Lauren Craig’s Residency- blog post #1

October 23, 2014October 23, 2014Leave a comment

Lauren Craig is a London based multimedia visual artist and Fresh Milk’s current International Residency Artist. During her time on the platform, she will continue her live performance work, ‘Cleanse‘.

Photograph by Lauren Craig

Through ‘Cleanse’, the artist is extending an invitation to the Barbadian public to explore what they no longer need or would like to let go of as well as what they want to keep while exploring the potential for where you want to be. Interactive sessions will examine mental and creative blockages that build up through busy, overworked lifestyles. Because bodies do not discriminate against what information they retain in daily life, Craig says they act as repositories or ‘palettes/palates’ that accumulate everything, becoming overloaded with unnecessary or negative information.

‘Cleanse’ participants will be encouraged to bring objects to their sessions, symbolizing what they want to share. They may also leave objects including drawings, poetry and photography. Participation is not limited to visual artists.‘Cleanse’ will offer a safe environment for participants to engage with Craig.

Sessions will be held at Fresh Milk and are being offered individually or in groups. Appointments for October 28^th are already full but openings are available on October 27^th, 29^th, 30^th and 31^st from 11 am for one-hour sessions.

The group session will take place on Saturday November 1^st between 2 and 4 pm.

Please email the artist at lauren@thinkingflowers.org.uk to make an appointment stating your available dates and preference for group or individual session.

The objects will also be available for viewing by appointment.

For more on Craig’s residency experience, read her first blog post below.

I arrived in to Barbados feeling fluey and pretty much run down with blocked ears and a lack of balance. The sea helped me recuperate and settle in to the warm slow waves of the island’s pace. I started my residency a week later and the first days were filled mostly with words and sounds. The things I heard and how they made me want to speak and write was the strongest impulse. I followed that. It’s come together in the hyperlinked text that I am sharing here, making connections with more of what I am seeing. The poem is inspired by something Annalee said about the stud’s job (on the horse farm where the residency flat is located) being just eating and having sex. The studio is a place of words with a beautiful library where I found Kamau Brathwaite’s Barabajan Poems.

Lauren Craig at Fresh Milk

There are so many other books I would like to tell you about – maybe later. I’m probably working on too many things at once, but what is new there? Here is a piece that came about called Formation.

Lauren Craig at Fresh Milk

I want to come back like that

Slow, Sleep, Stalling
Fresh sounds, smells, sights
Swarking birds, Beetles Bright
Green wings jewelled ceiling

Listen the land orders
Managing organising protecting
Security, mahogany speaks
Ginger pressing belly

Scattered butterflies
Ylang Ylang breeze in
My throat, nostrils flare
Pots on the banks

Green Gecko Greeting
Black Birds Vibrating feathers
Wind chiming souls
Elephants ears bow
Climb

Lauren Craig Barbados 2014

FRESH MILK welcomes international resident artist Lauren Craig

October 10, 2014October 10, 2014Leave a comment

FRESH MILK is happy to welcome London based multimedia visual artist Lauren Craig to our International Residency Programme between October 13 – November 4, 2014.

During her time on the platform, she will be continuing her series titled ‘Cleanse‘, a site specific, multi-sensory work exploring the intersectionality of sculptural installation, performance and ritual/alternative therapy. As well as taking inspiration from the natural Barbadian environment, Craig will host participatory sessions examining the mental and creative blockages that build up through our busy, overworked lifestyles. Because our bodies do not discriminate against what information they retain in daily life, they act as repositories or ‘palettes/palates’ that accumulate everything, becoming overloaded with unnecessary or negative information. With the artist’s gentle guidance in conjunction with nature, participants will be invited to work through these pile-ups, using art as a catharsis to reflect their ‘cleansed’ state.

Read more about the artist and her practice below, and stay tuned for more information about her residency!

