buildings, culinary productions and both observational drawings and paintings. Work can be found in the Arts Council of England collection and numerous public and private collections worldwide

Stephanie Douet has a BA Hons in Art History from UEA and an MA in Fine Art from Norwich Institute of Art & design (NUA). As well as exhibiting in solo and group exhibitions locally, nationally and internationally she curated the Queen of Hungary artist-led space (2001-4) and has curated over 75 exhibitions with 150+ artists. Recent solo exhibitions include ‘Roar like a Paintbrush’ in Udaipur City Palace, India, and ‘Real/Non-Real’ at Modern Art Oxford Project Space. Group shows include ’Sinopticon’ at Plymouth Museum and V&A Museum, ‘OPEM7’ at The Collection, Lincoln and ’Summer Salon’ at islington Arts factory, London.

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http://www.cotterrell.com/news/4664/tap--231118/ Tue, 20 Nov 2018 14:32:30 +0000
DC4663 Transmission - 13.11.18 On Tuesday, David and Ru will be presenting a public talk in Sheffield, exploring their recent collaborative work for the 2018 Transmission Lecture series

About the talk:

In recent years, David Cotterrell and Ruwanthie de Chickera have embarked on an eclectic series of field trips, producing a series of experimental artworks to clarify their experience and understanding of fear, risk, and empathetic failure.

They had been feeling uncomfortable with war being described as a declared state rather than a location on an iterative scale of social disintegration. While accepting that some measure of polarisation is a pre-requisite for conflict, Cotterrell and de Chickera consider the cycle of disengagement that is required to allow barriers to be constructed, long before they are recognised as fortifcations. Their research addresses the staged challenges to empathy that occur before the descent into the polarised engagement of military forces. Where risk has been identifed, and measures are variably employed as responsive protocols, a situation of distancing may occur – most obviously between the observer and the subject, but also between the perceptions of different observers.

To address this threat to collective understanding, they are developing a research network, exploring the contradictory nature of mutually exclusive versions of truth. Their work considers the way in which risk can be a catalyst to the loss of pluralist narratives as communities and individuals are denied access to each other’s vantage points. In particular, Cotterrell and de Chickera have an interest in the artist’s role in foregrounding subjective and alternate perspectives that may serve to challenge existing datasets, methodologies, and illusions of objectivity.

Time and Location:

13 Nov 2018 4:30pm–6pm

Adsetts Learning Centre, Lecture Theatre 6620, Sheffield Hallam University, Arundel Gate, Sheffield, S1 1WB

Booking:

Free and open to all, Transmission is an annual artist lecture series produced in collaboration with Sheffield Hallam University Fine Art Department. 

Eventbrite Link for free registration

About the Series:

Transmission is an annual series of lectures and symposia, now in its fifteenth year, and is a collaboration between Fine Art, the Art & Design Research Centre at Sheffield Hallam University, and Site Gallery. Convened by Sharon Kivland in 2001, Transmission was developed collaboratively with Lesley Sanderson from 2001 to 2004, and with Jasper Joseph-Lester from 2004 to 2012. The series is now convened by Sharon Kivland, TC McCormack, and Julie Westerman, Fine Art, in association with Site Gallery, Sheffield.

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http://www.cotterrell.com/news/4663/transmission--131118/ Sun, 11 Nov 2018 13:39:05 +0000
DC4662 Brouhaha - 04.11.18 For the second edition of the Brno/Kabinet Muz cultural festival, David and Ru will be performing their iphone tragedy, OnSilent. This new version, translated into Czech and syncronised across multiple devices, will act as a parasitic parallel installation tonight and tomorrow evening, throughout the sound and music line up of an international sonic arts and music performers.

Venue: Kabinet Muz - Sukova 4, 60200 Brno, Czech Republic

Dates; 4 & 5 November, 19:30 - 23:30

Facebook Page: https://www.facebook.com/events/270929593761450/

Event Information:

To demonstrate faith in the inevitability of greater things (if only because things cannot get worse), Kabinet Muz welcomes Hungarian and British artists in its second ostentatious demonstration of international fellowship and kindness.

Branching out from its limiting initial frame of ‘alliance via abbreviation’, the organisers have taken the bold step of linking nations through political disappointment and despair. At a time of existential angst and simplistic narratives, brouhaha offers experiential antidotes and convoluted conversations.

Hosting artists with entirely incompatible languages elegantly serves the dual purpose of limiting the production of trivial political slogans and fostering just enough loneliness to ensure a desperate engagement with new forms of expression.

Artists will find fellowship through music, noise, poetry and art in a real-time enactment of the potential for international dialogue, the cacophony of creative contradiction and the BrouHaha of hope.

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http://www.cotterrell.com/news/4662/brouhaha--041118/ Sat, 03 Nov 2018 13:53:33 +0000
DC4653 To Make Art Happen - 06.04.18 On the 6th April at Safehouse 1, David and Ruwanthie's new collaborative work, OnSilent, will be shown as part of the exhibition, To make art happen.

The show is the first of three international art exhibitions that will take place in London in 2018 and 2019. Twenty-eight artists from seven different countries are taking part in the project, from Iceland, UK, Spain, Netherlands, Germany, Ireland and Canada. All three exhibitions will highlight the multiple manifestations of time in art. The first exhibition, titled ‘To make art happen’, brings together artists that deal with the presence of time in their work, or who regard their work as performative. To encourage discourse with and amongst the audience there will be live performances at all three openings.

The artists in the first exhibition are: Thoroddur Bjarnason, Darri Lorenzen, Snorri Ásmundsson, Sara Bjornsdottir, Saemundur Thor Helgason, Frederique Pisuisse, Hatty Lee, David Cotterrell and Ruwanthie de Chickera, Kevin Atherton, Libia Castro and Olafur Olafsson.

Location:

Safe House 1, 139 Copeland Road Peckham SE15 3SN

Private View and Opening Times:

Exhibition Private View - 06.04.18 : 6-9pm

Exhibition continues 7th – 15th April / Thursday – Sunday / 1 – 6pm

Events:

The exhibition will be hosting a series of public artists talks and a participatory workshop.

  • 7th April, 2pm : A panel discussion with Thoroddur Bjarnason, Darri Lorenzen and Snorri Asmundsson Iceland, chaired by Pete Bishop.
  • 9th April, 6:30pm : Olafur Olafsson Icel. and Libia Castro Spain will be discussing the project campaigne 'Your country doesn't exist'. House opens at 17:30 some refreshments.
  • 15th April, 4:30pm : Sara Bjornsdottir and David Cotterrell will discuss new works within the show and host the Finisage Reception for the exhibition.

Additional Information:

Event Facebook Page

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http://www.cotterrell.com/news/4653/to-make-art-happen--060418/ Mon, 02 Apr 2018 10:44:18 +0100
DC4627 PPAN Conference Palestine - 29.11.17 David will be presenting at the Palestinian Performing Arts Network's first international conference in Ramallah. The conference will aim to assess the potential for arts to engage communities in various levels of social, political, economic, and educational change. The conference will host local, regional and international speakers to share their work and experience in their respective fields. 

The conference, “The Impact of Arts on Communities/Societies” Will be held on Wednesday 29 November until Friday 1 December, 2017 from 9:30 am to 5:00 pm at the Palestine Red Crescent Society, Al-Bireh. David will be presenting, The Problem with Perspective, exploring an artists' potential roles within international relations, conflicted landscapes and complex narratives. The presentation considers the challenges to the orthodoxies of analysis and policy development and, at a moment of existential doubt within global engagement, reflects on the potential value of cultural practice, creative research and subjective responses within situations of local impasse and international interference.

Further information may be sourced through the conference organisers: 

nisreen.kharoufeh@ppan.ps or by calling PPAN on 02-2402289

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http://www.cotterrell.com/news/4627/ppan-conference-palestine--291117/ Tue, 28 Nov 2017 14:12:04 +0000
DC4626 Maelstrom - 27.10.17 David's new permanent public installation, Maelstrom, launches today in Chester alongside new works by Bedwyr Williams, Kate Gater and Estelle Woolley.

King Charles Tower, on the city walls, hosts Chester’s first artwork that acknowledges the city’s emerging relationship with water. As a whirlpool appears and disappears in the Shropshire Union Canal, it rapidly turns to create the illusion of extreme depth and speed. David Cotterrell has taken his inspiration from the maelstrom, whirlpools and eddies that feature in literature from The Odyssey to Jules Verne, Herman Melville and Edgar Allan Poe, His new work seeks to represent the magnificence of these awe-inspiring natural phenomena, recreating them on this gentle stretch of Chester’s waterways.

How and why the whirlpool has appeared is intended to cause intrigue and provoke curiosity from the public visiting the canal with the intention that it draws attention to the waterway, its geography and environment. Working with David, pupils at local schools have imagined their own myths and stories of how the whirlpools came into being. Creating fantastical stories about a mysterious creature that ate a chunk earth from the bottom of the ocean, disrupting the flow of the water, causing a massive whirlpool; or a Superhero who blasted a villain during combat; or a massive serpent living beneath the water wagging its tail, causing destruction. A selection of artworks by Year 6 Pupils at Hoole C of E Primary School and Waverton Community Primary School will be exhibited at King Charles Tower for the launch event on Friday 27 October and during the October half term.

Public Launch

New digital artworks premiere in Chester

 

Meet the Artists, 5pm, Cinema at Storyhouse
David Cotterrell and Bedwyr Williams, hosted by Laura Robertson

Bedwyr Williams : Hypercaust
See the artwork tonight 5pm - 8pm

Special cocktails served 5.30pm, courtesy of Red Door Bar
Williams’ new video piece will bring back to life Chester’s Roman Fortress Bathhouse, recreated through historically accurate 3D renderings. This mesmeric work will interweave the stories of modern Chester: half remembered tales and shared anecdotes,
the ordinary epic of petty crimes and misunderstandings strung together.

Where: Storyhouse, Hunter Street
Find out more: storyhouse.com/hypercaust

David Cotterrell : Maelstrom
See the artwork tonight 5.45pm - 8pm

Cotterrell’s artwork acknowledges Chester’s relationship with water, as a whirlpool appears and disappears in the Shropshire Union Canal, rapidly turning to create an illusion of extreme depth and speed. This intriguing artwork encourages alternate viewpoints of the city that rewards curiosity and creates a sense of wonder and surprise.

Where: King Charles Tower, Chester City Walls
Find out more: westcheshiremuseums.co.uk/maelstrom/

Local postgraduate artists Kate Gater and Estelle Woolley will be showing sound and sculptural pieces in King Charles’ Tower and Gardens, and Chester Cathedral. Artists, David Cotterrell, Bedwyr Williams and Nayan Kulkarni have been offering their support and guidance to the ongoing development of Gater and Woolley’s individual practices as part of a mentoring programme.

Kate Gater : Fallen but not Forgotten
See the artwork tonight 5.45pm - 8pm

Gater is an artist working with sound and digital technologies, currently undergoing her PHD in Sound Art at the University of Chester. Her work involves researching rarely seen rural areas. For FLOAT, Gater has produced two surround sound pieces, Fallen But Not Forgotten’ made from field recordings of creaking trees which will be sited in King Charles Tower, and ‘Deep in the Sacred’ made from recordings of the Cathedral.

Where: Upper Room, King Charles Tower, Chester City Walls
Read more at: westcheshiremuseums.co.uk/maelstrom/

Estelle Woolley : Water Guardians, The Engine and Wishing Wells
See the artwork tonight 5.45pm - 8pm

Woolley is an interdisciplinary artist and MA Fine Art graduate from The University of Chester. Woolley has been developing her site specific works which include video and performance as well as her interest in the intersection of sound and sculpture. Her practice is concerned with the way in which we ‘see’ sound physically, exploring the embodiment of sound within the object, in relation to the site specificity of space. Work shown on the opening evening will comprise of a playful series of sound sculptures, including a purring lawnmower, taking the viewer on a multisensory discovery of the newly renovated King Charles’ Tower gardens.

Where: King Charles Tower Gardens, Chester City Walls
Read more at: westcheshiremuseums.co.uk/maelstrom/

Additional Information:

Chester is championing new technologies within artworks commissioned for the public realm, as can be seen with Maelstrom and Hypercaust, the forthcoming art commission by Bedwyr Williams at Storyhouse. Chester is a city rich in heritage and architectural interest and such artists’ interventions highlight its overlooked or hidden aspects.

Waterways Strategy
The artwork is part of the recent improvements at King Charles Tower Gardens, a refurbishment that transformed a once derelict part of Chester; and forms part of Chester’s Waterways Strategy which aims to reconnect Chester’s Waterways to the city.

Chester Heritage and Visual Arts Strategy.
The Chester Heritage and Visual Arts Strategy, recently adopted by Cheshire West and Chester, presents a city wide study that will deliver a clear and coherent direction for interpreting and presenting its heritage and visual arts to deliver a world class offer that inspires audiences and visitors. The strategy recognises the scope for the visual arts to renew our curiosity, highlight the charm of the city’s past and contribute to its future.

Funded by Arts Council England and Cheshire West and Chester Council.

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http://www.cotterrell.com/news/4626/maelstrom--271017/ Fri, 27 Oct 2017 08:11:49 +0100
DC4625 Age Of Terror - 26.10.17 David's photographic work, Gateway II, has been acquired by the Imperial War Museum and included within the new exhibition, Age of Terror: Art since 9/11. The UK’s first major exhibition to consider artists’ responses to war and conflict since 9/11.

Featuring 50 works of art including film, sculpture, painting, installations, photography and prints, many of which will be exhibited publicly in the UK for the first time, Age of Terror: Art since 9/11 will present IWM’s largest contemporary visual art exhibition to date. Staged in IWM’s centenary year, the exhibition will consider artists’ responses to war and conflict since the terrorist attacks on 11 September 2001 and will feature more than 40 British and international contemporary artists, including Ai Weiwei, Grayson Perry, Gerhard Richter, Jenny Holzer, Mona Hatoum, Alfredo Jaar, Coco Fusco and Jake & Dinos Chapman.

The catastrophic events of 9/11, a series of four coordinated terrorist attacks on the United States on the morning of Tuesday 11 September 2001, changed public perception and understanding of conflict. The complex issues surrounding the global response to 9/11, the nature of modern warfare and the continuing state of emergency in which we find ourselves have become compelling subject matter for contemporary artists.

