Featuring: Alice Forward, Anna Lucas, Andrew Mania & Daniel Rush, Animate, Aviv Kruglansk & Vahida Ramujkic, Brian Dawn Chalkley, Corey Orbisons, Pete Harrison + Emma Bush, Fránçois Marry, John Stark, Jessica Marlowe, Keira Rathbone, Goodiepal, Heath Bunting & Sarah Flint, Laura Oldfield Ford, Lady Stubbs, Marcia Farquhar & Mahali O'Hare, Patricia Jordan, Rebecca Swindell, Simon Webb and Tom Stubbs & Michael Smith.
Installation shot, Drawing Exchanges Festival. Photo: Nathan Wald
All drawings produced will be hosted in Gallery 2, Spike Island and the Festival launches at Renato's on Fri 24 April before moving across site and venues. Events at Spike Island start on 01 May and the Grand Finale Exchange Event takes place on 04 May, Gallery 2.
Irational website for further details of the festival
PDF of full programme of events
Some of the events a have limited number of places. You can book a place via events@spikeisland.org.uk or telephone: 0117 929 2266
Artists Kayle Brandon (Bristol) and Lady Lucy (London) have been collaborating for three years on ‘The Drawing Exchange’, a social platform for drawing-led events. The Drawing Exchange sets up situations where the amateur and the expert, the drawn and the drawer, a night out at the pub and a traditional drawing class, merge and lose their distinction. Exchanges take place in public locations with each event having its own subject and series of experimental drawing exercises. The events encourage both individual and collective activity with drawings swapped and exchanged at the end of each session.
This on-going project has expanded in 2009 to become Drawing Exchange Festival which will manifest from 24 April – 04 May as a series of events across arts institutions – Spike Island, Animate Projects with Picture This, Arnolfini, Bristol City Museum & Art Gallery, Station, Cube cinema - and public spaces - Leigh Woods, Clifton Suspension Bridge, Renatos, Stokes Croft and more.
Everyone is welcome to participate: none of the events require any specific drawing ability nor are they conventional drawing lessons. Instead The Drawing Exchanges Festival manifests as celebratory, wayward, imaginative, challenging and experimental drawing experiences.
To date Kayle Brandon and Lady Lucy have invited eighteen artists from an eclectic range of arts practices to respond to The Drawing Exchange format. Examples of Exchanges confirmed to date include: Network artist and Irationalist Heath Bunting presents his project Day Planner; Goodiepal, electronic musician, hacker and philosopher from the Faroe Islands, invites you to collaborate on a ’school book’ composition project…making music for extraterrestrial life forms; Patricia Jordan will present a still life, created from her personal collection of preserved lifeless animals; Andrew Mania invites you to a Drawing Feast; Laura Oldfield Ford will take you on an Urban Drift; Vahida Ramujkic and Aviv Kruglanski will embroiderer on the streets of Stokes Croft.
The Drawing Exchanges Festival will end with a grand finale event where all drawings produced will be viewed and then swapped, bought or bartered. This free event with live music and special guests will take place at Spike Island, Gallery 2 on Monday 04 May as part of the annual Spike Island Open Studios (May 02- Mon 04). Spike Island is the main hub and sponsor for The Drawing Exchanges Festival.
For information on previous past Drawing Exchange Events and future plans please see:
http://www.irational.org/drawing_exchange/
http://www.myspace.com/drawingexchange
To find out more about The Drawing Exchanges Festival, please e-mail: drawing_exchange@irational.org