Lauren Craig, Art Cleanse Study 2, Live Art Installation, 14ft x 6ft x 5ft (2013)

Lauren Craig, Her Story, Hand Developed Photography + Sculpture, 70cm x 40cm (2010)

Artist Statement:

Since 2003 I have been working with flowers, and coined the phrase ‘floral installation’ to describe the ephemeral, emotive and sculptural nature of my practice. I created an award winning organisation, Thinking Flowers?, around this idea and used it to challenge global corporations and their approaches to sustainability in the cut flower industry. My work is live, in a sense, and the medium is ever changing; working with living things and the opportunities it brings allows me to explore memory and emotions with a brevity of context and subject. Flowers as a medium have allowed me to bridge gaps and blow away social and economic boundaries and inequalities regarding race, gender, class, disability and health. More recently this work has grown into a more itinerant expression of floral interests, moving into site-specific, immersive happenings and experimental sculptural installations: areas of scent; audience participation; co-creation of content and narrative; playing with ideas of viewers/consumers and producers. My concerns are with the context of flowers in our everyday practice, rituals and ceremonies their origins and their presence in our lives now.

Lauren Craig, Last Offering, Installation, Wooden Beach + Funeral Wreath Flowers, 14ft x 8ft (2010)

Lauren Craig, Hybrid, Installation Sculpture, Wood Plastic, Plants, Drawing, 32ft x 16ft (2010)

About Lauren Craig:

Lauren Craig is a social entrepreneur and artist researcher based in London. She has designed systems and living business models that have challenged large corporations in areas of racism, minority and women’s rights. Her art and entrepreneurial activity tackle big questions around ethics, equality, sustainability and community engagement in the cut flower industry whilst delivering practical floral alternatives locally, through her organization ‘Thinking Flowers?’

As an entrepreneur, Lauren is involved with social issues such as environmental destruction, London street crime and equality, aiming to promote positive change through ethics, sustainability and engagement. She has developed therapeutic methods using photography to document and tackle street crime and runs a pioneering ethical florist. Additionally, she has founded ‘Field’ – an innovative pop-up community retail space in Brixton Village, pioneered urban green waste schemes and floral donations services whilst campaigning for human, working and women’s rights further afield. She is currently setting up the Field Foundation, which will work to reconnect people with the creative cultural industries.

Her recent work includes ‘Petal Tank’, an experimental film featuring collage of autoethnographic darkroom photography, poetry and sculpture. (Tate Modern Tanks, 2012) ; An artist residency at the Women’s Art Library at Goldsmiths College, University of London (2013-2014) ; Sculptural Garden, collaboration with Paul Jones, Royal Collage of Art for Space Station 65, London (2014) ; ‘Sense and Sensibilities’ at Victoria and Albert Museum, London (2014) ‘Modern Measures – Holding, Pouring, Stirring’ at The Petrie Museum of Egyptian Archaeology in London as part of University College London Museums & Collections (2014). Collaboration with visual arts and research collective ‘X Marks the Spot’, initiated at Studio Voltaire 2011, engages with the archive of photographer Jo Spence to explore concepts of class, race, gender and wellbeing.

St. Boniface New Murals

October 9, 2014October 11, 2014Leave a comment

Evan Avery, Versia Harris, Tristan Alleyne and Rhea Small

Fresh Milk recently completed its community outreach mural project at the St. Boniface Pre-School in Sion, Hill St. James. Thanks to Evan Avery for sharing his ‘miniis’ and also to Tristan Alleyne, Versia Harris and Rhea Small for working with us on this project.

The Principal, Mrs. Miller is doing a wonderful job stimulating the pre-schoolers in visual ways throughout the classrooms and we were happy to contribute to her vision.

St. Boniface Mural project

Design Neil deGrasse Tyson as a Superhero!

October 7, 2014Leave a comment

One of the most recognizable American scientists of the modern age, Neil deGrasse Tyson, has challenged and inspired people all over the world through his work as an astrophysicist, author, and science communicator. Since he has made so many invaluable contributions to science, many think of him as the SUPERSTAR of science!

In the spirit of this year’s AnimeKon, the U.S. Embassy to Barbados, the Eastern Caribbean, the OECS invites you to create eye-catching, original artwork reimagining Neil deGrasse Tyson as a SUPERHERO for a chance to win roundtrip airfare for two to Chicago, Illinois and tickets for two to attend the 2015 Anime Midwest convention July 3-5 2015 at the Hyatt Regency O’Hare & Convention Center.

