Open Crit with Flux Factory artists

We were joined at the open crit yesterday by artists Alison Ward and Shane Heinemier from Flux Factory arts space in New York. Alison and Shane have been taking part in an exchange residency set up by Islington Mill and local artist Tom Watson. Tom is in New York at the moment working at Flux Factory while Shane and Alison have been in residence here at the mill. Flux Factory began in 1994 as an informal collective with a mission to provide an alternative to the commercial art landscape in NY at the time. Today, it occupies a 3 story former card factory in Queens and provides studios for up to 30 artists of which approx. 16 are artists in residence from around the world.

Next Critque 29th July

The next Islington Mill Open Critique is on the 29th July. David Osbaldeston is joining us for this critique.

The critique on June 23rd went well. We were glad to welcome Vanilla Collective from Loughborough at the last minute. They're doing a tour of art collectives and stopped off at Islington Mill. Thanks to Natalie Bradbury of Shrieking Violets zine, and Sharon Walsh for coming along.

Upcoming Open Crits at Islington Mill

I think most of us would agree that last weeks open critique at Islington Mill was incredibly helpful in terms of pushing forward each of our individual practices. Buoyed up by that, we have organised the next 3 critiques over the Summer months, to which you are all invited!

We're looking forward to welcoming along some invited guest artists to these also. On July 29th, we'll be joined by artist David Osbaldeston who is currently a resident on the prestigious Firestation Artist Studios 5 year residency programme. Artist Leo Fitzmaurice will be our guest artist at our open crit on August 26th. Leo has an upcoming show in Manchester at Cube Gallery

Dates for next Open Critiques at Islington Mill:

Thur June 23rd - Midday - Islington Mill

Fri July 29th - Midday - Islington Mill

Fri Aug 26th - Midday - Islington Mill

Art Academy's Ben Davies performing at Text Festival

Ben Davies will be debuting a new performance collage work tomorrow, Sat 30th April at the launch of the Text Festival Ben will be up at the Transport Museum in Bury from 11am till 4pm. The show at the Transport Museum is curated by Philip Davenport and also includes works by Alec Finlay and Bob Cobbing. Get along if you can, the line up for the festival sounds amazing and includes an appearance by US L=A=N=G=U=A=G= E poet Ron Silliman and the first UK performance from Canadian virtuoso poet Christian Bok.

Art Academy feature in A-N magazine..

We are featured in a new report in A-N magazine on alternative art schools. You can read it here: http://www.a-n.co.uk/publications/topic/1145371

Talk at Islington Mill: The Free University of Liverpool

This Thursday at Islington Mill as part of our regular Say Something Series:

Lorena Rivero de Beer will talk about The Free University of Liverpool, a protest against the current situation in HE and a laboratory to explore new models of transmitting knowledge. She will discuss how it came about, the paradoxical space where it stands and the challenges they confront. Please come along if you would like to join the protest, create a Free University where you live or enroll in The Free University of Liverpool Foundation Degree that will start October 2011.

A performance artist, writer and producer Lorena Rivero de Beer recently completed a Phd exploring the relationship between cultural politics, representation, aesthetics and subjectivity. Collaborating with The Institute for the Art and Practice of Dissent at Home (Lena Simic and Gary Anderson) Lorena has initiated The Free University of Liverpool. Billed as a protest against the recent tuition fee increases and cuts to university budgets The Free University of Liverpool states it has been developed to provide FREE education for any student who is keen to study. Believing that critical thought and action are at the heart of changing the world we live in, The Free University aims to teach about and practice cultural activism.

'School Trip'- Art Academy at Instal Glasgow

Last November three members of Islington Mill Art Academy, including myself, travelled North-wards to Glasgow in order to attend, and take part in a series of workshops organised by Glasgow Open School (G.O.S) as part of the tenth annual Instal Festival. Given our status as an alternative art school organisation, and rather academically referential title, I like to consider our visit to be a kind of school trip.

Bik van der Pol collaboration

The Art Academy has been collaborating with Dutch artists, Bik van der Pol in a project which takes the 'road movie' as a model to explore ideas around autonomy. We have been using a motor home as a vehicle to get out on the road and meet groups and individuals who have made a decision for independence in what they do. Over the past few weeks, we have met a whole host of people including, 'The Rainy City Roller Girls', Manchester's very own roller derby team, Rev Andy Salmon, a local vicar who has given his 2 churches a new audience through holding music gigs and 'El Ingles' aka Franks Evans aka 'The Buspass matador', the worlds oldest bullfighter who is from Salford.

A first stage presentation of the project took place at the re-opening of Islington Mill on Oct 1st 2010. We staged short lectures in autonomy delivered by our own Maria Dada in the back of the motor home while we drove in circuits around the mill, very slowly.

