Residencies:
ALWIN REAMILLO @ ACTION FACTORY
21 April-8 June 2009
Action Factory, Clarendon Road, Blackburn BB1 9SS
Alwin currently lives and works in Perth, Australia
Alwin Reamillo’s prolific practice involves ambitious large scale social sculptures and installations. His artistic practice is fundamentally grounded in understanding the dynamics of trans-cultural migration, and how art can shape new ways of thinking. His work thrives on community values, and involves a democratic participation, building social sculptures, in which everybody contributes to the creation of artwork.
Ideas of travel, migration or movement are often reflected in his work but most notably in his series of creating whale art-cars or helicopter projects. With the help of local communities, school children and crafts people he has converted these vehicles into fantastical collaborative objects.
This belief in collaboration is very much grounded in his practice, the notion that any individual has the potential to be a truly empowered, creative and productive being.
During his residency Reamillo worked in collaboration with Action Factory a community arts organisation based in Blackburn. One idea he was keen to explore was the use of overhead projectors to create shadow plays about stories gathered in collaboration with local communities. Through a series of workshops with local artists and families Reamillo was able to experiment with creating shadow plays and puppetry with a different variety of methods. Alwin was also able to create a shadow play in homage to the Beatles and their inclusion of Blackburn on their Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band album.
Alwin Reamillo has exhibited extensively around the world including Philippines, Australia, Japan, UK and Indonesia.
HAM JIN @ BLACKBURN MUSEUM AND ART GALLERY
28 April-9 June 2009
Blackburn Museum and Art Gallery, Museum Street, Blackburn BB1 7AJ
Ham Jin currently lives and works in Seoul, South Korea
Ham Jin’s work often involves creating spectacles that are invisible to the eye, often these miniscule clay sculptures defy humor and horror. He takes his inspiration from the small or trivial, and makes figures as small as the size of a fingernail. He often incorporates dead insects or other objects in his sculpture. He has a unique insight which comes from an obsessive and personal vision on the world.
Often his works are a micro-cosmos busy with their own stories and logic, and the world created by him sometimes mimic this world as if it were making fun of reality. Suddenly his creatures are watching the gallery audience; turning the tables. This paradox between reality and fantasy is further explored by the artist pitting paradoxes of the small and cute against the ugly and grotesque. Ham’s work is as much about the process of looking as they are a startling visualization of otherworldliness.
During his residency Ham Jin was invited to gain inspiration from the Museum’s archives and collections. Situated within our galleries he created new work inspired by his own personal reactions and experiences of working in Blackburn.
Ham Jin has exhibited extensively around the world including South Korea, Japan, China, USA, France and The Netherlands.
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BINDU MEHRA @ BLACKBURN MUSEUM AND ART GALLERY
5 May-1 July 2009
Blackburn Museum and Art Gallery, Museum St, Blackburn BB1 7AJ
Bindu Mehra currently lives and works in London.
Bindu Mehra is a practising artist based in London whose work reflects a strong interest in drawing. It questions the hierarchy between ‘high art’ and ‘low art’. The notions of time, change and beauty are embedded in the work itself.
Her art practice explores themes such as orthodoxy, hegemony and tradition, whether global, national, local or inter-personal and this is often done by juxtaposition of cultural motifs with contemporary imagery. She is keenly interested in current social, political and economic issues and often use satire and paradox as tools in her work.
Mehra has also recently been experimenting with the material hot glue to create translucent flexible sculptural installations made of interlaced lines/motifs.
As part of her residency Mehra, inspired by the Museum’s Lewis Textile Collection, created a body of works titled ‘Blacheborne Largo’. The title a playful reference to Blackburn’s social history, Blacheborne – the old historic name of Blackburn, and Largo – slow tempo within music – mirrors the slow deliberate movements of the textile weaving machines. Taking reference from Blackburn’s textile heritage and traditional Indian mehendi patterns, Bindu also created an installation made from hot glue, stickers and lace.
Bindu Mehra has exhibited internationally in countries including the UK, Poland, India, and the US.
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LUKE CHING
Blackburn Museum and Art Gallery, Museum Street BB1 7AJ
3 November – 15 December 2008
Luke Ching currently lives and works in Hong Kong.