Age of Terror takes 9/11 as its starting point; the catalyst which altered public perception of contemporary conflict. The artworks featured communicate a range of perspectives on subsequent events and their consequences. The exhibition highlights the crucial role of artists in representing contemporary conflict. Artists’ unique ways of communicating through their art provide different levels of understanding. The stories they tell, whether first or second-hand, come from alternative viewpoints not always reflected in the mainstream media.

Opening times:

26 October 2017 - 28 May 2018 : Open Daily: 10am– 6pm. Last entry 30 minutes before closing.

Ticket availability and prices:

Tickets are available at https://www.iwm.org.uk/ageofterror
Adult £15, Child £7.50, Concessions £10.50, Members Free, Art Fund Members £7.50

Further information:

For further press information and interview requests please contact:
Monique Kent, Head of Press and PR, mkent@iwm.org.uk, 0207 416 5316 / Poppy Andrews, Press Officer, poandrews@iwm.org.uk, 0207 091 3069

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http://www.cotterrell.com/news/4625/age-of-terror--261017/ Tue, 24 Oct 2017 15:36:09 +0100
DC4623 The War Dialogues - 07.08.17 Does the placement, presence, and input of artists need to be re-negotiated and re-imagined in the context of contemporary crises? This panel discussion will explore the changing role, responsibility and challenges of witnessing and responding to modern conflict.

David will join a panel with Lola Arias, director of MINEFIELD, theatre which brings together ex-servicemen from the Falklands/Malvinas; Professor Michael Clarke, former Director General of the Royal United Services Institute and Ruwanthie de Chickera, a Sri Lankan writer and cultural activist. The discussion will be chaired by former BBC war correspondent Allan Little.

This panel is one of a series considering the potential for arts to challenge policy, curated by David Cotterrell, the British Council and the Edinburgh International Festival for the Spirit of '47 season.

BBC Arts Digital will be collaborating with us, making many of the events from Spirit of ’47 available live and on demand to a global audience online. Visit BBC Arts Digital for more information.

Title: ‘War Dialogues’, part of ‘Spirited Voices’ at Spirit of ‘47

Time: Monday, 7th August, 2017 - 15:00 to 16:15 (approx)

Venue: The Studio, 22 Potterrow, Edinburgh, EH8 9BL

Speakers: Allan Little (Chair), David Cotterrell, Ruwanthie de Chickera, Lola Arias, Michael Clarke

Additional Information: https://www.eif.co.uk/2017/

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http://www.cotterrell.com/news/4623/the-war-dialogues--070817/ Thu, 03 Aug 2017 19:29:27 +0100
DC4622 Three Mirrors And A Wall - 24.02.17 For his fifth solo exhibition at Danielle Arnaud contemporary art, David presents three works from the Mirror project: a series of two-screen works produced in collaboration with Ruwanthie de Chickera considering polarised perspectives, drawing alternatively on assumption and objectivity. This evolving project is designed to explore the common human characteristics that could provide a stronger empathetic bridge between strangers than their contexts, roles and attire might suggest. Portraits of individuals are constructed in a manner that transcend or challenge place, prejudice, projection, assumption and fear of the other – while at the same time providing insight into nuanced internal negotiations and narratives.

Mirror I: Hierarchy is the first work of this series devised to explore the anxieties and thought-processes of two protagonists within the world of surgery – the patient and the surgeon. The installation considers the concerns and devices by which an impending operation is philosophically contextualised and the way the mind might wander under the catalytic pressure of approaching professional or personal risk.

Mirror II: Distance examines the distances between individuals who occupy, protect and work in worlds that they may not own or belong to. It is inspired by observations of the Diplomatic Enclave in Islamabad, a heavily gated expat community living in the capital city of Pakistan. Entry into the enclave and then, within the enclave, entry into the various demarcated territories inside is monitored by local Pakistani guards. In this installation, two such men observe each other across a distance as they listen to the visitors, the experts and the specialists discuss Pakistan, its people and its future.

Mirror III: Horizon examines what might transpire between two strangers if their communication was reduced to the language of lights. Filmed in Malta, set against the dramatic edges of the island’s stunning coast and contextualized by the island’s deep historical experience of visitors who arrived repeatedly by sea, the installation draws on the fluctuating paranoia of the current refugee crisis. Mirror III examines what might possibly be communicated between strangers if their words were reduced to beams of light and their faces need never be revealed.

Within the exhibition, The Wall - a home installable table-top defensive barrier with an ensemble of miniature figurines - offers a playful interaction with the debates regarding walls, borders, and functions as an introduction to a conversation around xenophobic paranoia.

An accompanying essay by Sri Lankan playwright and theatre director Ruwanthie de Chickera, with whom David collaborates for the Mirror project, will be available as part of the exhibition.

Private View: Friday 24 February 6 - 9 pm

For more information and images please contact Danielle Arnaud at danielle@daniellearnaud.com

Danielle Arnaud
123 Kennington Road
London SE11 6SF UK
t/f +44(0) 207 735 8292
Thursday, Friday & Saturday 2-6pm (or by appointment)

Show continues until 1st April 2017

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http://www.cotterrell.com/news/4622/three-mirrors-and-a-wall--240217/ Mon, 20 Feb 2017 13:15:32 +0000
DC4606 All-Party Parliamentary Group - 24.01.17 On Tuesday, David will be presenting at the House of Commons to the fourth evidence session on the Inquiry into Building Resilience to Radicalisation in Middle East & North Africa (MENA).

The fourth formal evidence session will invite expert witnesses working in the sectors of Arts and Culture to look specifically at the role of Arts and Culture in building resilience to radicalisation in MENA. Experts and organisations working in the areas of Arts and Culture will look at the role of artists, and the contribution that arts and creativity can make to the fight against radicalisation, and the role of Arts and Culture in the political sphere of this question. Expert witnesses will also explore the role art and culture can play in strengthening civil society and building individual and community resistance.

Why it is important to involve and support the sectors of arts and culture, what are the current projects and strategies being used to build resilient individuals and communities, and how they are evaluating their impact. The session will continue to build on some of the concepts, definitions, and insights into the MENA region which were explored in the previous sessions, and what constitutes a resilient individual and society. Where should the focus be when building resilience – individuals, societies or structures? Particularly when faced with very poor circumstances. What opportunities and spaces do arts and culture create, where difficult current realities can be explored at a distance and therefore more safely? Can this help towards reducing the radicalisation of individuals and societies.

The session will inform the committee members of wider evidence being carried out in MENA (with any reference to relevant global case studies), using examples of successful initiatives and insights from the ground.

Witnesses attending:

Dr Bernadette Buckley, Convenor, MA Art and Politics, Goldsmiths, University of London.

Prof David Cotterrell, Professor of Fine Art, Director of Research and Development, College of Arts and Humanities, University of Brighton. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jkHeWvD1R4M

Stephen Stenning , Director Culture and Development, British Council .

Lois Stonock, Independent Researcher, Curator and Cultural Strategist, Founder, LR Stonock Consultancy and Create Associates.

Time, Date and Location:

14.30 – 16.30, Tuesday 24th January 2017;

Committee Room 08 (Houses of Parliament, Cromwell Green Entrance)

Further Details:

If you have any questions relating to the British Council All-Party Parliamentary Group and Building Resilience to Radicalisation Inquiry, you can contact the programme team directly as below:

Zafran Iqbal
Secretariat to the APPG Inquiry
Policy & Parliamentary Officer
British Council
020 3285 3724
zafran.iqbal@britishcouncil.org

Russell Clarke
Parliamentary Assistant
Office of David Warburton MP
020 7219 5229
russell.clarke@parliament.uk

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http://www.cotterrell.com/news/4606/all-party-parliamentary-group--240117/ Mon, 23 Jan 2017 08:46:21 +0000
DC4582 Peckham Platform Retrospective - 25.11.16 David's work Slipstream, will be shown at Peckham Platform for its final exhibition before moving to a new home next spring, a richly populated timeline of all twenty original projects so far celebrates Peckham Platform’s work, which seeks to give a platform to diverse contemporary talents and encourages deep engagement with the gallery’s surrounding communities.

Peckham Platform Retrospective includes artworks and materials from: Rachael House, Harold Offeh, Jessica Voorsanger, David Cotterrell, Sonia Boyce, Barby Asante, Gayle Chong Kwan, Garudio Studiage, Nikolaj Larsen, David Blandy, Sarah Cole, Kimathi Donkor, Ruth Beale, Kathrin Böhm, Eileen Perrier, Anna Best, Melanie Manchot, Michael McMillan, and Janette Parris.

The exhibition features original works from Melanie Manchot, Nikolaj Larsen and David Cotterrell, and presents the first opportunity for members of the public to browse the entire catalogue of the South London Black Music Archive compiled by Barby Asante from objects donated by visitors to the gallery. Alongside the installations, audio, unique ephemera and documentation from many of the celebrated artists, visitors will be able to collect memorabilia including special postcards, printed currency and limited edition pamphlets.

The opening night of the Peckham Platform Retrospective will be an opportunity to meet the artists and community groups that we have worked with Peckham Platform over the last six years for an evening of celebration, art, music & refreshments. Playing live will be the one and only Parris Experience.

This event will be part of the South London Art Map’s Last Friday Peckham Tour, a great way to find out about other galleries in the area.

Location: Peckham Platform, 89 Peckham High Street, London SE15 5RS, View Map

Private View: 25th November 5.00-8.00pm - all welcome.

Exhibition Dates: 25th November 2016 - 5th March 2017 : Opening hours: Wed–Fri 11am–6pm; Sat–Sun 10am–5pm

 

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http://www.cotterrell.com/news/4582/peckham-platform-retrospective--251116/ Fri, 18 Nov 2016 18:07:18 +0000
DC4581 Inaugural Lecture - 17.11.16 David Cotterrell, Professor of Fine Art at the University of Brighton, presents his inaugural lecture: 'Empathy and Risk'

For the past few years, Cotterrell has been embarking on an eclectic series of field trips and producing a series of experimental artworks to clarify his experience and understanding of fear, risk and empathetic failure.

He had been feeling uncomfortable with war being described as a declared state rather than a location on an iterative scale of social disintegration. While accepting that some measure of polarisation is a pre-requisite for conflict, Cotterrell has been considering the iterative progressive cycle of disengagement that is required to allow barriers to be constructed, long before they're recognised as fortifications. His research seeks to consider the staged challenges to empathy that occur long prior to the descent into the polarised engagement of military forces.

Where risk has been identified, and measures are variably employed as responsive protocols, a situation of distancing occurs – most obviously between the observer and the subject, but also between the perceptions of different observers. This lecture explores the contradictory nature of mutually exclusive versions of truth, the way in which risk can be a catalyst to the creation of partial truths and the possibility of the loss of pluralist narratives as communities and individuals are denied access to each others’ vantage points.

In his inaugural lecture Cotterrell will describe the motivation and observations of his ongoing research. At a time of increasing political polarisation, he will discuss an artists’ idiosyncratic search to find languages with which to explore the failure of dialogue.

DATE AND TIME

Thu 17 November 2016
18:30 – 21:00 GMT (The lecture will run from 6.30pm-7.30pm and is followed by a canapé reception.)
Add to Calendar

LOCATION

Sallis Benney Theatre
58-67 Grand Parade
Brighton
BN2 0JY
View Map

TICKETS

This is a free event. All are welcome. If you would like to attend, please register online no later than 48 hours prior to the event at www.brighton.ac.uk/openlectures

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http://www.cotterrell.com/news/4581/inaugural-lecture--171116/ Sun, 13 Nov 2016 03:52:54 +0000
DC4578 Buffet D'Art - 04.11.16 As the US election approaches, David will again be showing his installation, The Wall, within the touring exhibition, Buffet d'Art. The show will be open on Friday and run for a few intense days at the Ambika P3 gallery in London.

The Wall is a playful interaction with the debates regarding walls, borders and xenophobic paranoia. It consists of a home installable table-top defensive barrier. Supplied complete with a selection of culturally diverse miniature figurines, the domestic user is invited to determine where to draw their dinner-time boundary and who will be allowed into their defensive perimeter. This 1:100 scale version does not yet incorporate Trump's 'Big beautiful door' so the choice of who the 'good ones' to be allowed in, has to be a more definitive statement. Future versions may incorporate angrier crowds, fatigued travellers, despairing children and a selection of ladders and missiles.

Buffet d'art showcases an array of artists, all of whom have been invited to bring along a buffet size piece of work, to be perused on a plinth. The show will be a melee of mismatched yet aspiring works, some with delusions of grandeur, others grubby with spillage and monotonous repetition, set to a medley of smooth and relaxing music by Brendan Lynch, designed to whet the senses and heighten your experience of these buffet-inspired memories.

Location: Ambika P3 Gallery, University of Westminster, 35 Marylebone Road, London NW1 5LS

Private View: 4th November, 6.30-8.30pm - all welcome.

Exhibition Dates: 5th November - 6th November : Opening hours: 11am-5pm

Curated by: Peggy Atherton, Maria Bartolo and Ben Joiner.

Exhibiting Artists: Gustavo Ferro, Veronika Seifert, Maria Bartolo, Dolanbay, Doug Fishbone, Marcia Farquahar, Gayle Chong Kwan, David Cotterrell, Ben Joiner, Stuart Cumberland, Judith Dean, David Donald, Francis Upritchard, Luke Gottelier, Robert Rush, Kerry Stewart, Eric Bainbridge, Holly Hendry, David Mabb, Kitty Finer, Phil Allen, Brendan Lynch, Rachel Lowther, Edwina Ashton, Demelza Watts, Jo Addison, Louise Ashcroft, Georgina Starr, Peggy Atherton, Flora Parrott, Lucy Joyce, Katie Cuddon, Ian Kiaer, Renata Bandeira, Shrone Lifschitz, Justin Fitzpatrick, Mark Wilsher, Des Hughes, Annie Davey, Peter McDonald, Keith Wilson, Fabian Peake, Raine Smith, Pip Thompson, Keith Bowler, Pete Owen, Sarah Pucill and Adam Gillam

An exhibition concept by Peggy Atherton and Maria Bartolo.

