On Saturday 27th July ESP Programmer Elinor Morgan and ESP member and artist Matt Westbrook will lead a visit to the newly established Leamington Print Studios. The LPS is a new print studios with large screen printing and relief printing facilities initiated by ESP member and recipient of the 2012 Graduate Bursary, Elaine Ellis, who is an experienced print technician.

At this introductory session Elaine will introduce the facilities available and will make a demonstration after which the group will be invited to try out the equipment for themselves with her help. She will discuss the aims of the studio, its future plans and how ESP members can get involved in various opportunities there.

For more information about the Leamington Print Studios visit the website.

After this there is the option to go on with Elinor and Matt to the Warwick Bar Summer Fete at Minerva Works, Digbeth, Birmingham.

To sign up for this visit please email elinor@eastsideprojects.org

In August we will make an Away Day to visit spaces in Cardiff including G39 and Chapter, see shows and meet artists. There will be opportunities to meet with WARP users and we will meet a number of Spike Associates for the day making this a great networking opportunity as well as a chance to see exhibitions and studio spaces in a new city. More details of the day’s activities will follow.

We have a small budget which will cover travel costs for around eight ESP members – though if any members are prepared to drive please let Elinor know as this will make this budget stretch further.

We are organising this trip in conjunction with Spike Associates and will make another joint Away Day to Manchester in October, details of which will follow.

To apply for this opportunity you need to email elinor@eastsideprojects.org with an outline of why this Away Day is of interest to you and how it would benefit you at this time.

Join us for a discussion of the 2013 ESP Members Show, Sports Hall Sessions and the latest edition of Flatfile by ESP Members Tracy Hickinbottom and Alex Edwards.

Artist Anne Hardy is renowned for making sculptural works which are seen only through photographic documentation, a process which she recently moved away from in her exhibition at Maureen Paley (London), where she presented a sculptural structure to be encountered in the exhibition space for the first time. She will be in conversation with Jim Howieson, discussing his Sports Hall Sessions series, which involves the artist performing spatial exercises in various public sports halls. Each of Howieson’s ‘Sessions’ is documented and presenting through a single photograph.

Tracy Hickinbottom and Alex Edwards will discuss Potential for Play, the fourth Flatfile presentation which explores the artists’ shared interest in creative play and the types of environment necessary for it to take place in.

Anne Hardy received an MA in Photography from the Royal College of Art, London in 2000. Selected solo exhibitions include: Maureen Paley 2013; Wiener Secession, Association of Visual Artists, Vienna, Austria, 2012 (cat.); Artist in residence, Camden Arts Centre, London, UK, 2011; Longside Gallery, Yorkshire Sculpture Park, Wakefield, Yorkshire, 2010; Maureen Paley, London, UK, 2009; ArtSway, Sway, UK, 2005; Laing Solo, Laing Art Gallery, Newcastle, UK, 2004 (cat.).

For more information on Jim Howieson’s Sports Hall Sessions click here and for more information on Tracy Hickinbottom and Alex Edwards click here.

ESP Graduate Bursaries 2013
Deadline: Saturday 20 July

The ESP Graduate Bursaries will be awarded to up to eight students who completed or will complete an Undergraduate or Postgraduate degree in a subject relating to Art and Design in 2012 or 2013. We are looking for graduates who currently live and work in the West Midlands or intend to when they graduate.

The selected graduates will receive one year’s free membership to Eastside Projects’ associates scheme Extra Special People (ESP). ESP supports the development of work, ideas, connections and careers through a programme of events, opportunities and projects. Members become active contributors to a network of over a hundred practitioners and benefit from Eastside Projects’ experience of the contemporary art world and regional, national and international contacts.

As ESP supports the development of artists, curators and art writers this opportunity is not only for those who hope to become studio practitioners but for graduates who aspire to many different careers within contemporary art.

How To Apply

Please send us two things:

1. Evidence of your current and recent practice
Please send one of the following:
• Your website address
• Or a selection of up to ten images saved as one PDF
• Or a link to a showreel of film and video work (maximum duration 5 minutes) uploaded to Youtube or Vimeo.
• Or a link to audio work (maximum duration 5 minutes) uploaded to Soundcloud.
• Or three pieces of art-writing
Please include simple, explanatory information that explains the work you have sent, including titles, dates, medium and approximate dimensions of works.

2. A completed application form
Click here to download an application form

Email both components to submissions@eastsideprojects.org
Please write ‘ESP Graduate Bursary’ in the email subject heading.

We aim to announce the successful applicants during the week of 5 August.

Join us for the third in a new style series of Crit Clubs looking at the work of a range of self-identified ESP members. July’s session will be led by Directors of Eastside Projects Gavin Wade. ESP members Tracy Hickinbottom and Faith Pearson will present and discuss new and in-progress work at this Crit.

For more information on Tracy click here and click here to visit Faith’s website.

