Window Exhibition At the Airspace Gallery 

for more information about the works on display go to:

http://www.airspacegallery.org/2007/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=259:new-window-exhibition-in-limbo&catid=51:current&Itemid=96

How to CollaborateSharing and Seminar masterclass event
27-10-2011, 5.30pm - 7.00pm

How to Collaborate: a sharing and seminar masterclass event, as part of the British Ceramics Biennial 2011.This event complements the exhibition “Stick-Up” which features work made during an intense three day inter-disciplinary collaboration between artists from airspacegallery (stoke) and manifold (london).The masterclass event brings you an insight into the methods and approaches developed by the two groups during the collaboration process, and will aim to share with you the knowledge gained from this experience.
27.10.2011 - at AirSpaceGallery 5.30pm - 7.00pm
To Book please email info@airspacegallery.org

Insider Art

Faces of Kibblesworth 2011:

Over a three day workshop I have been working with a painting and drawing club who meet every Wednesday at the Millennium Center,  in Newcastle Upon Tyne. After the first session with the group we came up with an idea which could be showcased at the Celebration Day on 1st October 2011.

The images you see here are the photographs of some of the drawings which were produced during the workshop. They used graphite powder and pencil, mimicking I.D. photo style photographs of the local residents. The artwork has been enlarged and installed on the window and door shutters to be viewed from outside. The people in the drawings were invited to be photographed next to their old houses that they are no longer permitted to go into. The photographs will be given back to them as a present, so they are able to display the memory of their past house within their new home.

During the workshop the painting and drawing club were also photographed. A copy of these photos were given back to them on the 1st of October. The plan is that later, the group will produce “self ID portrait drawings” using the materials and skills they learnt and practiced during the workshops.

This project ran during Summer 2011 and involved creative workshops and consultation with people from Kibblesworth. Myself, artists from rednile and Joss Wrigg aimed to find out what skills, special memories and pastimes exist in the village. These findings have inspired the artworks and design features for the estate, which are planned as part of the redevelopment work currently being carried out. 

for more info:

http://www.rednile.org/public-realm/insider-art-kibblesworth/

Untitled 

Graphite powder and pencil on paper 2011

105x 75 cm

inspirited by Eddie Adams photograph captured perhaps the war’s most unforgettable image. Around noon of February 1, 1968, in the opening days of the communist Tet Offensive, South Vietnamese General Nguyen Ngoc Loan summarily executed a Viet Cong prisoner on the streets of Saigon.

Platforma Festival 29th Nov - 4th Dec

The first Platforma Festival will take place in London from 29th November 2011. Bringing together performers, artists and organisations from across the UK, the Festival will be a celebration of the arts by and about refugees and a chance to discuss different aspects of artistic practice.

Like the Platforma project as a whole, the Festival will embrace as many art forms as possible including music, dance, visual arts, live art, film, spoken word and literature.

for more info go to: Counterpoint show

Graphite powder and pencil on paper 2011

prints are available on requests.

Urban Decay

still images from Video 

Collaborative work by Behjat Omer Abdulla and Zachary Eastwood-Bloom, for the British Ceramics Biennial 2011 show “Stick-Up” at AirSpace Gallery.

panoramic images of the show :

http://360.io/Lk3stB

http://360.io/NzCUYg

http://360.io/fXntDQ

http://360.io/hbNppD

Urban Decay

British Ceramics Biennial 2011

Collaborative work by Behjat Omer Abdulla and Zachary Eastwood-Bloom, for the British Ceramics Biennial 2011 show “Stick-Up” at AirSpace Gallery.

For ‘Urban Decay’ Zachary Eastwood-Bloom and Bahjat Omer Abdulla have made a series of urn shaped raw clay vessels, filled them up with water and filmed the resulting outcomes. This project examines the notions of dependency and erosion with a wider metaphor relating to Stoke-on-Trent and the ceramics industry. The water in the vessels is dependent on the structural integrity of the clay body to keep it contained, however it slowly weakens the material over a period of time resulting in a loss of both vessel and fluid.
This process is symbolic of the decay of Stoke-on-Trent as a result of the decline in industrial ceramic production. A place once heavily dependent on clay but now feeling the loss of its core material.

panoramic images of the show :

http://360.io/Lk3stB

http://360.io/NzCUYg

http://360.io/fXntDQ

http://360.io/hbNppD

For more information about this project and other collaborative works form the other studio artists involved go to
airspacegallery.org or britishceramicsbiennial.com

Stick-Up 

British Ceramics Biennial

30 September to 13 November, 11am - 5pm Tuesday to SaturdayPreview 30 September 7pm - 9.30pm

  As part of the British Ceramics Biennial, Stoke-on-Trent’s AirSpace Gallery will be collaborating with London-based studio group Manifold, whose particular focus is Ceramics. AirSpace Gallery and its studio artists work within a contemporary art context working different medium. The intention is to instigate an element of risk for both the artists and curators. As both sets are removed from their individual comfort zones and work towards a challenging resolution.