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http://www.cotterrell.com/news/4578/buffet-dart--041116/ Wed, 02 Nov 2016 09:40:26 +0000
DC4575 Seeing - 28.06.16 The new installation work, Mirror II - Distance, is on show in Dublin as part of the Seeing exhibition at the Science Gallery. The exhibition features the works of 24 artists, designers and technologists exploring the complex sensory experience of vision and perception. The works illuminate optics, perspective, and comprehension while exploring enhanced and augmented ways of seeing, artificial eyes, and radical alternatives to vision. The exhibition explores the subjectivity of sight, the other senses that shape our view of the world, and the unexpected parallels between human and machine vision.

Mirror II – Distance is part of the “Mirror” project, a series of two-screen works devised to provide insight into global communities that experience distancing and objectification. “Mirror” experiments with perspective in order to challenge common human assumptions and provide insight into nuanced personal and collective narratives. The recent work, Mirror II – Distance examines the distances between individuals who occupy, protect and work in worlds that they may not own or belong to.

It is inspired by observations of the Diplomatic Enclave in Islamabad - A heavily gated expat community living in the capital city of Pakistan. This enclave is cut off from the rest of the country by high walls and heavy security. Inside the enclave is a network of country and organisational compounds further barricaded from each other. Entry into the enclave and then, within the enclave, entry into the various demarcated territories inside is monitored by local Pakistani guards. These men are privy to the culture, conversations and experiences of the international communities that they are responsible to protect. In this piece, two such Pakistani guards stand watch over the expat compounds they are stationed over. The two men observe each other across a distance as they listen to the visitors, the experts and the specialists discuss Pakistan, its people and its future.

Mirror II Distance uses a cable mounted camera system that films both forward and rear views simultaneously. Central to this installation is the experimental filming format “Collimation” which manipulates perception to provide an illusion of depth and an experience of the sublime. 

The project was made in collaboration with the Sri Lankan playwright and theatre director, Ruwanthie de Chickera and with the generous support of the simulation engineers, Geoff and Dan Blackham, at GBVI Ltd. It featured the actors, Akbar Merchant, Dominic Campbell, Louis Gallo, Holger Hille, Simon Kunz, Caroline Loncq, Jessica Rhodes, Deborah Rigby and Anna Versteeg. Location sound recordings were made by Fasi Zaka and access to the diplomatic enclave was supported by the British Council, Pakistan.

Location: The Science Gallery, The Naughton Institute, Pearse Street, Trinity College Dublin, Dublin 2

Exhibition Dates: 18th March - 25th September 2016

Opening hours: Opening hours can be found here.

Additional Information: For all media and press inquiries about the exhibition or exhibits, please contact Niamh O’Doherty. You can reach her by phone at +353 85 146 3683, or by email at niamh.odoherty@dublin.sciencegallery.com.

 

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http://www.cotterrell.com/news/4575/seeing--280616/ Tue, 28 Jun 2016 10:17:28 +0100
DC4574 Buffet D'Art - 31.03.16 David will be showing a modest new work, The Wall, within the Kunsthaus Meinblau exhibition, Buffet d'Art. A playful interaction with the debates regarding walls, borders and xenophobic paranoia, The Wall, consists of a home installable table-top defensive barrier. Supplied complete with a selection of culturally diverse miniature figurines, the domestic user is invited to determine where to draw their dinner-time boundary and who will be allowed into their defensive perimeter. This 1:100 scale version does not yet incorporate Trump's 'Big beautiful door' so the choice of who the 'good ones' to be allowed in, has to be a more definitive statement. Future versions may incorporate angrier crowds, fatigued travellers, despairing children and a selection of ladders and missiles.

Buffet d'art showcases an array of artists, all of whom have been invited to bring along a buffet size piece of work, to be perused on a plinth. The show will be a melee of mismatched yet aspiring works, some with delusions of grandeur, others grubby with spillage and monotonous repetition, set to a medley of smooth and relaxing music by Brendan Lynch, designed to whet the senses and heighten your experience of these buffet-inspired memories.

Location: Kunsthaus Meinblau, Christinenstrasse 18-19, 10119 Berlin, Germany

Private View: 31st March, 6pm - all welcome.

Exhibition Dates: 01st April -  10th April 2016 : Opening hours: Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday, 2-7pm

Curated by: Peggy Atherton, Maria Bartolo, Ben Joiner, Teena Lange, Chiara Valci Mazzara

Exhibiting Artists: Jo Addison, Phil Allen, Louise Ashcroft, Peggy Atherton, Maria Bartolo, Renata Bandeira, Keith Bowler, Jörn J. Burmeister, David Cotterrell, Stuart Cumberland, Annie Davey, Judith Dean, Dolanbay, Marcia Farquhar, Kitty Finer, Doug Fishbone, Luke Gottelier, RJ Hinrichsen, Des Hughes, Anja Ibsch, Ben Joiner, Sharon Lifschitz, Brendan Lynch, Pete Owen, Sarah Pucill, Robert Rush, Raine Smith, Kerry Stuart, Pip Thompson, Demelza Watts, Mark Wiltshire, Keith Wilson.

An exhibition concept by Peggy Atherton and Maria Bartolo. 

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http://www.cotterrell.com/news/4574/buffet-dart--310316/ Wed, 30 Mar 2016 13:05:27 +0100
DC4573 Pilot 1, Private View - 17.03.16 David will be showing his collaborative work, Mirror at the University of Brighton Gallery. This exhibition, the first in a series of research gallery productions, introduces two new professors in the College of Arts and Humanities, Professor Kelly Snook and Professor David Cotterrell, through their current work.

Location: University of Brighton Gallery, 58-67 Grand Parade, Brighton BN2 0JY

Private View: 17th March, 5pm - 8pm - all welcome.

Exhibition Dates: 18th March -  8th April 2016 : Opening hours: Mon-Fri 10am – 6pm, Sat 10am-4pm (closed Easter weekend, 25-28th March)

Events: 

David Cotterrell in dialogue:
Thursday 24 March, 12.30-1.30pm

Kelly Snook in dialogue and with demonstration of mi.mu gloves:
Thursday 31 March 12.30-1.30pm

Curator's Introduction and Additional Information:

Pilot is a series of exhibitions and events planned to showcase work in progress. The aim is to initiate a public dialogue around the intellectual and creative enquiry of researchers from the University and wider community. The work selected to be part of this series is presented in a resolved state but is part of an ongoing and open enquiry. The invitation to audiences and fellow researchers is to engage with the work as a discreet exhibition, installation, event or exposition of ideas at the same time as speculating where the research could lead.

The exhibition and related events programme provides an opportunity to engage with the research of two exciting new members of the University and the creative community of the city. The work has been selected as a significant and discreet output from two established figures in their respective fields as well as being part of ongoing research enquiry. Both works are the result of interdisciplinary collaboration.

The exhibition includes contributions from David Cotterrell and Kelly Snook. Professor of Fine Art David Cotterrell is an installation artist, and digital media specialist working across varied media including video, audio interactive media, artificial intelligence, device control and hybrid technology. Kelly Snook is a music producer, music technologist, and data sonification researcher working at the intersection of the arts, science, and technology. She has backgrounds in both aerospace engineering and planetary science and was Lunar Program Scientist in the Planetary Systems Division of the Science Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters.

Exhibited works:

Mirror

As a the discrete episodic precursor, to a more ambitious developing research project, David Cotterrell and the Sri-Lankan screen-writer, Ruwanthie de Chickera have begun working on the collaborative installation, Mirror.

Mirror is conceptualized as a series of two-screen works considering polarised perspectives, drawing alternatively on assumption and objectivity; this project is designed to explore the common human characteristics that could provide a stronger empathetic bridge between strangers than their contexts, roles and attire might suggest. Portraits of individuals are constructed in a manner that they transcend or challenge place, prejudice, projection, assumption and fear of the other – while at the same time providing insight into nuanced internal negotiations and narratives.

Mirror I – Hierarchy was devised to explore the anxieties and thought-processes of two protagonists in surgery – the patient and the surgeon. The installation considered the concerns and devices by which an impending operation is philosophically contextualised and the way the mind might wander under the catalytic pressure of approaching professional and/or personal risk.

A series of rhetorical monologues, projected on screen, are absorbed as polarised dialogue. It is ambiguous as to whether the two talking heads are speaking to one another or to themselves; or if indeed, these are two characters at all. As the dialogue develops, several complex and nuanced assumptions of roles and prejudices shift from one video portrait to the other.

Recorded in isolation from context, without revealing the categorising uniforms of scrubs or gown, the conversation offers an introverted and existential portrait of the both the surgeon and the patient as they prepare for surgery. The outwardly simple video projection offers a snapshot of these complex internal negotiations of vulnerability and bravado.

The installation was produced in collaboration with the actor Simon Kunz and with the support of the Association of Medical Humanities.

David Cotterrell will be 'in dialogue' in the gallery for Q&A: Thursday 24 March, 12.30-1.30pm

The mi.mu gloves

Wireless gestural control: liberating musicians and artists from their computers and technology.

The mi.mu gloves are a powerful and flexible new gestural interface, allowing musicians to control music through movement. Existing ways of interacting with computers restrict the boundaries of human creativity. While computers provide enormous creative possibilities, our interfaces (buttons, faders, keyboards) create artificial limits to the things we create, especially in the world of music. Mi.mu’s aim is to help build a future where we will compose and perform electronic music in new ways - through the complex movement of the human body. With advanced, customisable gesture detection and mapping software, musicians can create their own sound-gesture relationships. The mi.mu gloves also have great potential outside of this domain as a general tool for human computer interaction.

Starting in 2011, a team of engineers, artists and designers worked with musician Imogen Heap to develop the first version of the mi.mu gloves. After their debut at a performance in Heap’s garden, the gloves began to gain widespread attention and demand. By late 2013, the first batch of gloves were in the hands of seventeen early Collaborators, including musicians, film composers, mixing engineers and a music and disability charity. By 2015, the mi.mu gloves made their way into mainstream popular music when Ariana Grande featured them in her Honeymoon World Tour arena show.

Professor Kelly Snook is a co-founder and co-developer at mi.mu. Her current role centres on the development of creative content and playability of the gloves, as well as the development of a robust DIY design and culture around mi.mu’s technology, which aims to be open sourced in the near future.

Kelly Snook will be 'in dialogue' at the gallery with Q&A and with demonstration of mi.mu gloves: Thursday 31 March 12.30-1.30pm [limited capacity 25 people, please reserve a place through A.Boldon@brighton.ac.uk]

 

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http://www.cotterrell.com/news/4573/pilot-1-private-view--170316/ Fri, 11 Mar 2016 17:29:31 +0000
DC4571 World Theatre Forum - 20.02.16 David will participate in the World Theatre Forum at the National School of Drama, Delhi. He will discuss his recent project, Mirror as part of a three day forum bringing together 30 academics, practitioners and theorists from 14 countries and a range of disciplinary backgrounds. The forum is a critical component of the 18th Bharat Rang Mahotsav World Theatre Festival taking place in Delhi and at other cities throughout India.

Abstract

Over the past year, the British visual artist, David Cotterrell has been collaborating with actors and writers to create and propose a series of works titled, ‘Mirror’. These have been devised to consider scenarios and locations that might encourage distance and objectification, whether through perceived risks, hierarchies or social barriers. Intrigued by the idea that the chaos of our lives may be told back to us as a causational sequence of events through the words of others, Cotterrell found himself driven to consider expanding his own vocabulary and working processes. This presentation describes a twelve month journey of discovery from Ireland to India, and from visual to performing art. It is a personal reflection on a search to transcend perceived disciplinary and geographic boundaries and to establish a voice to engage with the empathetic challenges of conflict and the alienating concept of complexity.

Further Information

World Theatre Forum: Email

 

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http://www.cotterrell.com/news/4571/world-theatre-forum--200216/ Thu, 18 Feb 2016 07:34:23 +0000
DC4570 Trauma - 20.11.15 David's photographic works, Sightlines I and Supernumerary are included within the new Science Gallery (Dublin) exhibition, 'Trauma'. 

A sudden, violent, stressful and disturbing event, often a physical injury, trauma can be short-lived or long-lasting with impacts that range from deeply personal to universal. In this exhibition curated by Shane O’Mara of the Institute of Neuroscience at Trinity College Dublin, and Daniel Glaser, Director of Science Gallery London at King’s College London, visitors will experience a range of works by artists, scientists and designers that connect with the emotional upheaval of trauma on a physical, biological and psychological level. Then we’ll explore the post-traumatic flipside of healing physiologically, emotionally and socially.

Location: The Naughton Institute, Pearse Street, Trinity College Dublin, Dublin 2.

Exhibition Dates:
20 November 2015 – 21 February 2016 : Free Entry. Opening hours and event details can be found here.

Launch Event: Thursday, November 19, 2015 - 18:00 to 20:00. To attend, RSVP to rsvp@sciencegallery.com

Further Details:

Phone: +353 1 896 4091
Email: info@dublin.sciencegallery.com
Twitter: @SciGalleryDub

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http://www.cotterrell.com/news/4570/trauma--201115/ Wed, 18 Nov 2015 11:48:59 +0000
DC4569 THAAP - 08.11.15 David will present his paper, 'Empathy and Risk' at the 6th International THAAP Conference 2015 on 08 November at 43-G, Gulberg-III, Lahore, Pakistan.

The Trust or History, Art and Architecture of Pakistan, Series of Conferences began, in 2010, with “Historiography of Architecture in Pakistan and the Region”. The conference has grown in scope and depth; celebrated scholars from around the world have been invited to contribute to a wider dialogue, which is relevant and timely to undertake within Pakistan. It is time to revisit the opportunities, issues and problems of writing history in general and Pakistan in particular. This year's conference is brought together under the theme, 'The People's History of Pakistan'

David's paper introduces the themes and concerns that are motivating a wider research project and a new body of work:

Empathy and Risk (Abstract)

Late C20th historians suggested that the linear narrative of passive communities being defined and led by dynamic individuals was illusory. It was suggested that localism could be used to consider that the same moment had a different significance depending on the nation, county, town, tribe or family that you lived within. This offered the tantalizing promise of a potentially infinite pluralist contradiction of narratives.