Art School Alternatives - Liverpool JMU

We are taking part in the 'Art School Alternative's' symposium at Liverpool John Moores University on 7th Oct. It aims to bring together 'a range of practitioners whose work looks to the communal, collaborative and participatory'. The event is being organised by Corridor 8 magazine.

Initially, we proposed to run a live publishing event as our contribution to the symposium, using a couple of office photocopiers. The response from JMU was that the photocopiers would contravene health and safety; there wouldn't be adequate ventilation in the conference room!

Perhaps this illustrates a problem with educational institutions in this country better than anything that will be said on Oct 7th.

So, we don't know what we will do yet but we have invited an artist we have worked with in the past called Terry Smith to join us in doing something together there.

The symposium is free but you have to register to attend. You can do that here: http://artschoolalternatives.tumblr.com

Art Academy's Top floor Cinema

Every Friday evening at Islington Mill during August

Gates open at 6pm with food and drinks available. Film screenings begin at 9.30pm

Fri Aug 6^th: Alex Pearl presents ‘Tour de France’ by Lelouche.

UK artist Alex Pearl makes things and then videos them before they fall apart. His work deals with chance and the things in life he doesn't do very well.

www.alexpearl.co.uk


Fri Aug 13^th:
Juhana Moisander, Islington Mill resident artist presents... (tbc)

"In Juhana Moisander’s installations, videos and photographs, a dim space is constructed in which history, memory and fantasy meet."

www.juhanamoisander.com

Fri Aug 20th
: Royston Futter from Working Class Movement Library presents a short film about the library founders, Ruth and Eddie Frow.

The Working Class Movement Library records over 200 years of organising and campaigning by ordinary men and women. The collection provides a rich insight into working people's daily lives as well as their thoughts, hopes, fears and the roles they played in the significant events of their time.

www.wcml.org.uk

Fri Aug 27th
: 7inch Cinema

7 Inch Cinema are illustrious mobile film exhibitors and producers of the Flatpack Festival in Birmingham. Before the summer disappears altogether they are going camping, but en route they are making a pit-stop at Islington Mill to present an evening of short films, archive oddities and music devoted to high days and holidays. Boarding passes at the ready! Knotted handkerchiefs and deckchairs are optional.

www.7inch.org.uk

Save Middlesex Philosophy - Reading Group - 1 June 18:00 - 20:00

In late April 2010, Middlesex University decided to close down Philosophy, its highest research-rated subject; ever since, Middlesex students and staff, and many thousands of their supporters in the UK and around the world, have been battling to save it. Over the course of the past decade, Middlesex University has come to be widely recognised as one of the most important centres for the study of modern European philosophy in the English-speaking world. However the Management at Middlesex are only measuring it's contribution through it's financial gains. The Department is not in the red it's just not performing as well as other vocational subjects. This is of course a threat not only to philosophy but to other subjects that are not lucrative to an institution. For more information see http://savemdxphil.com/about/

A group of campaign supporters from Manchester have decided to join Middlesex Philosophy Students in their continued effect to revert the decision to close down the department by joining their summer reading group over skype. The first session of which is to happen on the 1st of June starting at 18:00 with a reading of chapters from Freud's "Interpretation of dreams" and Alain Badiou's "Ethics".

For copies of the text please email miss.tokyo.witch (at) gmail (dot) com

Art Academy artists take part in BOX OFFICE

Art Academy members, present and past have taken part in BOX OFFICE an artist project as part of the Sounds from the Other City festival. BOX OFFICE is an artwork by Maurice Carlin and Pippa Koszerek that issues tickets for a range of events in those spaces left defunct following industrial decline and urban regeneration.

Events and performances included: 'The So Long Series' by Lowri Evans, a live performance over 3 consecutive days at 2.36pm each day on platform 2 of Salford Central Train Station; 'Rebound Diary Project' by Andrew Beswick, discreet acts in commemoration of past events published for each day of a pocketbook diary; 'Ghost Ramp' by Amy Pennington, a ticket touting performance for a road to nowhere; 'Paper Records' by Maria Dada, a corporate board room meeting for a fictitious record label held in Manchester's plush new Civil Justice Centre; 'The Telephone Showbox' by Maurice Carlin, live music beamed down the wires to a telephone box transformed into a gig venue for audiences of one, featuring Dan Deacon, Andrew W K, Six Organs of Admittance, Tune Yards and She Keeps Bees.

8th Open Critique with Association artists

Come along to our 8th Open Critique this Monday 29th Mar!

We are excited to be welcoming Association artists, Nina Chua, Ying Kwok, Jessica Longmore and Sarah Sanders as well as current Chinese Arts Centre resident artist Wang Jun.

Association will be giving a talk at 6pm to conclude their month long residency at Islington Mill.

Islington Mill Art Academy members will be showing and talking about recent work.

