Gateshead Shop Art

Gateshead Shop Art Project (Wellington Street) 2011....

Throughout the spring and summer of 2011 the Shop Art Project, (Gateshead Council), brought a little life and colour to local shop fronts and provided a public display space for local artists.

Wellington Street hosted 3 art works - Matt Stokes “Dance Dance Dance” and Nick Kennedy’s “Faultlines (7 days)” at Number 9, and Dan Holdsworth’s “Blackout” at Number 2.

“Faultlines (7 days)”
at Number 9 by Nick Kennedy

Nick says...

Central to all my work is the conflict between chance and influence, order and chaos, success and failure, rules and irregularity. My practice has a very specific focus on drawing, which is largely due to its immediacy and flexibility as a medium for the exploration of ideas. A key strand of my work involves the employment of systems or devices to disrupt or interfere with my control over the process of making. Through my practice I aim to explore the notions of chance, order, control and serendipity.

Faultlines (Seven Days)

This is a durational performance that will take place over a one week period, which will result in a large scale line drawing on the interior of a vacant shop window. By working into a whitewashed surface, an undulating organic mass of lines will slowly reveal itself, mark by mark. Throughout the seven day time period, the deliberate and personal act of making the work will also become exposed to passing viewers, day by day, moment by moment.

The work will be constructed by removing a succession of lines in the whitewash around a selected imperfection or fault on the surface of the window. A small remnant of previous shop signage, an area of gathered dust or vestiges of former use this fault provides the starting point for the process. A line is then traced around it’s form, starting a chain of consecutive lines, which each follow precisely the contour of their predecessor. Lines are continually added throughout the seven days, only stopping when the whole window is filled with the rhythms of concentric line that emanate from the original fault.

The system employed is a vehicle for uncontrollable things, continually generating error and making it visible. The tight margins for error lead to mistakes and small deviations, which are faithfully recorded and magnified in the succession of copied lines. It could be seen as a kind of Chinese Whisper of imperfectly echoed lines, small failures relayed across each surface to create a pattern of cumulative error.

The performative nature of the work and its duration are key elements. On each of those days work will take place to slowly remove the whitewash, line by line, gradually revealing more of the shop interior and so my activity within it. The act of making the work becomes increasingly more public, as lines are removed and the vacant interior becomes more exposed.

Nick Kennedy Info on Nick

Dance Dance Dance depicts a cartoon character modelled on a hybrid of styles associated with distinctive modern music and dance cultures, dating from the early 1900s to the present day.

The animated character energetically cycles through a variety of moves that epitomise the represented dance genres, subtly highlighting threads between each. During apparent shifts in tempo, the tireless figure remains immersed in an altered and focused state, outwardly displaying the escapism and enjoyment in his actions.

The animated film entertained passers by from 4pm to midnight each night for 2 months until September 7th. Matt Stokes - artist and film maker - winner of the Beck’s Futures Prize 2006, and short listed for the Northern Art Prize 2009 - was the Artist Director.

Matt is currently based at the Workplace Gallery Gateshead.

More info on Matt here

“Dance Dance Dance”
at Number 9 by Matt Stokes