The paper seeks to consider the staged challenges to pluralism within contemporary histories that are occurring prior to the descent into the polarised engagement of military forces. Where risk has been identified, and measures are variably employed as responsive protocols, a situation of distancing occurs – most obviously between the observer and the subject, but also between the perceptions of different observers. This paper will seek to explore the contradictory nature of mutually exclusive versions of truth, the way in which risk can be a catalyst to the creation of partial truths and the possibility of the loss of pluralist narratives as communities and individuals are denied access to each others’ vantage points.

The various and progressive acceptance of limitation of movement, compound walls, the frame of the armoured car, the company of security personnel and the adherence to defensive protocols, all contextualise environments and its communities as posing a threat. While engagement may well be maintained, potentially the nature of the communication and awareness of alternate perspectives is fundamentally challenged by the behavioural shift that has been displayed.

The paper will discuss the relationship between the mitigation of risk and loss of empathetic engagement. Perhaps this issue is of greatest relevance in contemporary areas of tension where a delicate balance between the maintenance of consent and the tolerance of risk to civilian, governmental and NGO representatives must be maintained.

Location: 43-G, Gulberg-III, Lahore, Pakistan

Date and Time: Sunday November 8 • Afternoon Session: 14.50 - 18.30

Further information: Full conference program and associated events.

 

 

 

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http://www.cotterrell.com/news/4569/thaap--081115/ Sat, 07 Nov 2015 02:14:08 +0000
DC4568 ISEA - 17.08.15 At ISEA 2015, David is showing The Ostrich Effect. This generative installation was built using commercial automated call-centre servers, customising their IVR (Interactive Voice Response) programs to broadcast and handle telephone campaigns. It explores the recursive loops that might occur in a hypothetical scenario. The computer-based conversation will never be resolved and continuously re-attempted.

Location: Fur Vault (enter off alley) (5 W 4th Ave, Vancouver, BC V5Y 1G2)

Launch Event: Monday, August 17 • 7:00pm - 10:00pm

While in Vancouver will also present the paper, Ostrich Effects, co-authored with Jordan Kaplan.

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http://www.cotterrell.com/news/4568/isea--170815/ Sun, 16 Aug 2015 00:56:21 +0100
DC4563 Terminus - 08.08.15 Focussing on the absurd beauty of infrastructure in a post-industrial landscape, Terminus is an exhibition of new artwork considering the legacy of masterplanned dreams. The exhibition includes new and existing installations by David Cotterrell as well as commissions by Ron Wright and Michael Day.

Private View:
Saturday, 8 August, 4-7 pm

Location:
The Scottish Queen, 21-24 South Street, Park Hill, Sheffield, S2 5QX

Exhibition Dates:
9 August – 9 September 2015 : Open every day, 2pm - 6.30pm (free entry)

Curator's Introduction:

David Cotterrell brings three site-specific artworks to The Scottish Queen in Park Hill this summer. Exploring the legacy of the Tinsley Cooling Towers site, these new works focus on the absurd beauty of infrastructure in a post-industrial landscape.

Commissioned by Sheffield City Council as an initial phase of / part of the Tinsley Art Project , ‘Terminus’ is supported by, S1 Artspace, Urban Splash, E.ON, Sheffield Hallam University, Sheffield Robotics, The European Regional Development Fund and the National Lottery through Arts Council England.

Filmed from the E.ON biomass power station’s chimney over the course of a day, On England’s pleasant pastures seen documents the sweeping vistas of the Tinsley Viaduct, the biomass plant local sewage works, train lines and canals that jostle for space alongside the hills of the Peak District. At 90m in the air, the view is one that would have been visible from the top of the Cooling Towers, which were demolished in 2008. Cotterrell climbed the chimney in July with a six-lens spherical camera to record the panorama of landscape and infrastructure, which is projected on a bespoke curved wall in the gallery.

Developed with the support of Sheffield Hallam University’s Cultural, Communication and Computing Research Institute, Babel is a 3D projection of a simple closed-system created within a game engine. The work depicts an infinitely expanding highway system: as traffic increases and queues build, a viaduct is formed. Gradually slip roads are added, lanes widened and a ring road is created to alleviate pressure. Sweeping feeder lanes distribute fast turning traffic and double, then triple deck highways appear. As capacity increases, more cars are added. As more cars are added, capacity is stretched. A vertigo-inducing monument to highway geometry gradually pierces the clouds as Cotterrell’s ridiculous extrapolation is rendered in real-time.

Automotivation takes its title from Sheffield-based Cabaret Voltaire’s 1984 ‘Gasoline in Your Eye’. Produced with the support of Sheffield Robotics, the work is based on traffic ‘micro-simulation’ models which use parameters including Aggression, Gap Tolerance and Lane-Discipline to demonstrate how driving populations behave. Realised as database engines, these models are not neutral: they depend on programmers’ assumptions and judgments and pre-suppose that smoother flowing traffic is progressive. Automotivation demonstrates patterns of traffic flow like phantom roadblock as a kinetic sculpture of 12m2 of Scalextric-style track and 55 slot cars.

Cotterrell has invited artists Ron Wright and Michael Day to develop two new works for the exhibition, which will also include his 2001 single-channel video work, Car Culture.
A series of events has been programmed to coincide with the exhibition including work with Tinsley Meadows Primary School and an architecture summer school as well as a day of climbing and communicating via public realm sites, which will formally launch the next stage of the Tinsley Art Project - a £450k Major Commission. The ‘Terminus’ project website will feature news and documentation of these events.

Further Information:

For more information and images please email: andrew.skelton@sheffield.gov.uk or telephone: +44(0)114 205 3784

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http://www.cotterrell.com/news/4563/terminus--080815/ Mon, 20 Jul 2015 15:56:59 +0100
DC4561 Mirror - 27.06.15 David and the Sri-Lankan screen-writer, Ruwanthie de Chickera have produced the collaborative installation, Mirror. In the first of a series of two-screen works considering polarised perspectives, David Cotterrell and Ruwanthie de Chickera explore what he describes as: “the relative anxieties and thought-processes of two of the major protagonists in surgery – the patient and the surgeon, shown as two talking heads on opposite mirrors. The work considers the shared concerns, the devices by which a serious event is philosophically contextualised and the way the mind might wander under the catalytic pressure of forthcoming professional and/or personal risk. Two rhetorical monologues – patient and surgeon – may be misconstrued as a polarised dialogue. It is ambiguous as to whether the two characters are talking to one another or to themselves; and as the dialogue continues the assumption of roles may shift from one video portrait to the other.”

Cotterrell continues: “Recorded in isolation from context, without revealing the categorising uniforms of scrubs or gown, the conversation offers an introverted and existential portrait of the two individuals. The portraits are constructed to transcend the place, or the situation, perhaps considering fear of the other, but often more internalised, describing a sense of self-image or personal narrative. There are differing social conventions at work for the articulation of anxiety and the consideration of failure. For the patient, there is often a requirement to be strong for their relatives; and the surgeon must demonstrate confidence to command the trust of both patients and colleagues in the operating theatre. Space for reflection may be deferred to a later date or constrained to the domain of the internal monologue. This outwardly simple video project offers a snapshot of these complex internal negotiations of vulnerability and bravado. The project is designed to explore the common human characteristics that could provide an empathetic bridge that might offer a stronger solidarity between strangers than the context, roles and uniforms might suggest.”

The work was developed in collaboration with the actor Simon Kunz. It was produced with support from the Association of Medical Humanities and is on display at Dartington Hall Gallery within the exhibition, At the Sharp End of Bluntness also featuring sculptural work by Sue Bleakley and documented performance by Martin O'Brien. Mirror was introduced in a plenary presentation by David Cotterrell and Professor Roger Kneebone at the AMH annual conference, Dangerous Currents hosted by Dartington 23.06.15 - 25.06.15

Location and Contact Details: 

Dartington Hall, Totnes, Devon, TQ9 6EL
Telephone: 01803 847514 / Email: info@dartington.org

Opening Dates and Times:

Monday to Sunday 24.06.15 - 23.07.15
Open 9am - 5pm

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http://www.cotterrell.com/news/4561/mirror--270615/ Sat, 27 Jun 2015 12:02:27 +0100
DC4560 Politics Of Amnesia II - 17.05.15 David's installation work 9-Liner will be shown as a three-channel video projection for the first time in this new show at Cafe Gallery Projects in London. The group exhibition curated by Fieldgate Gallery looks at past trauma through the conduit of technology.

Politics of Amnesia II is curated by Richard Ducker and includes works by George BarberAmanda BeechJohn GerrardGibson/Martelli, Matthew Noel-Tod, Derek Ogbourne and Nonny de la Pena.

Private View:
Sunday, 17 May, 3 - 5 pm

Location: 
CGP London
Southwark Park
London SE16 2UA

Exhibition Dates: 
20 May - 21 June, Wednesday – Sunday from 11am – 5pm.

Curator's Introduction:
In Part 2 of this two-part exhibition that looks at past trauma through the conduit of technology (Part 1 was at the Cafe Gallery in 2012), the technology is itself now presented as implicated in that very trauma it is representing. These artists look at the psyche of the body politic and reveal a condition of disquiet and concern through an interest in, or reference to that technology. Rather like the little girl in the film Poltergeist, they discern the faint echoes of failed past utopias through the technological notion of ‘progress’. However, here the sense of loss is ours, confronted with this spectacle, where that conduit is no longer neutral, but demands/commands our attention. Through its encroachment on our understanding narrative is interrupted, skewed, and not to be trusted. Like Walter Benjamin's angel, these artists look to the future by facing the past, witnessing "the storm we call progress" through a medium insistent on recycling of the present.

The exhibition's title is taken from Terry Eagleton's book 'After Theory' in which he states in the eponymous first chapter: "There can be no falling back on ideas of collectivity which belong to a world unravelling before our eyes." Our need to want to fashion our future to our own desires, fills us with both optimism and dread. As our hi-tech future promises us infinite possibilities, it leaves a gap filled with impending disappointment. It is a disappointment through our sense of separation that is loaded with atomised pathos. And it is to this gap that these artists look, where memories appear flattened and shorter, and where we are distracted by the heat of the present. This sense of amnesia, induced by the seduction of the spectacle of technology, becomes the consequent politics of memory and distraction.

Art has often engaged with optical technology, from the popularity of the camera obscura in the 18th Century to the more recent fascination with Virtual Reality. However, it is not the technology itself that is necessarily of interest, but how it adds to the existing language of art, and offers it new meanings. Unlike science fiction, which creates its own language of myths but acts as an allegory, here the myths are already embedded, and the allegory but a memory, the fading pulse of past events. It is through this process that the present is given its framework of comprehension, as cited by Giorgio Agamben's paradox that the most contemporary is that which is most out of sync with its time. It is this "Out of joint-ness," to use Agamben's phrase, that these works reveal, and consequently, the contemporary is made more contemporaneous.

© Richard Ducker/Fieldgate Gallery, 2015.

Further Information:

For more information and images please email: admin@cgplondon.org or telephone +44(0)20 7237 1230

 

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http://www.cotterrell.com/news/4560/politics-of-amnesia-ii--170515/ Thu, 14 May 2015 20:58:18 +0100
DC4552 Art And War: Truth, Propaganda And Protest - 09.08.14 Shock and Awe presents a wide range of artists and artworks, portraying many facets of armed conflict: militarism, power, dispossession, peace, protest and remembrance. Brothers in Art brings together landscape paintings by John and Paul Nash - the places and countryside which they lovingly renegotiated and reimagined after the trauma of not one, but two, world wars.

Lowongan Kerja

How can the artist respond ‘truthfully’ to the spectacle and trauma of armed conflict? When does reportage become propaganda? Historically, how have artists attempted to take a pacifist stance, particularly in an environment of growing nationalism and military hostility?

Addressing these questions and the wider themes of the exhibition, this half-day workshop will combine gallery-based talks with Shock and Awe artists Jill Gibbon and David Cotterrell, and an illustrated lecture with University of Bristol Art Historian, Dr Grace Brockington.

Event Details:

Location: The Royal West of England Academy, BS8 1PX

Date & Time: Saturday 9 August. 2pm - 5.30pm

Admission prices: £10 to include exhibition entry / £5 RWA Academicians, Friends, Artist Network Members and Students.

Tickets: Places limited so please book early to avoid disappointment. To book online click here or call 0117 973 5129.

 

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http://www.cotterrell.com/news/4552/art-and-war-truth-propaganda-and-protest--090814/ Sat, 02 Aug 2014 11:22:52 +0100
DC4551 Shock And Awe - 19.07.14 David's photographic works, GateWay I, Gateway II, Sightlines and Supernumerary are being presented in a new exhibition at the Royal West of England Academy.

The RWA is about to open its most controversial and compelling exhibition to date; an installation of works by contemporary artists recently exposed to the front-line of war in Iraq, Afghanistan and the Balkans.

The exhibition, Back From the Front presents: Shock and Awe - Contemporary Artists at War and Peace is part of the Bristol 2014 Project, an extensive programme of events marking the centenary of the start of the First World War and also looking at other conflicts that have had an impact on Bristol over the last century.

Each participating artist has created their own powerful response to conflict, building on personal and collective memories, whether by examining acts of remembrance, the notion of art as a warning or as a form of protest. In the run up to the opening of the exhibition the RWA in conjunction with the Bristol 2014 project looks at what inspires the artists, their ways of working and how they have coped in highly demanding, often very stressful conditions.

The exhibition will be open from 19th July until 17th September

Artists and Curators :

The exhibition and programme is curated by Professor Paul Gough supported by Arts Council England, the Bristol Cultural Development Partnership and the University of the West of England, Bristol. The show features the work of Jill GibbonMario Minichiello, Xavier Pick, Tim Shaw, Elizabeth Turrell and Katie Davies

Gallery location, Opening Times and Admission :

The Academy is situated in the academic heart of Bristol at the Clifton Triangle opposite the Victoria Rooms.

