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PARADE

PREVIEW: WEDNESDAY 3 JULY, 4-6PM

EXHIBITION: 4 - 13 JULY 2019

CIRCUS ARTSPACE @ INVERNESS CREATIVE ACADEMY

We are delighted to present Circus Artspace's inaugural exhibition, Parade. This exhibition brings together a diverse group of artists and work, from installation and printmaking to film and performance, to launch our programme with a playful spirit of exploration and celebration. 

Featuring:

ANNE BEVAN 

Anne’s animation, Star Sand, comes from a CT scan of a microfossil found on a beach on the Japanese island of Okinawa. Brought in by the tide, the shell of a single-celled organism, a foraminifera (or foram) named Baculogypsina sphaerulata, which lived along with trillions of other plankton in the deep sea. Although tiny in scale (this one around 1mm diameter), forams are hugely important: as a significant component of the global carbon reservoir, as well as one of our most complete fossil records on earth. While they form an archive of past climate, these tiny creatures are also indicators of changes in our seas in the present – of acidification and rising temperatures.

Through her research and artwork Anne explores stories, histories, systems and change within our environment. She often works in collaboration with people from other disciplines, such as archaeology, anthropology and marine science, as well as writers, poets, composers and musicians. The process involves dialogue and experimentation, sometimes exploring a specific place, the properties of different media e.g. physical material such as cast iron, moving image, sound and text. Playing with light and reflection, weight and scale, conversations and connections form between people, objects and place. Through this interaction, intangible things become physical and visible – things change.

Anne Bevan, born in Orkney, studied Fine Art & Sculpture in Edinburgh. Her work has travelled widely in the UK and internationally, most recently with projects in Australia and Denmark. Solo exhibitions and publications include the Fruitmarket Gallery, Edinburgh and Hunterian Museum, Glasgow (Pipelines and Rosengarten with Janice Galloway), and the Pier Art Centre, Orkney (Lifting Light; Things Unspoken, Things Unseen with Andrea Roe). Anne recently returned ‘home’ where she is artist in residence for the project Orkney: beside the ocean of time. She is also the Head of Art and Design in Orkney College, University of the Highlands and Islands.

ROBYN BENSON 

Robyn makes drawings and sculptures that investigate self-sufficient structure. The sculptures are balanced and rely on material tension to create a tenuous equilibrium of counteracting forces. Robyn explores these structural investiga- tions through drawing, making diagrams set up in an ideal environment void of interruption (i.e material degradation or the surrounding movement) that can consider how the drawn, theorised logic will exist in actual space. Working across proposition and reality - or diagram and structure - challenges our inherent understanding of the possible and impossible. The body of work displays a logic that is void of illusion and outlines a clear vocabulary of principles.

Robyn Benson lives and works in Aberdeenshire, Scotland. She graduated from Edinburgh College of Art in 2013 and has exhibited work in solo exhibitions including, Supporting Parts, Cairn Gallery, 2019, There is no equivalent structure, Rhubaba Gallery and Studios, 2018 and From a horizontal line, St Margarets House, 2015. Robyn has also exhibited in group exhibitions such as, Drawing on Drawing, Edinburgh College of Art, 2016, participated in an online collaborative project with the Marina Abramovic Institute in 2014 and completed the Graduate Residency Programme at Hospitalfield Arts in 2014.

JACK CATLING (preview performance) 

Jack is an artist working mainly through the mediums of performance and installation. Through his practice he aims to bring about an atmospheric shift in ontological value, opening up a space for wonders to occur. Jack draws from his background in illusion, his interest in the value and perpetuity of symbols and a shady past built from various fictions.

Jack Catling studied BA Fine Art at the Royal College of Art (2015 – 2017) and MA Fine Art Sculpture at Chelsea College of Art & Design (2005-2008). He is a founding member and director of the performance group, Parlour Collective, a group of contemporary artists, musicians, and film-makers dedicated to exploring history and mythology from imagined perspectives, and also co-director of Cabaret Melancholique.

MARCO DESSARDO

Marco was invited to show his work at a castle in Belgium. As a site-specific sculptor exhibiting a boat sculpture he interacted with the exhibition site, deciding to navigate all the waters at the castle with his model, even the sink in the bathroom. This short video records the performance.

Marco Dessardo is an Italian sculptor, born in Belgium, living in France. He works all around the world. When invited, he comes with a project and a very limited set of tools. After wandering for a while and drinking local coffee, he creates his work from locally-found materials. The output is always unexpected, highly influenced by local context. Often the sculpture emerges as a house, some sort of tool, or a link between things, sometimes a floating sculpture. Something site-specific. To conclude, he makes a film or an improvised performance - to tell a story. When the photographs and films are uploaded to dessardo.com the sculpture is declared done.

ROOS DIJKHUIZEN 

Roos led AIRPLAY, supported by the Market Gallery, as a process of creating a collective art work with interested participants to exhibit in a stalled space in the East End of Glasgow. The production classes turned the gallery into a space for experimenting, learning about inflatable making and socialising. Participants explored scale, form and new spatial happenings to add to their environment and interact with. Peoples’ generous contributions grew into a type of sculpture garden, playful components of architecture handmade by the public. The pieces, now taken out of storage to exhibit as part of Parade, feel like a chain of memories and fragmented shapes, a collective energy and stream of conscious- ness of designs and imaginations. Thank you all for the fun we had together years ago!

