North + South Asamoah has created R.O.Y.G.B.I.V, a new installation that continues to explore the ideas of her earlier work; Islamic art and its relationship to modernist culture in a largely secular nation; the different cultural connotations of geometry and patterning and the play of light and shadow across a space, combined with more than an acknowledgement of the tradition of English stained glass windows. Joung has collected English plates and tableware from charity shops in Gateshead and elsewhere in the Northeast. She has presented an installation to rethink the history of the object; exploring the memories, rituals, skills and design associated with these domestic everyday items. In a table laid for tea Joung imagines the English convention of ‘taking tea’ and the construction of a ‘carpet’ of memories laments the neglect of traditional and decorative china from modern day life. Matt Hearn and Sarah Warden's Track and Place is a national mail project exploring the concept of the north/south divide. Twenty letters were posted from North East England to artists at different points throughout the UK, presenting the them with a map of the British Isles, on which they are asked to locate themselves and determine their relative position, north or south. They were invited to include an unspecified contribution and develop a dialogue in which they ‘add and send on’ to another artist of their choice, located on the opposite pole to themselves. The project’s concluding exhibitions in the North, at National Glass Centre, and South at John Hansard Gallery, shows the archive of artists’ contributions and ephemera - the paper trail and postal data - that corresponds to the individual contributors and their geographical location. Back to North + South |
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| Matt Hearn and Sarah Warden, Track and Place, 2007. Image courtesy of the artists. |