Royal West of England Academy, Queen’s Road, Clifton, Bristol BS8 1PX | 0117 973 5129 | www.rwa.org.uk

Tuesday – Saturday 10am – 6pm
Sunday 11am – 5pm

Adults £5 inc. gift aid
Concessions £3.50 inc. gift aid

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http://www.cotterrell.com/news/4551/shock-and-awe--190714/ Sat, 19 Jul 2014 11:25:29 +0100
DC4550 Code Yellow - 28.03.14 David will be showing the new immersive installation work, Mazar, Texas in the exhibition, Code Yellow. Co-produced with the artist/curator Laray Polk.

A curatorial exercise exploring systems of real and perceived warnings, Code Yellow involves six curators from various fields (art, journalism, network analysis, social activism) investigating issues of vulnerability, struggle and crisis. Works in the exhibition use humor, irony, empathy, direct or indirect action, data, graphic depiction, media manipulation, and social engagement to convey the various means humans express societal dilemma and moral anxiety.

Artist & Curators:

Kael Alford: Perceived Threat: The Texas Survivalists – Spike Johnson; Optic Nerve – by the women of Resolana, a program of Volunteers of America Texas. co-curated by Jennifer McNabb.

Mona Kasra: NØTABLE SELFLES$$ AFFECT – Andrew Blanton

Greg Metz: Caveat Emptor – curated selections by Kayla Escobedo, Trenton Doyle HancockGary Panter, Marian Henley and Mike Presley

Laray Polk: Mazar, Texas – David Cotterrell

Max Schich: Creepy Figures – Didier Sornette

Janeil Engelstad: Zone of Resistance – Tomáš Rafa, Rudolf Sikora, Václav Vašků and Jana Želibská

Location & Dates:

March 28 – April 26 at UTD Main Gallery
800 W. Campbell Rd, Richardson, TX 75080
Reception: March 28, 6:30–8:30 p.m.

April 12 – May 17 at CentralTrak,
800 Exposition Avenue, Dallas.
Reception: April 12, 6:30–10 p.m.

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http://www.cotterrell.com/news/4550/code-yellow--280314/ Fri, 28 Mar 2014 10:24:57 +0000
DC4547 The Ostrich Experiments David's fourth solo exhibition at Danielle Arnaud explores the illusion of chance amidst a dominant culture of reductive choice. The Ostrich Experiments invites participants to consider their actions and reactions within a closed loop of predetermination.

A series of logic systems, some complex state-of-the-art programs, others analogue re-enactments of 1980s gaming, suggests the neutered nature of contemporary autonomy.

Each work developed for exhibition, including a fruit machine dispensing fortune cookie wisdom, an automated Russian Roulette machine, a ‘cocktail cabinet’ game of attrition and a semi-intelligent, voice-activated Call Centre, routes back on itself, creating a death loop or stalemate. The logic of each system, however sophisticated, becomes irrelevant when it is forced to confront its equal opposite number. The recursive systems become impotent and the effect of opponents, combatants or participants is neutralised to the point of obsolescence.

The scenarios of computer science suggest the potential for an Ostrich Algorithm: a strategy of wilfully ignoring potential problems on the basis that the likelihood of their occurrence would be so rare as to negate planning for them. Cotterrell here reveals the realities of such potential narratives, inviting those who interact with them to devise a humane stance that can create new fictions for contemporary battlegrounds.

Private View: Friday 4 October 6 - 9 pm

For more information and images please contact Danielle Arnaud at danielle@daniellearnaud.com

Danielle Arnaud
123 Kennington Road
London SE11 6SF UK
t/f +44(0) 207 735 8292
Fri, Sat & Sun 2-6pm (or by appointment)

Show continues until 3rd November

 

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http://www.cotterrell.com/news/4547/the-ostrich-experiments/ Mon, 23 Sep 2013 13:56:52 +0100
DC4519 Engines Of War - 28.03.13 David will be showing his photographic work, Gateway, at Gasser Grunert Gallery, NY in a group show, Engines of War, curated by Charles Dee Mitchell and Cynthia Mulcahy.

Opening March 28, the show will feature the work of Ghaith Abdul-Ahad, Heather Ainsworth, Lisa Barnard, David Cotterrell, Benjamin Lowy, Christopher Morris, Eugene Richards, Jamel Shabazz, Anthony Suau and Teun Voten. In addition to the artists’ work, the exhibition will also include the United States Military-designed war video game America’s Army and the US Army-designed digital comics for the iPad and Android tablets, “the military’s most effective recruiting tools to date,” Mulcahy says.

Gallery location :

Klemens Gasser & Tanja Grunert, Inc.
524 West 19th Street
New York, NY 10011

Opening Reception (public) : Thursday 28th March 6-8pm

For Press and Private preview invitations please contact the gallery or David Cotterrell.

Press and Hi-Res Images :

Sue Selby: 917.697.6680 / sue@sueselby.com

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http://www.cotterrell.com/news/4519/engines-of-war--280313/ Sat, 23 Mar 2013 13:10:48 +0000
DC4518 London Art Fair : Stand 1 - 16.01.13 At the London Art Fair, David will show Prototype II, a mechanical artwork incorporating two .357 Magnum handguns engaged in a perpetual game of Russian roulette.

The work is being represented by Danielle Arnaud alongside photographs from the Gateway series, and work by Suky Best, Katie Deith, Tessa Farmer, Polly Gould Helen Maurer, Paulette Phillips & Sarah Woodfine.

Opening Hours:

Tues 15 January
(Invited guests / Preview & Six Day Ticket Holders)
6:30pm - 9:00pm

Wed 16 January
11:00am - 9:00pm

Thurs 17 January
11:00am - 9:00pm

Fri 18 January
11:00am - 7:00pm

Sat 19 January
10:00am - 7:00pm

Sun 20 January
10:00am - 5:00pm

Venue:
Business Design Centre, 52 Upper Street, London N1 0QH

Please do not hesitate to contact the gallery for more information on any of the artists or to get invitations to the fair.

Danielle Arnaud
123 Kennington Road
London SE11 6SF UK
t/f +44(0) 207 735 8292

danielle@daniellearnaud.com

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http://www.cotterrell.com/news/4518/london-art-fair--stand-1--160113/ Tue, 15 Jan 2013 15:55:50 +0000
DC4517 Stefan Gec In Conversation With David Cotterrell - 23.10.12 Stefan Gec will talk to David Cotterrell about his recent exhibition Crossing Heaven at noshowspace.

The artist's talk will take place on Tuesday 23 October 2012, 6.45pm in the project space, 13 Gibraltar Walk, London E2 7LH in the final week of the exhibition. Please rsvp info@noshowspace.com

Crossing Heaven ends Saturday 27 October. Final week exhibition opening hours are: Thursday to Saturday 12 - 6 pm.

 

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http://www.cotterrell.com/news/4517/stefan-gec-in-conversation-with-david-cotterrell--231012/ Thu, 18 Oct 2012 11:26:24 +0100
DC4513 Art Image Politics - 10.03.12 To accompany the exhibition, Monsters of the Id a one day symposium will be held at the John Hansard Gallery, University of Southampton:

Nation States, world power, economic models, the role of the citizen have all been in a state of change and flux over the last ten years. Historically art has been a good reflection of change and in some cases has led the way in reworking policy.

There is a resurgence of art work around new political agendas that either reflects directly current world themes or employs predominant new technologies or other materials and concepts inventively to make more subtle comment. While, since its inception, the photographic image has been questioned for its ‘truth’, it is now accepted that images are routinely manipulated and mediated in order to convey a message or context.

This event will address the ways that artists in 21st Century are using new technologies, reflecting new political agendas, and are constructing imagery or concepts to represent the current world situation.

Papers will explore issues surrounding the following themes:

Image Manipulation and Politics – How much has the ubiquity of image manipulation changed views on current affairs and their authenticity? How have artists responded to this?

Hacking, art and the political agenda – Artists have in the post WWII decades manipulated software and hardware to convey ideas and concepts. How are they responding now? How are they dealing with the standardisation of proprietary software and hardware? Is the current trend in content and platform separation appropriate for artists?

New display technologies, art and politics – After decades of working within the constraints of the screen or photographic image, artists are beginning to look at new forms of display. How have artists used new display devices as a conceptual tool? Which artists alongside David Cotterrell are using new displays to convey meaning?

New Politics and Artist Responses – Artists are beginning to emerge that embody strong political ideas in their work. How are they responding across a range of media? How is this different from previous work that has a strong political agenda?

Speakers:

Roger Kneebone Professor of Surgical Education at Imperial College London
Gunther Kress Professor of Semiotics and Education at the Institute of Education, University of London
David Cotterrell Artist, Monsters of the Id
Michaela Crimmin Course Tutor, Art in the Public Domain, Curating Contemporary Art Programme, Royal College of Art
Carina Brand Centre for Art, Design, Research and Experimentation, University of Wolverhampton
Mafala Dâmaso Department of Visual Cultures, Goldsmiths, University of London
Ian Kirkpatrick Southampton-based artist and researcher
Neja Tomšič Researcher / curator at MoTA – Museum of Transitory Art, Ljubljana, Slovenia
Georgina Williams Winchester School of Art, University of Southampton
Matthew Cornford Artist, Cornford & Cross
Hydar Dewachi Photographer, artist and engineer
Ian Gwilt Professor of Design and Visual Communication, Sheffield Hallam University
Helen Sloan (Chair) Director, SCAN

Convened by John Hansard Gallery with SCAN (digital and interdisciplinary arts agency) as part of the extended programme for the exhibition David Cotterrell: Monsters of the Id (11 Feb – 31 March, 2012).

Location:

Building 58, Murray Lecture Theatre
10 March 2012 / 9.30am – 6.30pm

Tickets (Booking Essential):

Tickets: £10 (includes refreshments, light buffet and evening gallery reception)
To book: call 023 8059 2158 or email info@hansardgallery.org.uk

Limited student bursary places are available – for details contact Ronda Gowland Pryde at rjg3@soton.ac.uk

 

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http://www.cotterrell.com/news/4513/art-image-politics--100312/ Fri, 02 Mar 2012 14:27:09 +0000
DC4511 Monsters Of The Id - 11.02.12 David's new solo exhibition opens next Saturday at John Hansard Gallery

Derived from the artist's journeys to Afghanistan, Monsters of the Id tests our expectations of cinematic and media representation, presenting a series of new works that experiment with advanced display technologies. The exhibition captures the disorientation of a civilian observer within a militarised environment.

Upon entering the gallery, visitors are immersed in a landscape that crosses the physical and the virtual. The disquieting Observer Effect presents viewers with a projected image of a distant, self-absorbed population. As audiences remain within the space, this virtual community grows in number and becomes distracted by their presence.

Searchlight 2 reveals illusory human shadows traversing a low platform terrain, suggestive of the desert landscape as seen by an aerial drone. The unnerving movements of this unidentified population are computer-generated and directly mirror the actions seen in Observer Effect.

Apparent Horizon renders immersive, virtualised vistas of a desert landscape. As viewers, our role hovers between sublime reverie and the quiet anxiety between of periods of violence. The exhibition ends with a final cinematic flourish, enabling visitors to consider their role in the exhibition and its dialogue of control, observation truth and contradiction.

Monsters of the Id is a John Hansard Gallery exhibition co-curated with Helen Sloan, SCAN, and is accompanied by a new, fullyillustrated publication. The development of the exhibition has been supported through residencies with the Joint Forces Medical Group in Helmand province and civilian agencies in the northern provinces of Afghanistan enabled by Wellcome Trust and the RSA, and supported by a Philip Leverhulme Prize for research, Danielle Arnaud, Sheffield Hallam University, Wellcome Trust and Arts Council England.

Exhibition Preview
Saturday 11 February 2012 / 2– 4pm
Free / all welcome

Free London Coach
A free return coach will travel from London to the John Hansard Gallery, available exclusively to guests. Spaces are limited and available on a strictly first come, first served basis. To book email info@hansardgallery.org.uk by Friday 10 February 2012.

Coach departs from the Madame Tussauds coach dropoff point, Marylebone Road at 11.45am (guests can attend an optional tour of Kinetica from 10-11.30am*). The coach will leave the John Hansard Gallery at 4pm. Journey time approximately two hours.

*Requires ticket entry to Kinetica Art Fair. A 20% promotional discount is available to David Cotterrell Exhibition Preview guests. Visit http://www.kinetica-artfair.com/?visitors/tickets.html and enter "senses" (all lower case) in the promotional code box.

 

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http://www.cotterrell.com/news/4511/monsters-of-the-id--110212/ Mon, 06 Feb 2012 00:34:47 +0000
DC4508 Other Surfaces - 12.01.12 David's work, Hero, will be shown in the exhibition Other Surfaces, curated by Rebecca Geldard at the Poppy Sebire Gallery

The artists participating in ‘Other Surfaces’, a single-projection show-reel of short films and videos, are essentially known for materially hands-on approaches to making. While there are some obvious points of connection -- few appear concerned with the conventions of the medium -- it’s unlikely these artists would ever be shown together as a group of object and mark makers. Yet, however diverse each individual line of enquiry, all use video as a research tool as much as a recording device: a means of finding other ways around the issues of representing ideas with things. This exhibition, sat somewhere between the screening and the group show, offers a quiet space in which to consider what these artists do, both behind and life-side of the lens.

Exhibiting artists include: Vanessa Billy, Lloyd Corporation, David Cotterrell, Tom Dale, Clare Goodwin & Paul Harper, Lee Maelzer, Sam Porritt, Magali Reus and John Strutton.

Private View: Thursday 12th January, 2012, screened twice between 6.30 and 8.30pm

Exhibition Dates: 13 January - 11 February 2012

Additional Screening Event: Wednesday, 1st February, screening at 7.30pm

Gallery Information: 

Poppy Sebire Gallery
All Hallows Hall,
6 Copperfield Street,
London, SE1 0EP

Opening hours:

Tuesday – Saturday 10am- 6pm or by appointment

Contacts and further information:

+44(0)20 7928 3096 / gallery@poppysebire.com / www.poppysebire.com

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http://www.cotterrell.com/news/4508/other-surfaces--120112/ Fri, 06 Jan 2012 13:13:52 +0000
DC4501 Adhocracy - 07.08.11 David will be joining a panel of creative thinkers, social innovators, future-shapers, dilettantes and their admirers to tattle-tale on how resistance and entrepreneurship might be getting it together.