The Engine House cafe, Islington Mill 1pm till 6pm.

7th Open Critique with Jason Minsky

On Monday, we invited artist, Jason Minsky to join us for our open critique. The critique is a monthly opportunity for artists from the academy to present recent work, including everything from sketchy outline ideas to more developed works. We try to experiment with the structure of the critiques ie. location, duration etc. This time we set ourselves up in Islington Mills new cafe space and had a delicious lunch to break up the day with.

We were joined by Jason Minsky who gave a great talk about the many, many works he has made and projects he has been involved with since graduating from the Royal College of Art in 1999. Here's what Lisa Beauchamp says about him:

"His work carries with it a sense of realness and familiarity, through the types of topics it addresses, the commentary it makes and the ways in which this is communicated. Minsky sees sport as an effective and available means of communication and a language that most people can easily relate to and understand. In much of his work he appropriates sport as a common vocabulary, using and messing it up for his own means. Minsky uses things like sport and humour to set up and create dialogues in his work and there is always a refreshing, open-ended and limitless quality to all of his pieces. His work attempts to create debate and poses critical questions on different levels."

Art Academy Talk at Black Lab, Leeds

This week, we were invited by the Leeds based artist collective, Black Dogs to give a talk about the art academy at the opening event for their new space, Black Lab. Until now, Black Dogs have been a roaming bunch, working from each others homes and in other temporary spaces. The Black Lab marks a decision to take on a more permanent space for the group and so our talk was followed with a discussion on what it could best be used for.

Here is something written by Andy Abbot that I've cut from the Black Lab blog about the event:

“Seemingly slicing into the nuts and guts of something perhaps very often overlooked in art education, the academy investigated the question what does it mean to be an artist? Sharing resources and discussion the self-directed students of Islington Mill invited artist’s to come to their school to talk about, reflect on and expose their methods. Open to anyone wishing to enrol the academy dissolved the usual hierarchy of information, resources and experience with the attitude and commitment to the idea that there should always be a mutually beneficial exchange with the people they worked with. “

www.blacklableeds.blogspot.com

Workshop with Rachel Goodyear

This week we spent two inspiring days working alongside artist Rachel Goodyear in her studio. The focus for the workshop was 'prized possessions'. Each person brought along object(s) which held a degree of preciousness for them. Amongst these were rare finds, one of a kinds, personal things and objects with stories attached to them.

We looked at where and how our concepts of the value of things is formed. We applied this to the objects we had each brought to the table and considered how we could channel these idea's into our art making.

Paroles et Dessins

The Art Academy are taking part in a live, experimental drawing event using the magical powers of Skype to connect us here in Salford with London, Paris and New York.

We will be working with students from Wimbledon School of art who will be based at Matts Gallery in London along with students of Parsons School of Art & Design in Paris and New York.

We have a small number of extra places for those who would like to take part or watch so please get in touch if you'd like to do that.

KS09: Kurt Schwitters Autumn School

Islington Mill Art Academy will be giving a presentation at KS09, the Kurt Schwitters International Autumn School event in Cumbria. Writer and curator, Guy Brett is to give the annual Kurt Schwitters lecture. Other confirmed speakers include David Medalla (Mondrian Fanclub), Barbara Steveni and Elisa Kaye (Flat Time House), Dr. Penelope Curtis (Henry Moore Institute), and artists Pippa Koszerek, Sophie Hope, Eva Merz and Glenn Loughram.

The Seminar runs from Friday 2nd till Sunday 4th Oct. Booking and further information is available at www.littoral.org.uk

In Court with Martin Holman

On Friday members of the Academy spent an afternoon in Manchester's new Civil Justice Centre with our artist in residence, Martin Holman. Martin gave a reading of 'Doing what it Horta' a text he has written on the artist, Ian Kiaer. This was followed by a lively discussion. We were joined by artist Simon Blackmore with whom we are planning to organise a future event at the Civil Justice Centre, listening to an audio version of Plato's 'The Republic' over the course of a day.

The Civil Justice Centre opened in 2007 and, despite its unwelcoming entrance, is a public building open to all. The upper floors offer great views over Salford looking through what is reportedly the largest suspended glass wall in Europe!

OPEN DAY!! for new members: Sept 10th 2009

Islington Mill Art Academy will be opening its doors to new members on Thursday Sept 10th with an open day at Islington Mill from 2 till 8pm.

The Academy was started in 2007 by a group of art foundation students keen on exploring alternatives to University based education for artists. The Academy exists to experiment with what an education in art can be, where it can take place and how it can be paid for.

If you have a tremendous and unstoppable will to make art and you would like to direct and organise your own education please come along on Thursday 10th to find out more! If you can't make it along to the open day, just drop us a line at:

artacademy(at)islingtonmill(dot)com