As a contemporary artist in Hong Kong, Luke Ching uses different art forms to respond to the city, the platform of everyday life. By making art, he explores every possibility of understanding the public realm, from both physical and cultural aspects. He hopes that his artworks can play a role as a bridge between people and public space.
During his residency at Blackburn Museum and Art Gallery Luke Ching will further develop his Folk Art Series Project. Every society with a long history has its own folk art that is developed and passed on from hand to hand, one generation to the next. In the contemporary era, however, it is more and more difficult for the hustle and bustle of city life to give birth to a new kind of folk art. In his ongoing project Ching tries to develop a form of folk art that is very original to the modern Hong Kong experience – the creation of fake cockroaches. Ching will be inviting people to create cockroaches and hide them throughout the Museum as part of the Trail.
Exhibitions:
Hide and Seek Urban Contemporary Asian Art Trail
ARTISTS:
Roslisham Ismail aka ISE (Malaysia)
Melanie Sangwine (UK)
Kong Kee (HK)
Nina Chua (UK)
Wee Lit Tan (Singapore/US)
Sarbjit Kaur (UK)
Luke Ching (HK)
Wit Pimkanchanapong + Soi Project (Thailand)
VENUES:
Blackburn Railway Station Internet and Coffee Bar: Railway Road, BB1 1EX
Blackburn Cathedral: Cathedral Close, BB1 5AA
Blackburn Visitor’s Centre: 50-54 Church Street, BB1 5AL
V.fresh: 35 King Street, BB2 2DH
Mercer & Sons: 21-27 Northgate, BB2 1ST
Blackburn Museum and Art Gallery: Museum Street, BB1 7AJ
Blackburn Market: Market Hall, Ainsworth Street, BB1 6AF
NINA CHUA
Blackburn Cathedral, Cathedral Close, Blackburn BB1 5AL
Nina Chua currently lives and works in Manchester.
Working predominately in the field of textile installation Nina Chua’s work is often a visceral response to the surrounding environment, both social and physical, and an instinctive reaction to materials.
In Egg Tart, Sausage Roll Chua explores how food is important not only as a means to sustain life but also as a cultural signifier; the food she sculpts are an intrinsic reflection of her own dual heritage, Chinese and British. The different foods are highly visual and have a humorous, gently suggestive nature and result in a tactile ‘food landscape’, dream-like, surreal and playful. The public are invited to touch, move and play with the work, creating their own mixed up meals and strange associations.
ROSLISHAM ISMAIL AKA ISE
Blackburn Railway Station Internet and Coffee Bar, Railway Road, Blackburn BB1 5AL
Roslisham Ismail aka ISE currently lives and works in Kuala Lumpur.
A conceptual artist whose work centres around his personal experience of urban communities and the culture of the populace. He also works with comic narratives and collected popular material. The excitement of the city is the source of inspiration in most of his works. Superfiction tells a story that evokes the superhero and supermonster battles in the 1960 to 1980s that were a staple of weekend television in Tokyo, Malaysia and other South East Asian countries. The battle between Godzilla and Ultraman fuelled inner fantasies of heroism and living an extraordinary secret life.
By using collage to tell the story Ise immerses us in the immediacy of life, this way the heroic tale shapes his visual celebration of one of the most exhausting and dense spectacles on earth today; everyday life in Tokyo.
KONG KEE
V.fresh, 35 King Street, Blackburn BB2 2DH
Blackburn Visitor’s Centre, 50 – 54 Church Street, BB1 5AL
Kong Kee currently lives and works in Hong Kong.
Kong Kee works in comic as well as video imaging. In his comic works there is a sense of humour and imagination as he often explores ironic situations that occur in ordinary life. Kong Kee is also active in the visual art scene in Hong Kong and often uses his work to question city life.
In KISS the STRANGERS Kee explores how contemporary city developments can turn people into strangers, how the value of human-relationships are ignored in new city constructions. We are not encouraged to stop/play on streets, we can only keep moving. KISS the STRANGERS is a work to remind us that we are not just statistics on the blueprint of town planning, that we can stop and interact with the spaces around us.
MELANIE SANGWINE
Blackburn Visitor’s Centre, 50 – 54 Church Street, Blackburn BB1 5AL
Melanie Sangwine currently lives and works in Edinburgh.