The Panel Discussion on 'Can-do: from DIY to Social Entrepreneurship will include Kate Bull (co-founder of The Peoples Supermarket in Holborn, London), Dr Lida Hujić (strategist advising market leader brands), Lois Keidan (co founder and Director of the Live Art Development Agency London), Amy Spencer (author of DIY: The Rise of Lo-Fi Culture and The Crafter Culture Handbook) & John Powles (Glasgow Caledonian University for 25 years, including 15 years managing the University’s collections of left wing political materials).

This event is part of Adhocracy- a weekend-long, mini-festival of creative thought and activity celebrating D.I.Y. cultures, collection action, creativity and can-do: – then and now.

Meet influential peace-makers, queer protesters, climate changers, up-cyclers, craftivists, artists, engineers, community orchards planters, independent publishers, pop-up retailers, bee-keepers, instrument makers, trend-setters, creative collectives, localists and social entrepreneurs.

Adhocracy is convened by New Work Network

Event Details:

Full schedule here

Time and Date:

Sunday 7th August, 4–6 pm

Venue:

Rich Mix
35-47 Bethnal Green Road
London
E1 6LA

Tickets:

http://adhocracy.info/booktickets

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http://www.cotterrell.com/news/4501/adhocracy--070811/ Sun, 31 Jul 2011 22:34:56 +0100
DC4496 Slipstream : Closing Weekend The exhibition Slipstream closes this weekend. Tonight it will be open until 8.30pm as part of the 'Last Friday' South London art event. 

The exhibition, held at Peckham Space features a new two-channel video installation.

The ideas behind the work were discussed with David Dibosa on 9th July 2011 and are now the subject of a short film by Gordon Beswick.

Another on-line film by Terry Wilson shows artist David Cotterrell and Bradley Dilsworth from the Lea Valley Model Flying Club using the specially constructed aerial drone to film Slipstream in North Peckham.

Directions and map to the gallery may be found here

 

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http://www.cotterrell.com/news/4496/slipstream--closing-weekend/ Fri, 29 Jul 2011 16:20:22 +0100
DC4484 David Cotterrell : Kino Eye Now available to download : An illustrated chapbook which documents the relationships between Breda Beban and David Cotterrell's works and explores possible common themes in terms of subject matter and the choices of vocabulary used to articulate perceptions of extreme environments.

With kind permission of Artwords Press, the chapbook is now available as a free downloadable PDF here.

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http://www.cotterrell.com/news/4484/david-cotterrell--kino-eye/ Tue, 26 Jul 2011 15:58:30 +0100
DC4468 Hill33 : Launch Event - 09.10.10 David has completed installation of Hill33 a 1,300 tonne, 11-metre tall earthwork for the Forest of Dean Sculpture Trust.

Working with the 100 Field Squadron of the Royal Monmouthshire Royal Engineers to build the work, the artist has realised one of the most ambitious land art projects in the UK.

Landfill reclaimed from Eastern United Coal Mine is contained in HESCO Concertainer units, which are regularly used by the Army to build shelters and large-scale defence structures in Afghanistan, but also have pseudo-civilian applications and can be employed as flood barriers.

The pyramid-like work is informed both by Cotterrell’s memories of Mayan temples hidden in the rainforests of Central America and his experiences at Camp Bastion and Sangin, Afghanistan, where he was commissioned as a war artist by the Wellcome Trust in 2008.

Cotterrell’s inversion of conflict-specific design for civilian introspection invites consideration of the role of the military in contemporary Britain. The structure denies obvious monumentality – like Shelley’s Ozymandius, it is destined to return to its source, obscured by the plant life that takes root in its soil.

Of the work, Cotterrell says: “My early visits to the Forest offered an unexpected series of contradictory perspectives. The glades of bluebells, dappled light and fabulous weather offered an idyllic vision of natural beauty. However, it’s also a landscape shaped by historic industries and human intervention. Reclaimed through time, the residue of free-mining, charcoal burning and commercial forestry is discretely camouflaged beneath the prolific growth of plant life.”

Jake McQueen, Product Manager for HESCO Bastion comments: “David saw the HESCO walls and bunkers that protect our troops on operations in Camp Bastion and Sangin, Afghanistan. To the best of our knowledge the product has never been used to form an artwork so imaginative and exciting, which is why we are so delighted to support this project.”

Lieutenant Colonel Peter Fisk, Commanding Officer Royal Monmouthshire Royal Engineers, said: “The task provided a great chance for soldiers from the Royal Engineers Territorial Army to train for the very task they will conduct on operations. Using the very skills required of the modern-day military engineer on operations and under the watchful eye of the artist, the Territorial Soldiers used their training, experience and equipment to create Hill33.”

The Forestry Commission works with the Forest of Dean Sculpture Trust to keep the Sculpture Trail relevant. Hill33 has been further supported by funding from the Gloucestershire Environment Trust and sponsorship from HESCO.

Sculpture Trust Projects Director Carolyn Black commented: “We were very excited to receive David’s proposal as it reflects the Forest’s unique heritage, as well as making a very unusual addition to the work already on the Trail. We are also very grateful to the Royal Monmouthshire Royal Engineers, for helping to build this new work as a training exercise. To our knowledge, it is the highest HESCO structure ever made and the first sculpture in this particular material. I love the way it slowly reveals itself between the trees. I wonder how long it will take for the forest to reclaim Hill33?”

LAUNCH EVENT

Saturday 9th October 10am – 3pm:
Family workshops using miniature HESCO Bastion Concertainer®

Saturday 9th & Sunday 10th October 10am – 5pm:
Exhibition in the Loft at Beechenhurst Lodge, showing scale model of Hill33 and time-lapse footage of the build.

Saturday 9th October 2pm:
Launch of Hill33 at the sculpture (marked on the map linked here

Saturday 9th October 3pm - 5pm:
Refreshments in the Gavellers Café at Beechenhurst Lodge

VISITOR INFORMATION

The Royal Forest of Dean is situated on the English and South Wales border, 120 miles west of London (via the M4), 65 miles from Birmingham (via the M5), and 35 from Bristol to the centre of the Forest.

The Sculpture Trail is 3.5 miles long and starts and ends at Beechenhurst Lodge, off the B4226. It is open dusk to dawn every day of the year and there is no admission charge.

MAP

A map and directions to the trail may be downloaded here.

PRESS

For press information, images or directions to the site, please contact: Carolyn Black,
Projects Director for The Forest of Dean Sculpture Trust at: forestdean@gmail.com

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http://www.cotterrell.com/news/4468/hill33--launch-event--091010/ Mon, 04 Oct 2010 22:16:28 +0100
DC4464 Forest Of Dean Sculpture: Planning Permission Granted! The planning application for the proposed new work, Hill33, was granted today. 

David is intrigued by the ex-industrial landscape of the Forest of Dean, seeing it as “one of choreographed and manipulated tranquillity and contemplation.” On his appointment he said, “I would like to investigate construction techniques, which could provide a structural addition designed to be readily appropriated by the forest environment and a platform to consider the contradictions between human manipulation of landscape and the natural passage of time.”

David began his research in the Forest of Dean in 2009, having just returned from living at Camp Bastion as a war artist. The camp is surrounded and protected by HESCO Concertainer units (a form of gabion structure) and their industrial presence echoed in his thoughts as he met people in the Dean. Here he heard stories of how Nelson commanded the oaks to be planted; how the remnants of war had been put down redundant mine shafts; and how freemining rights are a legacy of service during conflict. These thoughts informed his research for this significant new sculpture.

Hill33 is the outcome of that research and is set to be a challenging and intriguing addition to the works on the Trail. Hill33 is a poetic sculpture, which is at once in the landscape and made of the landscape. It will be created by the manipulation of existing materials, filled with local coal spoil and topped up by soil from the site itself. Taking the form of a pyramid, it has been designed to evoke a sense of wonder, nestling in the woodland and reaching up to the trees that surround and partially conceal it, appearing as an enigmatic folly in the wood. 

David is planning to launch Hill33 in Autumn 2010.

 

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http://www.cotterrell.com/news/4464/forest-of-dean-sculpture-planning-permission-granted/ Wed, 21 Jul 2010 16:38:42 +0100
DC4462 AMH 2010 : Humanities At The Cutting Edge - 05.07.10 This year's Association for the Medical Humanities conference will be held in Truro and Tate St Ives.

Conversations Between Surgery, Pathology, the Humanities & the Arts

Peninsula College of Medicine & Dentistry, Truro/ Tate St Ives, Cornwall, UK

Mon 5th – Wed 7th July 2010.

Keynote speakers and conference themes:

AMH 2010 offers a stimulating group of keynotes, including talks, art interventions and performance, bringing new meanings to the medical and surgical humanities. David Cotterrell, an artist and professor of fine art, will discuss medicine in conflicted landscapes using front line surgery in Afghanistan as his focus and film as the medium for representation. Francis Wells, a heart surgeon and artist, discovered that study of Leonardo da Vinci’s drawings revealed remarkable insights leading to a rethink of how mitral valve operations may be carried out. Francis shows how surgical practice is formed through visual thinking and this in turn is shaped by art history. Both David Cotterrell and Francis Wells ask us to re-imagine medicine and surgery through the lens of art.

Programme: Link here

Conference Book: Link here

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http://www.cotterrell.com/news/4462/amh-2010--humanities-at-the-cutting-edge--050710/ Wed, 30 Jun 2010 00:05:56 +0100
DC4461 Volta6 Basel For Volta 6, David will show 1:25, a modular, miniature artwork suggesting children’s toys like Brio, Lego and Meccano. The work can be endlessly built and rebuilt to create defensive barriers across coffee tables or gallery floors.

David's work is being presented at Volta by Danielle Arnaud contemporary art.

The work references Hill33, a massive earthwork, due to begin construction in the Forest of Dean, UK, in the summer of 2010, a work that will recycle two thousand tons of landfill (originally taken from the Forest as the result of open cast mining) to produce a sculpture of grandiose proportions and employing indigenous waste and the construction materials of conflict.

further information on 1:25 can be found here.

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http://www.cotterrell.com/news/4461/volta6-basel/ Sun, 13 Jun 2010 07:35:02 +0100
DC4458 Professorial Lecture: Simulating The Sublime - 09.06.10 To address his disappointment with the limitations of photographic and film reproduction of vast landscapes, in his inaugural lecture, David is referencing the work of aviation simulation companies to explore the use of immersive and collimated visualisation. At an early stage within a period of research funded by the Leverhulme, David will describe the initial investigation, the ambitions for the project and the potential difficulties of attempting to co-opt advanced technology within his practice.

Details:

Date: Wednesday, 09 June 2010
Time: 6 for 6:30pm
Location: Furnival Lecture Theatre (F9130), Furnival Building, City Campus, Arundel Street, Sheffield S1 2NU (view map)
To book: Places are free but must be booked in advance. Booking form link.
Further information: University event page or email events@shu.ac.uk

After the lecture, which will end around 7:30pm, guests will be invited to stay for wine and a light buffet served in the atrium area of the Furnival building. The rooms and gallery housing the Creative Spark exhibition will also be open for guests to view at this time.

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http://www.cotterrell.com/news/4458/professorial-lecture-simulating-the-sublime--090610/ Fri, 04 Jun 2010 11:31:19 +0100
DC4457 Structurescapes - 01.06.10 The University of Essex Gallery, Arts on 5 is pleased to present Structurescapes, an exhibition exploring images of rural and urban constructed environments to reveal how utopian and dystopian principles manifest themselves in our everyday surroundings.

The show displays artworks by five contemporary artists, David Cotterrell, Jane Prophet, Sachiyo Nishimura, Léon Ferrari and Sinta Werner.

Curated by MA Gallery Studies and Critical Curating students at the University of Essex, the exhibition uses a range of different media including photography, video projection, ink on paper and floor installation to give a sensorial and wide ranging viewing experience.

Structurescapes aims to reveal what is produced when utopian and dystopian ideologies meet in the juxtaposition of differing constructed ideals. This is to be done through the revelation of the fine line between these two concepts. This fine line can be termed as the Picturesque.

The exhibition is based upon the premise that all environments whether natural or built are constructed. Environments are synthetically arranged to reveal the idealisms of the creator. However, when differing ideals are juxtaposed their imperfections are emphasised as no utopian construction can ever be finite, as utopianism is subjective.

The exhibition will be presented at the University of Essex Gallery in Wivenhoe Park, Essex. As a picturesque estate, Wivenhoe Park is the very embodiment of these ideals, and with the juxtaposition of the Kenneth Caplon brutalist concrete architecture of the University campus buildings, this estate enacts the very contradictions and continuities that this exhibition explores.

Exhibition Dates:

01 June 2010 - 26 June 2010

Opening Times:

Monday-Friday 11am-5.00pm
Saturday 12.00pm-4.00pm

The exhibition will be accompanied by an events programme which will explore the issues raised as well as a catalogue offering diverse essays and explorations of the artworks and artist information.

Artist Talk:

As one of the artists featured in the Structurescapes exhibition, David will be contributing to this program in an afternoon event, 'Structurescapes Talk: An Interview with David Cotterrell' at the Headgate Theatre at 3pm on Saturday, 5th June.

This interview will discuss David Cotterrell’s motivations and themes within his artworks, his wider career as an artist as well as his role in the context of this exhibition.

Tickets: £2 - Please call 07821 438888 for general enquiries and to book seats.

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http://www.cotterrell.com/news/4457/structurescapes--010610/ Fri, 28 May 2010 01:42:31 +0100
DC4454 Tate Britain: Beyond The Academy - 14.05.10 David will join the panel exploring the concept and curatorship of the exhibition in a research context. Is the idea of the exhibition being distorted or creatively extended by new disciplinary practices and knowledge? When does a researcher become a curator and what are the implications?

Research as Exhibition: Research as Exhibition
Friday 14 May 2010, 10.00–18.30

Tate Britain Auditorium

The exhibition is increasingly being reframed as a 'research output', but what can new forms of research and collaboration bring to the concept and curatorship of the exhibition? Is the idea of the exhibition being distorted or creatively extended by new disciplinary practices and knowledge? In what ways do new forms of research exhibitions create new types of knowledge and experience for the audience?