All ESP members are invited to attend the crit and participate in the discussion.

We are considering running more Crit Clubs if there is interest from the members. If you would like to participate in future Crit Club events or want more information please email elinor@eastsideprojects.org

With many arts practitioners in general and ESP members in particular representing their work to new audiences online via a range of websites questions arise about what information to give viewers and in what format.

This crit session will take existing examples of ESP members’ websites and will critique their design in terms of structure, layout and visual identity. Led by Harry and Robin of An Endless Supply, this will be an informal group discussion exploring how to represent yourself online and looking at what content management systems are appropriate for different levels of programming knowledge from non-whatsoever to advanced.

For this session we are asking for ESP members to volunteer their website for discussion by sending a link to elinor@eastsideprojects.org. Harry and Robin will then select a number of websites for the group to crit. All ESP members are welcome to attend this excellent professional practice opportunity. Following this toolkit there is potential for follow-up sessions with Harry and Robin and a more technical exploration of website design and construction.

An Endless Supply are a graphic design studio based in Birmingham. They work on a range of design outcomes including typefaces, publications and print and have recently designed and developed websites for Rowing Projects, Open File and Performance as Publishing.

Artist Anne Hardy will be available for up to three 1-2-1 sessions on 23 July, at ESP members’ studios or Eastside Projects. This is a great opportunity to discuss your practice, how you might develop your work and career as well as a chance to gain some insight into the work of this interesting and successful artist.

To apply send a short statement (200 words) describing your work, outlining why you wish to meet with Anne Hardy and why this is a pertinent time for you to have feedback on your practice and a small number of low res images to elinor@eastsideprojects.org

Anne Hardy received an MA in Photography from the Royal College of Art, London in 2000. Selected solo exhibitions include: Maureen Paley 2013; Wiener Secession, Association of Visual Artists, Vienna, Austria, 2012 (cat.); Artist in residence, Camden Arts Centre, London, UK, 2011; Longside Gallery, Yorkshire Sculpture Park, Wakefield, Yorkshire, 2010; Maureen Paley, London, UK, 2009; ArtSway, Sway, UK, 2005; Laing Solo, Laing Art Gallery, Newcastle, UK, 2004 (cat.).

ESP member Kartar Uppal will be hosting an evening discussion on the question ‘What is Science?’. This is a follow up to the successful ‘What is Art?’ held in January 2012.
He will be joined by the scientist Matthew Birtwistle, the evening will look at and debate the question what makes a science? Can we count homeopathy, astrology, palmistry, acupuncture and parapsychology as sciences? What is the difference between art and science? Can different sciences co-exist? The evening will certainly also touch upon why is it called science? As well as asking where is science going?
There will be an entry fee on the door of £3 all donations will go to the British Heart Foundation.

A talk-show line-up of invited protagonists choose and read passages from science fiction to critical texts according to the rules of an MC. Read in a rapid-fire format the spoken extracts all imagine and attend to the ‘architecture’ of utopia. A line-up table is transformed by a graphic framework, a page from a book rescaled and now occupied by readers and objects, staging the table as a discursive territory. Language is encountered as sound, words are performed with emphasis and pause. The rules change and the meaning of sense meets no-sense.

The event is a participatory, discursive and performative work by artist/architect collaboration Sophie Warren and Jonathan Mosley, conceived as one in a series hosted in cities internationally. It will engage and develop a network of utopian thinkers in Birmingham and connect those participants with a global network through their involvement in the project which has iterations in Townhouse Gallery, Cairo, The Showroom, London, Pro QM and Errant Bodies Press, Berlin.

The Utopian talk-show line-up launches and extends the concerns of Warren and Mosley’s book Beyond Utopia, a collection of works and essays published by Los Angeles/Berlin publishers Errant Bodies Press, including contributions from Maria Fusco, Brandon LaBelle, Marie-Anne McQuay, Paul O’Neill, Elizabeth Price, Jane Rendell, Lee Stickells and Robin Wilson. Set at the intersection of architecture, art, critical writing and fiction Beyond Utopia speculates on the value of utopian thinking as a tool with which to scrutinise contemporary society and spatial culture.

Working with event, installation, images and words Warren and Mosley pursue a critical spatial practice that employs strategies of play, hybridization, participation and the construction of situations to resist homogeneous perceptions of urban and architectural space. Recent exhibitions include Rogue Game in collaboration with Can Altay at Spike Island, Bristol (2012), Casco, Utrecht (2011) and event at The Showroom, London (2010); and group shows at Tin Sheds Gallery, Sydney (2011) Massachusetts Museum of Modern Art (2011), Whitechapel Gallery at The Mint Hotel, London (2011), Smart Project Space, Amsterdam (2009). Jonathan Mosley is currently guest editing an issue of Architectural Design on the theme of Transgressions, and holds a senior lectureship in architecture at the University of the West of England, Bristol, UK. See here for more info.