Roos Dijkhuizen graduated in Printmaking at Grays School of Art, Aberdeen (2011) and then became part of The Pipe Factory studio and gallery space in Glasgow 2011-2014. She has exhibited in Glasgow International Festival 2012/2014, Edinburgh Science Festival 2015 and ran workshops from GoMA, Market Gallery, Peacock Visual Arts and Glasgow School of Art. Roos is currently living and working in Glasgow.

EVIJA LAIVINA 

The rock was the subject of vivid nightmares, resulting in sketches drawn trying to visualise the feelings immediately after waking - thinking how in different contexts the rock may have multiple meanings. In relationships, people sometimes keep matters untold; over time these become heavier until they are static and unmovable. There are two choices - try to move this rock away or leave the relationship. We can try to balance the rock between us and hide behind it, but if it’s not lifted or taken away it will hurt us. This work also alludes to our consumer culture. Dependency on products that are meant to make our lives easier, doesn’t change our feelings about life. The newest technologies and prosthetics invade our everyday lives. We carry them around with us and instead of making us happier, they can become a burden and make us feel lonelier.

Evija Laivina was born in Latvia (1978) and has lived in Scotland since 2009. She is a recent graduated from UHI with BA Hons in Contemporary Art and Contextualised Practice. Laivina works with photography and installation.

ANNA KAJOS 

This work is inspired by the writings of Alan Wilson Watts:

‘We do not “come into” this world; we come out of it, as leaves from a tree. As the ocean “waves”, the universe “peoples”. Every individual is an expression of the whole realm of nature, a unique action of the total universe.’

People ask when they meet you: ‘How is life?’ We give generic answers, often trying to be positive although we may face daily struggles. We forget the primary point where balance has to be maintained: the law of nature. In order to ‘better’ society we often go against the natural flow of the universe, disrespecting and exploiting it. We need to connect with the innate energy seeded in all of us as part of the workings of the universe; instead of striving for meaning in and of ourselves.

Anna Kajos, born in Hungary, came to Scotland in 2012. Graduating from UHI Moray School of Art in 2017, she has since been based at MC3 Creative Spaces in Elgin. Her interest is in how our perceptions are structured and influenced by both our external environment and internal processes of the conscious and unconscious minds’ speculations. Anna’s process starts with observation, deconstruction, then re-examination allowing individual elements space to become something else. She creates bridges between media and techniques, encouraging the viewer to explore and initiate thinking in a playful and liberating way.

PHOEBE ROZE 

Phoebe created this series of prints as an investigation into screen-printing processes. The cairns, which are found east of Inverness, are formed by a series of standing stones and circular cairns. Understanding of their purpose remains limited, although their connection to midsummer solstice, concluded by their angles and general arrangement, is well established. Using the strong shapes derived from the monolithic structures, and an energetic colour palette, these images are the results of curiosity and play.

Phoebe Roze is an illustrator based in Inverness and a graduated from Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art and Design, Dundee. Her work encompasses memories of childhood and the rich culture of Gaelic in the North of Scotland where she grew up. Using processes including print-making, drawing, collage, digital work and ceramics, Phoebe aims to create a colourful, varied portrait of a fantastical and playful version of the past. Past projects include Dundee City of Design (UNESCO), Dundee Literary Festival and Glasgow Royal Hospital for Children in association with Impact Arts.

FABIANO MARQUES

A pulley is one of the six simple mechanisms, that, when combined with other simple machines, generates all sorts of complex machines of the modern world. The old pulley block above your head is built by placing together parallel pieces of wood to form a case for the sieves. Fabiano used the same method to build a model of this building to try to predict how the Circus Artspace will develop in the future: will it be complex, have a cycle, fall into stagnation or live in chaos? He’s particularly interested in cycles and the loops created by the rope on a pulley system give an image of that, as the number of loops will determine the advantage one generates. The movement of turning around and coming back can become a source of inspiration.

Take a look at the building from outside and pay attention to something Fabiano noticed when he arrived: its asymmetrical volume is designed in two sections intercalated in a progression of 1, 2 and 3 blocks of windows and roofs. A neat sign of growth from an era which is also always worth revisiting.

His print is an image of an orange sunset on the docks of a river of a post- industrial city or a post-apocalyptical science-fiction scenario dominated by a mysterious corporation called Orion? In truth, nothing but random abstract scratches on a damaged logo painted on the side of a large overused plastic bin. The slogan of the company: ‘Construct Waste Recycling’, which Fabiano recycled to create the title of the piece. If instead of a noun, one reads them as a sequence of verbs, they become a good procedure to make art.

Born in Santos, a major harbour city, in Brazil, Fabiano Marques grew up to become a slow-motion nomad. He now lives in London and has performed and exhibited internationally, primarily in Brazil and the UK. His work deals with the development and experimentation of site-specific interventions and situations. He searches for the precarious and temporary balance of objects that work together due to a concept or rule. These take form as sculptures, installations and videos.

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