Speakers include: Dr Gail Lambourne (AHRC), Dr Angus Carlyle (CRiSAP), Irene Revell (Electra), John Byrne (LJMU), Alistair Hudson (Grizedale Arts), Dr Leslie Topp (Birkbeck), Professor David Cotterrell (Sheffield Hallam University), Professor Felix Driver (Royal Holloway, UoL) and Kate Southworth (University College Falmouth), Professor David Solkin (Courtauld), Susan Pui San Lok (Artist), Dr Brian Dillon (University of Kent) and Dr Ken Neil (Glasgow School of Art)

Keynote: Professor Bruno Latour (Sciences Po)

Introduction: Dr Victoria Walsh (Tate Britain) Respondents/chairs: Sally Taylor (LCACE), Evelyn Wilson (LCACE), Oriana Baddeley (CCW, University of the Arts), Dr Ken Neil (Glasgow School of Art) and Dr Noortje Marres (Said Business School).

The event is followed at 18.30 by a drinks reception.

In collaboration with and supported by LCACE

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http://www.cotterrell.com/news/4454/tate-britain-beyond-the-academy--140510/ Thu, 13 May 2010 23:08:48 +0100
DC4452 Field Broadcast - 08.05.10 33 Artists will send live broadcasts from fields direct to your desktop. All works, whether video, animation, performance, sculpture or live data will be created in the field with no editing or post production. Each broadcast will be viewed by a dispersed international audience, at office desks, in cafes, on trains and at kitchen tables. 

To receive the field broadcasts visit www.fieldbroadcast.org and click on 'download viewer' and follow the instructions. Once you have installed the viewer application, each broadcast will arrive directly through your internet connection, opening in a pop-up window.

Field broadcast will be live for 24 hours a day from May 8th to May 16th. Times of individual broadcasts will not be published in advance. All broadcasts are live and will not be repeated.

Broadcasts from: Bram Thomas Arnold, Ed Atkins, Dave Ball and Oliver Walker, Christopher Bassford and Jonathan Ryall, Richard Bevan, Sara Bjarland, Martin John Callanan, Susan Collins, Dan Coopey, Alexander Costello, David Cotterrell, Michael Cousin, Juan Cruz, Sean Edwards, Simon Faithfull, Florencia Guillen, Hamilton, Southern and St Armand, Toby Huddlestone and Sarah Jane Parton, Fritha Jenkins, David Kefford, Olivier Leger, Pernille Leggat Ramfelt, Neil Luck, Revati Mann, Elizabeth McTernan, Alex Pearl, Eric Rosoman, Jennie Savage, Rob Smith, Dan Walwin, Ian Whittlesea, Luke Williams, Laura Wilson

Field Broadcast is presented as part of Wysing Arts Contemporary Presents, a Field Broadcast bell will ring in Wysing’s gallery to mark the start of each new broadcast and there will be a special live screening at Wysing on the 16 May, for further details visit www.wysingartscentre.org

Field Broadcast is curated by Rebecca Birch and Rob Smith. PROJECKT was established on the 1 January 2009. Through curatorial experimentation it provides new and innovative contexts for contemporary artists and practices. www.projeckt.org.uk

For further information please contact field@fieldbroadcast.org / Tel: 07719 976830

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http://www.cotterrell.com/news/4452/field-broadcast--080510/ Fri, 07 May 2010 11:26:37 +0100
DC4448 TheArtFund RUSI: Remembrance In A Modern Society - 10.03.10 David will take part in a debate chaired by Jon Snow to discuss Britain's historical approach to remembrance. The panel includes General Sir Richard Dannatt, Diane Lees and Chris Simpkins. The event, co-hosted by The Art Fund, will take place at the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI), London.

Further information, courtesy of the Royal United Services Institute:

Details:

Date: Wednesday, 10 Mar 2010
Time: 7.00 - 9.15 pm
Location: RUSI, Whitehall, London, SW1A 2ET (view map)
Book your place: Please follow link.

About the event:

The Royal United Services Institute for Defence and Security Studies and The Art Fund, Britain’s leading art charity, would like to invite you to a reception and debate on the topic of “Commemorating our Armed Forces: Remembrance in a Modern Society”.

Set against the backdrop of the Wootton Bassett phenomenon, a high-profile panel of speakers will come together to discuss our country’s historical approach to remembrance.

Chaired by Channel 4 television presenter, Jon Snow, the debate will hear contributions from:

• Former UK Chief of the General Staff, General Sir Richard Dannatt GCB CBE MC
• Director General of the Imperial War Museum, Diane Lees
• Director-General of the Royal British Legion, Chris Simpkins
• David Cotterrell, Artist and Professor of Fine Art at Sheffield Hallam University

The debate will be preceded by a canapés reception between 1900-2000, where people can view Official Iraq War artist, Steve McQueen’s, Queen and Country artwork.

To attend this event, please register online using the "Book your place" link above. If you have any queries please contact Deanne Prudden, Events Manager, at deannep@rusi.org or call +44 (0)20 7747 2619.

 

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http://www.cotterrell.com/news/4448/theartfund-rusi-remembrance-in-a-modern-society--100310/ Fri, 05 Mar 2010 15:22:47 +0000
DC4433 Fabrica: Artist Talk - 19.11.09 David will be visiting Fabrica in Brighton to give an artist's talk next Thursday. The event is part of a range of talks and activities scheduled to coincide with the exhibition Chameleon, by Tina Gonzales. His talk will be a presentation of recent commissioned and site-specific projects.

Details:

Date: Thurs 19 November,
Time: 6.30-8pm
To book: email: caitlin.heffernan@artistresource.org.uk
Location: View Map

Fabrica is an art gallery in the heart of Brighton, on the South Coast of England. It is situated in the former Holy Trinity Church on the corner of Ship Street and Duke Street.

Travel Information:

TRAIN - Fabrica is close to Brighton station (10 to 15 minutes walk).

TAXI - If you are coming to Fabrica by Taxi, ask for the bottom of Duke Street, opposite Brown's Restaurant. Taxi ranks can be found at: Brighton station (10 minutes walk); junction of East Street and North Street (10 minutes walk or less); near the Clocktower at Queen Square (5 minutes walk).

BUS - Fabrica is 5 to 10 minutes walk from bus stops on North Street and at Churchill Square.

CAR - Finding parking space in central Brighton can be difficult, especially at weekends. Nearest car parks are: Churchill Square, Russell Road, Cannon Place, Church Street, West Street (10 minutes walk or less) North Road, Black Lion Street (10 to 15 minutes walk) Regency square (15 minutes walk) On street parking (using voucher or digital meter systems) can be found along the Seafront and on Middle Street, Duke Street and throughout the lanes. Car Parking for Drivers with Disabilities Fabrica is within 1 minutes walk of 2 spaces reserved for orange badge holders. Orange badge holders may also park on double yellow lines immediately outside the entrance. The gallery entrance in Duke Street is ramped.

 

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http://www.cotterrell.com/news/4433/fabrica-artist-talk--191109/ Thu, 12 Nov 2009 14:03:21 +0000
DC4419 Philip Leverhulme Prize David has been awarded a Philip Leverhulme Prize.

The Trustees are pleased to announce the results of the 2009 competition for Philip Leverhulme Prizes. These Prizes are awarded to outstanding young scholars who have made a substantial and recognised contribution to their particular field, are recognised at an international level, and whose future contributions are held to be of correspondingly high promise.

Further details can be found at the Leverhulme Trust website.

 

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http://www.cotterrell.com/news/4419/philip-leverhulme-prize/ Tue, 27 Oct 2009 22:47:00 +0000
DC4372 Bearing Witness: The Role Of War Artists In The 21st Century - 26.10.09 David and Paul Seawright will be in a chaired conversation with Jes Fernie, Associate Curator, firstsite at Headgate Theatre, Colchester. 

Further information, courtesy of Jes Fernie, follows:

"The programme will coincide with the showing of Steve McQueen's Queen & Country project at the University of Essex Gallery.

Internationally acclaimed artists Paul Seawright and David Cotterrell will be talking about their experiences of working in Afghanistan as representatives of the Imperial War Museum and the Wellcome Trust.

Seawright visited Afghanistan in 2002 where he created Hidden, a powerful series of photographs which depict minefields and battle sites devoid of people, highlighting the fact that so much of the conflict in Afghanistan is invisible. Cotterrell spent time in Helmand Province with the Joint Forces Medical Group in 2007 witnessing operations on combat trauma victims in the field hospital at Camp Bastion."

Bearing witness: the role of war artists in the 21st century
Speakers: Paul Seawright and David Cotterrell
Chair: Jes Fernie, Associate Curator, firstsite
26 October 2009, Headgate Theatre, Colchester
7.00 - 8.30pm

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http://www.cotterrell.com/news/4372/bearing-witness-the-role-of-war-artists-in-the-21st-century--261009/ Thu, 10 Sep 2009 19:55:30 +0100
DC4362 Berlin International Video Art Festival - 27.08.09 While David will be in Bangkok on August 27th (installing work for The Making of the New Silk Roads) he will be presenting live in Berlin at the VideoKills International Video Art Festival - over Skype. A selection of his films will be projected onto the side of an emptied swimming pool, and his audience will be sitting inside the pool, able to interact with him through a webcam and microphone.  David's time slot is 17.30-19.00 Berlin time.

The festival will showcase works from international artists in the form of video installations, video art, experimental, VJ and live audio visual perfomances.  In addition they will host the Skype symposium series where scholars and video artists from around the world will lecture and participate in panel discussions on a wide range of topics from art to technology.  There are also a series of workshops scheduled to coincide with symposium topics, focusing on techniques and innovation.  The philosophy of Videokills and the international festival is accessibility, open exchange of art and ideas and a dedication to the preservation, invention and evolution of the medium of video art.  The location is in the underbelly of Stattbad, a re-appropriated swimming complex, come cultural venue.

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http://www.cotterrell.com/news/4362/berlin-international-video-art-festival--270809/ Wed, 26 Aug 2009 11:26:44 +0100
DC4352 Shanghype (Chicago) - 27.09.09 This Autumn the film Hero will be presented in Chicago as part of the touring exhibition, Shanghype!

From September 20 to December 13, 2009 the Hyde Park Art Center presents the exhibition featuring the video work of eighteen international artists who explore aspects of Shanghai’s rapidly evolving urban culture. Held in the Art Center’s Black Box Gallery, the exhibition, Shanghype! dismantles perceptions of the city’s identity, stimulating complicated visions of the Far Orient and asking the public to reevaluate notions of neoliberalism and globalization.

Focusing on a city that is constantly in flux—having been built from scratch, rebuilt, and overbuilt—the exhibition reveals a generation’s dramatic achievements while questioning the sustainability of existing urbanism. Using the notion of China at its height as a beginning metaphor, the exhibition works to explore Shanghai’s aspirations and desire to regain its once legendary reputation, the reflected need of China to be recognized as international and modern, and the power struggle between Shanghai’s local and global identity. Organizers of Shanghype! worked closely with selected artists on specific projects “pushing the place of Shanghai in the imaginary”.

All artists involved with the exhibition have spent significant time in China conducting conceptual and visual research on cultural authenticity. Artists include: Sun Xun, Qiu Anxiong, Tang Maohong, Bu Hua, Song Tao, Cao Fei, Zhang Ding, Yang Fudong, David Cotterrell, Xu Zhen, Yang Zhenzhong, Pierre Giner, Olivo Barbieri, D-fuse, Jin Shan, Speedism, Mathieu Borysevicz, and Zhou Xiaohu. The works were selected by Davide Quadrio, a Shanghai-based curator and founder of BizArt, one of China’s oldest and most renowned independent spaces for contemporary art. Co-curating the exhibition is Dan S. Wang, a widely published Chicago-based writer and artist.

Shanghype! will be held in conjunction with the exhibition Reversed Images: Representations of Shanghai and Its Contemporary Material Culture at the Museum of Contemporary Photography at Columbia College Chicago. Both exhibitions explore the cityscape of Shanghai as conceptual terrain. This program is part of a college-wide initiative at Columbia called Eyes on China. This exhibition and related programming has been supported in part by The Center for The Arts of East Asia at the University of Chicago, Dr. Samuel Wang, and anonymous donors.

Shanghype! will be on view from September 20 to December 13, 2009 at the Hyde Park Art Center, 5020 South Cornell Avenue, Chicago, IL, 60615; 773.324.5520 and www.hydeparkart.org. Hyde Park Art Center exhibitions are always free and open to the public.

Exhibition Reception: Sunday, September 27, 3–5 pm

Black Box Gallery Hours:
Monday – Thursday: 10 am – 8 pm
Friday – Saturday: 10 am – 5 pm
Sunday: 12 pm – 5 pm

Artist’s Talk: Sunday, September 27, 2 pm
Peggy Wang and Qiu Anxiong will discuss the current state of video art in China.

Sponsored by the Center for the Arts of East Asia at the University of Chicago.

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http://www.cotterrell.com/news/4352/shanghype-chicago--270909/ Sat, 08 Aug 2009 01:35:05 +0100
DC4342 Forest Of Dean Commission - 14.07.09 David has been commissioned by the Forest of Dean Sculpture Trust to undertake research and produce a new work, opening to the public in summer 2010. The research period is supported by the Forest of Dean District Council and Arts Council England.

David is intrigued by the ex-industrial landscape of the forest, seeing it as "one of choreographed and manipulated tranquillity and contemplation." He is considering the use of ‘gabions’, used for military and land fortification, which he saw in Afghanistan. "I would like to investigate construction techniques, which could provide a structural addition designed to be readily appropriated by the forest environment and a platform to consider the contradictions between human manipulation of landscape and the natural passage of time."

Project Director for the Sculpture Trust, Carolyn Black, commented “This is fantastic news for the Sculpture Trust. David’s work is always sensitive and considerate of the people and the places where he works, and the Trust encourages people to become involved in some way. David will present his proposal to the public in the autumn of 2009, as part of programme of artist’s talks we are planning. We can’t wait to see the outcome!”

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http://www.cotterrell.com/news/4342/forest-of-dean-commission--140709/ Fri, 10 Jul 2009 13:09:00 +0100
DC4334 Searchlight Book-Launch And Talk - 23.06.09 On Tuesday 23rd June a book documenting the project, Searchlight will be launched at this year's North East Festival of Architecture at a talk by David on the development of the work.