Nomad is the initial result of an ongoing project which explores the issues surrounding cultural identity. The piece talks about the sense of confusion, disorientation and displacement that is caused when one presents themselves differently in different cultural environments. It raises questions about nature versus nurture and comments on how ones genetics remain constant but external factors will always influence you.
The title Nomad is intended to generate the idea that home is with you wherever you go; belonging nowhere and everywhere at the same time.
SARBJIT KAUR
Blackburn Museum and Art Gallery, Museum Street, Blackburn BB1 7AJ
Sarbjit Kaur currently lives and works in Manchester.
As a visual artist and conceptual sculptor, Sarbjit Kaur enjoys creating work out of different kinds of materials. She explores the possibilities of the material, finding its limits and working with how it can best be used. For Kaur, play is a way of getting in touch with creativity. Young children do this naturally. Children do not inhibit themselves with the end result, what others may think, they just play. Some adults stay in touch with that side and remember to play still.
Magical Material Monsters was first developed as part of the plAAy Shop Art exhibition in July 2008. The exhibition space used was a former furniture store so there were several sample fabrics and materials that had been left behind. Looking at the textures and colours Kaur did not see fabrics anymore, she saw creatures. These creatures are displayed, hidden, in amongst the exhibits of Blackburn Museum and Art Gallery and audiences are invited to hunt them out as part of the Trail.
WEE LIT TAN
Blackburn Visitor’s Centre, 50–54 Church Street, Blackburn BB1 5AL
Mercer & Sons, 21 – 27 Northgate, Blackburn BB2 1ST
Wee Lit Tan currently lives and works in Chicago.
Employing sublime wit as a power of subversion, what appears frivolous in Wee Lit Tan’s work often reveals significant undertones. The constant state of flux in the definition and trends of contemporary art, together with the ever-evolving role of the artist; are questions often raised in tandem throughout his practice.
In Tan Wee Lit an action figure of himself is reproduced and sold as limited edition toys. It is a self-mocking gesture about the artist’s own anonymity, at being mass-produced as a toy where only celebrities are. The original figure, sculpted by the artist himself, also questions the role of craft behind the work in contemporary art today, as well as making Art accessible and affordable for the public. It also makes a statement about collecting artworks based on the name (reputation) of the artists and the multiple works of famous artists produced in editions for museums around the world.
WIT PIMKANCHANAPONG + SOI PROJECT
Blackburn Market, Market Hall, Ainsworth Street, Blackburn BB1 6AF
Wit Pimkanchanapong currently lives and works in Bangkok.
Wit Pimkanchanapong’s background in architecture is often reflected in his work, which often focuses around the idea of mapping, distortion, unfold, hypertext, and space in-between. Established in 2003 by Jiro Endo (Japan) and Wit Pimkanchanapong and Pitupong Chaowakul (Thailand), Soi Project is a group of artists, musicians, architects and designers that engages audiences in interactive and social situations.
Their installation Fruits is a fruit stand modelled on those found on street corners in Sharjah, where this work was first produced. Visitors are invited to make paper bananas, apples, oranges, pears and tropical fruits from cardboard cut-outs. The tabs which must be used in order to glue the fruit templates together hold text: names of different fruit written in Arabic, Thai and English which, when matched correctly, enable the successful completion of the model; the flat shape providing a map to the three-dimensional form. The meeting of different languages also suggests international communication and understanding.
plAAy & Create: The Art Shop
plAAy Shop Art – 1–31st July 2008
ARTISTS:
Nina Chua (UK)
Jessica Emmett (UK)
Sarbjit Kaur (UK)
Ed Pien (Canada)
William Titley (UK)
VENUE:
Waterloo Pavilions, Church Street, Blackburn
For a month in July 2008 one of the pavilion buildings in Church Street, Blackburn, was filled with exciting art works – two floors containing two art exhibitions!
On the ground floor, as part of Create: The Art Shop, people of all ages worked alongside resident artists to create original art works for the exhibition.
Meanwhile upstairs on the 1st Floor, plAAy: Shop Art invited several Contemporary Asian Artists to contribute work to a developing exhibition. Artists included Lancashire artist William Titley, Manchester-based artist Jessica Emmett as well as Ed Pien from Toronto, Canada. Nina Chua and Sarbjit Kaur also developed new work within the space itself. All works exhibited were in response to the theme of ‘play’ and included installations, video and textile.
plAAy 
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