The winner will be announced on November 20, 2014 during Neil deGrasse Tyson’s first public event in Barbados, and admission is free!

Review the competition rules here and submit your entry by November 6th.

OPEN CALL – 19th Contemporary Art Festival Sesc_Videobrasil

October 5, 2014Leave a comment

Associação Cultural Videobrasil and Sesc São Paulo are calling upon artists interested in taking part in the 19^th edition of the Contemporary Art Festival Sesc_Videobrasil, due from October 6 to December 6, 2015 at Sesc Pompeia, in São Paulo, Brazil. Entries will be accepted from September 15 to November 16, 2014.

19th Contemporary Art Festival Sesc_Videobrasil OPEN CALL

The Contemporary Art Festival Sesc_Videobrasil has become established over the years as a diverse, multiple framework designed to spread, foster and reflect on art production from the “global South”, understood as Latin America, the Caribbean, Africa, the Middle East, Oceania, parts of Europe and Asia.Significant geopolitical changes are underway, radically resizing the notions of North and South. Nonetheless, the need persists to work for art and culture in areas that are yet to invent new forms of circulation and visibility.

In its 19^th edition, the Festival aligns its curated sections with the South, rather than its competitive show only, as it did in the past. The entire program is therefore oriented towards the South and its myriad issues. These issues – which provide inspiration and parameters for the selection of artworks and projects for the Festival – concern the diasporas, hybrid identities, travel and migration flows, personal narratives, isolation, the social fabric and insularity

For the first time ever, the call for submissions comprises two separate open calls: one for artworks and another for projects, to be developed under the oversight of curators and with backing from the Festival; both the artworks and the projects are to be featured in the upcoming edition of the Festival. Artworks and projects will be accepted in all supports, artistic expressions and techniques, by artists either born or resident in the Festival’s target areas for over five years. Each artist may submit up to three (03) artworks and/or one (01) project, in keeping with the terms set forth in the open calls available on the website as of the opening date for entry.

The Curatorial Committee will select 4 (four) projects for production of artworks. Each project will receive financial support of up to R$ 30,000 (thirty thousand reais) and will be overseen by one of the curators until its presentation at the Festival.

In this edition, the Curatorial Committee is formed by Solange Farkas and by invited curators Bernardo de Souza, Bitu Cassunde, João Laia and Júlia Rebouças.

Based on the Award Jury’s selection (to be announced in 2015), the Festival will grant 1 (one) cash prize of R$ 75,000 (seventy-five thousand reais) and 9 (nine) two-month artist residency prizes to be undertaken in Videobrasil Residency Network’s partner organizations around the world. Prizes do not apply to the projects produced by the Festival.

As a strategy of publicizing the selected artworks and spreading knowledge about the artists’ creative processes, the Festival will showcase the works via Associação’s online research tool PLATFORM:VB; publications; and documentary films and interviews produced for VB Channel.

Aiming to consolidate an active network of exchange that contributes to the insertion of the selected artists on the contemporary artistic and cultural circuit, the 19^th edition of the Festival will also promote Public Programs activities, with meetings between artists, curators, critics, researchers, delegates from different organizations and residency sponsors.

Carefully read both calls for entries prior to your application on Videobrasil’s website

More on the Festival

In addition to exhibiting artworks and projects by shortlisted and guest artists, the Contemporary Art Festival Sesc_Videobrasil offers artist residencies, public programs, educational actions and publication launches.

In a bid to publicize the productions of shortlisted artists, the Festival also conducts actions to make their work available in its digital research platforms, books, websites, social media, as well as documentaries and TV programs produced by the organization. The artists also participate in meetings and debates that bring together curators, critics, researchers and delegates from art institutions and artist residencies to reflect on and discuss pressing issues in contemporary art and culture.

The Festival also awards a cash prize and nine artist residency prizes to be undertaken at Videobrasil Residency Network partner organizations around the world. All of the winners are given trophies designed for each edition by artists such as Tunga, Rosângela Rennó, Erika Verzutti, Carmela Gross, Luiz Zerbini, Raquel Garbelotti, among others.