Searchlight is the story of a politically influential art event. Offering an alternative public art model to the monumental sculpture traditionally aligned with inner-city regeneration, it is an experimental journey through technology, contested territories and fragmented communities.

This publication celebrates the risk and uncertainty of the project, drawing attention to unresolved questions being explored by Britain’s public art community as it seeks to re-evaluate its relationship to context.

Details:

Event: An Evening with David Cotterrell
Date: Tuesday 23 June
Time: 6.30 - 8.30pm (refreshments from 6pm)
Location: The Place, Athenaeum Street, Sunderland SR1 1QX
Free (booking required): bookings@northernarchitecture.com

Further information about the publication may downloaded as a one page document here.

 

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http://www.cotterrell.com/news/4334/searchlight-book-launch-and-talk--230609/ Tue, 09 Jun 2009 21:19:47 +0100
DC4333 Reversed Images: Representations Of Shanghai And Its Contemporary Material Culture - 24.09.09 Industrial perspectives before my eyes. Unforgiving architecture. The prospect of a future civilization made of metal structures covering the passageway to the world.” Arrival, 2008 by Davide Quadrio

In September of 2009 the Museum of Contemporary Photography, Chicago, is opening an exhibition curated by Davide Quadrio entitled Reversed Images: Representations of Shanghai and Its Contemporary Material Culture. The city of Shanghai is known for its impressive population growth, the increasingly rapid rate of its cultural and environmental transformations, and the tension between Western and traditional Chinese values, lifestyle, and work habits. Within this environment, the role of the artist becomes ever important as they look to interpret the experience of inhabiting a city and a time that’s looking to define itself between the contradictory natures of its past, present and future. The participating artists in this exhibition take various approaches in capturing a city that from day to day seems to transform before our eyes.

Artist included:
Olivo Barbieri, Isidro Blasco, David Cotterrell, Su Chang, Yang Fudong, Xu Zhen, Shi Guorui, Xu Xixian and Xu Jianrong, Birds Head–Song Tao and Ji Weiyu, Speedism–Julian Fridauer and Pieterjan Ginckels, Hu Yang, Ma Liang, Zhu Feng, Zhou Xiaohu, Jin Shan, Cao Fei, Mathieu Borysevicz and Lu Yuanming.

Exhibition Dates:
September 24 – December 23, 2009.

 

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http://www.cotterrell.com/news/4333/reversed-images-representations-of-shanghai-and-its-contemporary-material-culture--240909/ Tue, 09 Jun 2009 20:35:34 +0100
DC4328 The Making Of The New Silk Roads - 27.08.09 David will be exhibiting new work within a performative symposium and exhibition in Bangkok, Thailand in August this year.

The New Silk Roads is a highly constructed and symbolic subject that keeps fascinating East and West alike as a source of never ending story-telling. The New Silk Roads are a variable place for instable connections and uncertain achievements: leading all to cultural hybridity. ArtHub, a Hong Kong based non-profit dedicated to art creation in China and the rest of Asia, is organizing a four-day symposium Friday, August 27th through Sunday, August 30th to take place in Bangkok University Gallery (BUG), in collaboration with the Prince Claus Fund, Bangkok University (BUG) and National Research Center of the Kingdom of Thailand.

Arthub’s summit will examine the recent rapid developments in Asia, its cast of characters, issues and mediums as the impetus for artists, curators, and cultural thinkers from a wide array of viewpoints to imagine, challenge and transform our visions for arts and culture in progress in Asia in relation to the rest of the world.

A select group of China and Asia’s leading academic and cultural institutions will present lectures and works in a semi-public forum. The panels will be designed to provide a channel for dynamic, cross-disciplinary conversations among artists, curators and scholars in order to expound on strands of investigation pertinent to the subjects such as cultural development, and non-profit management. Arthub will explore connections between cultural circulation, activism, and social/political issues by creating an international platform for the examination of and response to Asia’s cultural issues. The organizations individuals invited will present artworks/ presentations/ installations that can summarize or represent a possible story-telling about a specific condition.

The symposium will be orchestrated by Arthub as a two day happening where each of the participants will perform/ present a specific condition/ angle of the already specific area (both physical and artistic) in which they operate.

The event will be staged within the 250m2 exhibition space of BUG. At the end of the symposium, the space will be opened as a public exhibition. The process will be video recorded and a film + catalogue will be produced. The exhibition will then tour internationally later in 2010.

Participants include:

Ark Fongsmut, independent curator, Bangkok University Gallery , Thailand, Agung Kurniawan, artist/curator, Indonesia, Alexander Ugay, artist, Kazakhstan, David Cotterrell, artist, UK, Els Silvrants, Curator, Belgium/Beijing Theatre in Motion, Gary Pastrana, artist, Philippines, Ho Tzu Nyen, artist, Singapore, Howard Chan, Artist/Curator, Hong Kong, Iani Arahmaiani, Artist, Indonesia, Jiang Jun, Urban China, Beijing China, Kyong Park, Architect, University of California USA/Korea, Lina Saneh artist, Lebanon, Mu Qian, Ethnomusicologist, China, Nikusha Chkhaidze (Nika), artist, Georgia, Onno Dirker, artist/ Architect/ Researcher, The Netherlands, Pratchaya Phinthong, artist, VER Gallery , Thailand, Rahraw Omarzad artist, Afghanistan, Samah Hijawi, artist, Space Makan, Jordan, Shaarbek Amankul, artist, Kyrgyzstan, Stefan Rusu, Artist/ freelance Curator, Project Manager Center for Contemporary Art, Chisinau, Moldavia, Hakan Topal, artist/curator Xurban.net, Turkey, Zoe Butt, curator, Long March Project, Beijing/South East Asia, Seph Rodney, Ph.D. candidate at the University of London- Birkbeck College, UK, Veronica Sekules, Head of Education at the Sainsbury Centre, UK, Adeline Ooi, curator and arts writer, RogueArt, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, Agung Hujatnikajennong, artist, Indonesia, Nguyen Trinh Thi, filmmaker, Hanoi, Vietnam, Supersudaca, architect/artist collective, South America/ The Netherlands, Edwin Zwakman and Liu Gang, the Netherlands/ China, Speedism, collective, Belgium/ Germany.

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http://www.cotterrell.com/news/4328/the-making-of-the-new-silk-roads--270809/ Sun, 31 May 2009 00:05:45 +0100
DC4325 It Was The Best Of Times, It Was The Worst Of Times - 26.05.09 Salon Conversations: Collaborations

at the Architectural Association, London : AAIS Salon

26th May 6.30-8.30pm.

AA School Director Brett Steele hosts a conversation between pairs of collaborators who discuss their joint projects as well as the joys and pitfalls of working together. With Dr Ken Arnold (Wellcome Collection) + David Cotterrell (Artist); Patrick Dickinson (film director) + Andrew Graham Dixon (art critic); Richard Wentworth (artist) + Kit Grover (designer); Gavin Turk (artist) + Deborah Curtis (artist).

Set in a former Georgian drawing room in the heart of today's Architectural Association, the exhibition Salon aims to restore the room to its original function as a place of stimulating conversation and the pursuit of knowledge. The AAIS is a new AA programme that gives experienced individuals an opportunity to step away from their existing professional or academic activities and enter the unique AA environment in order to see their own field and interests in a new light.

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http://www.cotterrell.com/news/4325/it-was-the-best-of-times-it-was-the-worst-of-times--260509/ Wed, 20 May 2009 23:55:20 +0100
DC4324 Method - Cultural Leadership Programme - 19.05.09 David has been selected to be included in the pilot artists’ development programme, Method.

Supported exclusively by the Cultural Leadership Programme, Method focuses its agenda on the development of 21 independent leaders in the cultural and creative industries in the UK, offering participants leadership learning in the context of their own place of work.

The Cultural Leadership Programme (CLP) was set up to address a significant historical under-investment, when compared to other sectors, in the professional development of people operating in the creative and cultural sector. The work of the programme is diverse, exploring a wide variety of approaches to and understanding around what effective leadership means in a diverse and fast-changing set of contexts, and drawing upon relevant models, expertise and thinking. 

It proposes to define and determine new ways of supporting individual artists and practitioners who are seeking to develop their leadership skills and behaviour, exploring how artists might organise themselves to influence through their own practice, often beyond organisational settings. 

The programme is being delivered by Solar Associates and will take place over the next four months.

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http://www.cotterrell.com/news/4324/method--cultural-leadership-programme--190509/ Tue, 19 May 2009 00:02:23 +0100
DC4236 Website Relaunched - 15.04.09 Nearly ten years after the first attempt at creating a web-site to document my work was launched, a new site has been created. Unlike previous incarnations, this site can be updated and will provide a growing archive of artworks, exhibitions, publications and other activity.

Subscribe to the RSS feed, visit the YouTube channel, follow with Twitter or just browse through the eclectic material developed over fifteen years of experimental practice.

Website design and construction by Red Leader Industries Ltd.

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http://www.cotterrell.com/news/4236/website-relaunched--150409/ Wed, 15 Apr 2009 22:25:55 +0100
DC4229 Krieg Und Medizin Exhibition Open - 04.04.09 The second leg of the Wellcome Collection's, War and Medicine touring exhibition has been opened as Krieg und Medizin at the Deutsches Hygene Museum in Dresden. The expanded exhibition features two of David's projects, 9Liner and Theatre.

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http://www.cotterrell.com/news/4229/krieg-und-medizin-exhibition-open--040409/ Sun, 12 Apr 2009 14:14:53 +0100
DC4349 Help With This Website Part4 : Other Pages And Functions The Help pages consist of a few short videos (see right) and you can either view them in order by clicking 'Next...' (below) or jump to a video by using the links at the bottom of this text.

Part 4 : 'Other Pages and Functions'

Downloads - The site also contains a growing archive of downloadable documents and media. Reports, Reviews, Interviews and Transcripts can be accessed in the ‘Downloads’ section. As with other indexes you can view the items by text summary or thumbnails.

The details pages for Downloads function in the same way as other details pages except that clicking the image in the right pane will automatically open or download the attached document.

Search - The content of the site is indexed and a plaintext search will produce a list of items from all sections of the website. Eg. If you type the word ‘Afghanistan’ you will be offered an index of works, shows, publications and downloads related to this topic.

The web-address of the generated search result is unique and can be emailed to others if you wish to refer to this subset of information.

Contact - The contact section provides details of phone and email contacts for visitors from varying countries. It also allows you to subscribe to future occasional bulletins about shows, events and publications. You can also choose to hear about updates by subscribing to the RSS news feed or the Twitter updates (links on contact and home pages).

Next...

Or click on the following links to find out more about the functions available in:

General
Index Pages
Detail Pages
Other Pages and Functions

 

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http://www.cotterrell.com/news/4349/help-with-this-website-part4--other-pages-and-functions/ Thu, 05 Mar 2009 15:27:48 +0000
DC4348 Help With This Website Part3 : Detail Pages The Help pages consist of a few short videos (see right) and you can either view them in order by clicking 'Next...' (below) or jump to a video by using the links at the bottom of this text.

Part 3 : 'Detail Pages'

Once you have selected an item from any index you will navigate to a detail page. Regardless of section the controls and buttons are similar.

Basic information is offered in the header section, with a narrative explanation in the left pane. The right pane is used for displaying still and video-based documentation. If there is more than one image/video thumbnails will appear below the pane you can either click the thumbnail to view the full-size image or click the main image to automatically progress to the next one in the series.

If there is video documentation available a triangle will be displayed as one of the thumbnails. Click this to view an embedded Vimeo or YouTube video within the pane.

The most powerful feature of the details page is the ‘Links’ tab. Click the chain link thumbnail to the left of the text pane (beneath the ‘T’) to view a complete set of direct links to other related material within the site. For example from the ‘Becks Futures 2002’ exhibition detail page you will find links to the work ‘Borrowed Time’ featured within the exhibition and the publication produced to document the show.

All detail pages have the ability to generate a printable pdf of the displayed content. This can be accessed by clicking the small ‘document’ icon in the lower right corner of the right pane

Next...

Or click on the following links to find out more about the functions available in:

General
Index Pages
Detail Pages
Other Pages and Functions

 

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http://www.cotterrell.com/news/4348/help-with-this-website-part3--detail-pages/ Thu, 05 Mar 2009 15:27:47 +0000
DC4347 Help With This Website Part2 : Index Pages The Help pages consist of a few short videos (see right) and you can either view them in order by clicking 'Next...' (below) or jump to a video by using the links at the bottom of this text.

Part 2 : Index Pages

In Icon view items will generally be displayed in reverse chronological order (ie most recent first). You can switch to A-Z view by clicking the ‘A-Z’ link within the header text. If there are more than 40 items within the index you can advance to a the next page by clicking the ‘->’ symbol displayed beneath the Icon grid or to the right of the Icon grid.

Rolling over an Icon displays the thumbnail in colour, displays the name of the Item within the lower information bar (and within a ‘tooltip’ if the mouse is paused above the icon.)

A more selective index may be displayed by clicking one of the Filter Icons in the bottom right of the screen (eg Within the Projects Index, you can choose to view only Projects in Galleries / Public Realm or Proposals). To view the entire index again, simply click the filter once again.

You can toggle between ‘List’ and ‘Icon’ view using the button to the far right of the filters.

Next...

Or click on the following links to find out more about the functions available in:

General
Index Pages
Detail Pages
Other Pages and Functions

 

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http://www.cotterrell.com/news/4347/help-with-this-website-part2--index-pages/ Thu, 05 Mar 2009 15:27:46 +0000
DC4332 Help With This Website Part1 : General The Help pages consist of a few short videos (see right) and you can either view them in order by clicking 'Next...' (below) or jump to a video by using the links at the bottom of this text.

Part 1 : 'General'

The menu tabs at the top of the screen allow access to content sorted in a variety of ways. If you select to view information by ‘Project’ or ‘Exhibition’ you are initially presented with a Thumbnail or Icon-based index. Other menu tabs take you to index’s of content displayed in List view.

Next...

Or click on the following links to find out more about the functions available in:

General
Index Pages
Detail Pages
Other Pages and Functions


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http://www.cotterrell.com/news/4332/help-with-this-website-part1--general/ Thu, 05 Mar 2009 15:27:45 +0000