The two studio groups will be collaborating to make a body of works within a restricted time period. The focus of the project is the exchange between two types of working methods, skill sets and knowledge. The outcome of these investigations is unpredictable and will develop organically over an intensive three-day period leading up to the opening of the exhibition, which explores a newfound relationship between Ceramics and Contemporary Art.

AirSpace Gallery Artists:

Behjat Omer Abdulla, David Bethell, Andrew Branscombe, Anna Francis, Janine Goldsworthy, Phil Rawle, Katie Shipley. 

Manifold Studio Artists:

Zachary Eastwood-Bloom, Ellie Doney, Amy Hughes, Sun-Ae Kim, Hanne Mannheimer, Matthew Raw, Bethan Lloyd Worthington.

panoramic images of the show :

http://360.io/Lk3stB

http://360.io/NzCUYg

http://360.io/fXntDQ

http://360.io/hbNppD

BE FESTIVAL

Birmingham European Theatre Festival 2011 4th – 10th July @ AE Harris, mac, Birmingham

Kurdsat.tv, Heftenamey rwnakbiri 25-07-2011

Kurdsat TV Visiting 

“AVENUE OF PORTRAITS”

Platforma News Letter 2011

IT IS not every day that a local artist gets his work exhibited in one of London’s most prestigious galleries. It is even rarer for this accolade to be given to someone who only a year ago graduated from Staffordshire University.

It seems almost impossible that this has happened to someone who arrived in this country fleeing the persecution of Saddam Hussein only about a decade ago.

However, this is just what has happened to fine art graduate Behjat Omer Abdulla, pictured. His work has been chosen for an exhibition in The Hayward Gallery in the South Bank Arts complex.

This is at the centre of London’s artistic establishment. Make no mistake; this exhibition is a hugely prestigious coup for any artist to have achieved.

I have seen Behjat’s work, both at his degree show and also at Broad Street’s Airspace Gallery. I am delighted that it has been chosen for national exhibition, but I am not surprised.

He draws with a creative passion that brings to life the beauty of his subjects and the horror of the treatment that he knows many of them have received.

His graphite portraits are like ID cards and conjure the strength of his subjects as well as the evil of the police state. I hope that his work will go far, but that he will remain based in the city.

Behjat’s success demonstrates again the ability for our fine artists to lead the re-invention of the city. We were once famous worldwide for the creativity of our ceramic designs and the beauty of our hand crafted ware.

We are lucky to have clusters of artists, mainly graduates from the local universities, who continue to create and exhibit their work locally. Airspace Gallery puts on many groundbreaking shows every year on a shoestring.

The Burslem School of Art is a fabulous display area that showcases local talent. However, local policy makers don’t give the sort of credit or support to local artists that even the distant grandees of the Hayward Gallery know they deserve.

Behjat’s studio is in the Cultural Quarter. This is perhaps the city’s greatest unfinished monument. Dropped in terror by politicians following the scoffing of cynics and the overspending of project managers, this ambitious attempt to put creativity at the heart of the city was one of the bravest regeneration ideas that we have ever had.

Sadly, it never got beyond the pedestrianisation of Picadilly or the creation of two fabulous venues. Policy makers failed to recognise that whilst venues and infrastructure are important, it is artists, not buildings, that create culture.

Behjat’s success should remind us of the importance of completing this brave vision.

Luckily, the time has never been more opportune to complete the human development of the Cultural Quarter.

You see, in comparison to the huge cost of building the venues, this part of the project costs peanuts. Making the Cultural Quarter sing, paint and dance is still affordable. Giving it the energy of resident artists living above independent shops and galleries is still feasible. Making it a destination for local people in search of inspiration is within our reach.

Making it a natural stopping place on a thinking person’s holiday is possible.

We now need thinking, imagination and bravery. The opening of the refurbished Mitchell Memorial Theatre should breathe new life and youth into the area. Alongside that I would like to see a group thinking of ways to fill the Quarter with artists and fun. Artists can be trusted to come up with cheap, creative and novel ways of doing things.

Let’s dust down the 15-year-old plans for the Cultural Quarter and give them, along with a modest amount of cash, to a group of our talented young artists to deliver.

I suspect that the nation will be surprised and delighted with the result.

Wednesday, June 01, 2011

by: Mike Wolfe