35 & Counting,

Aspex Gallery,

35 & Counting,

Aspex Gallery,

35 & Counting,

Aspex Gallery,

35 & Counting,

Aspex Gallery,

35 & Counting: Steve Moberly

 In early February we launched ’35 & Counting’, an exhibition and online auction, marking 35 years of supporting emerging artists.

All proceeds of the online auction, launching on Thursday 16 February (5pm), will support our artist residency programme.

To showcase the 29 artworks generously donated, we have asked each of the artists to remind us about their involvement with the gallery and what a residency means to them. 

 Steve Moberly

A painting of space and not so space.

 “There is no likeness only a manufactured, material imposter. It is enough to trick us as we are, perceptively insufficient and unhinged. As does the vibrating flux we call matter till consciousness witnesses. So it resumes its form, both rigid and fluid as to our experience. As if pushed from a tube and poked around with a fury ended stick.”

 Steve Moberly was born in 1972 in Keynsham near Bristol, and now lives and works in Bournemouth. Recent highlights have been exhibiting in ‘John Moores Painting Prize’ 2016, ‘Beers contemporary Visions VII’ shortlist 2017, Aspex ‘Emergency’ group show 2015/16, winner best visual arts event, ‘Bournemouth Emerging Arts Fringe’ 2015 for his solo show ‘Insider Planting’ and ‘Platform’ nominee 2014.

 What does a studio/place to work mean to you?

An essential separation from day to day distractions that permits and facilitates an acute focus on making

 How have funded residencies supported your professional development, and what impact have they had on your work?

35 & Counting: Tim Machin     

 In early February we launched ’35 & Counting’, an exhibition and online auction, marking 35 years of supporting emerging artists.

All proceeds of the online auction, launching on Thursday 16 February (5pm), will support our artist residency programme.

To showcase the 29 artworks generously donated, we have asked each of the artists to remind us about their involvement with the gallery and what a residency means to them. 

 Tim Machin     

 Tim Machin’s work transforms overlooked everyday ephemera in unexpected ways - a roll of sellotape becomes a cloud, a piece of A4 is folded into a mountain.

 Tim was born in Sheffield, UK in 1978. He studied at the Ruskin School of Fine Art, University of Oxford (1996-1999) and Wimbledon School of Art (2001-2002). Recent exhibitions include: ‘In Conversation’, Touchstones, Rochdale 2014; ‘Meanwhile’, John Hansard Gallery, Southampton, 2012; ‘Sustainability’, University of Oxford Botanical gardens, 2012; ‘Undone’, Henry Moore Institute Leeds, 2010. He was shortlisted for ‘Becks Futures’ in 2006 and the ‘Jerwood Drawing Prize’ in 2001. He is represented by Bureau, Manchester, and lives in Hebden Bridge, Yorkshire.

 “I was the winner of the Aspex ‘Emergency2’ Prize in 2005, and had one of the very first exhibitions in the new Vulcan Building space in 2007 [‘Astrolabe’]. The two years between were incredibly fruitful, working towards a major show really enabled me to experiment with my practice and - with a view to working in such a large space - making the most ambitious work I'd made.”

 What does a studio/place to work mean to you?

It's somewhere to potter about. Read the paper, do the crossword. Make nice coffee. It's an office-cum-theatre where you can play with ideas and set them off on their own tracks. I always think of art as the stuff that happens beyond what you do, the things you can't explain in words easily , but which make sudden, fluid, sense. The studio is the special place this all happens (even if over time, the studios I've worked in have ranged from the glamorous purpose built, through the threadbare conversion (and currently an upcycled chicken shed).

 How have funded residencies supported your professional development, and what impact have they had on your work?

35 & Counting: Ross Sinclair

 In early February we launched ’35 & Counting’, an exhibition and online auction, marking 35 years of supporting emerging artists.

All proceeds of the online auction, launching on Thursday 16 February (5pm), will support our artist residency programme.

To showcase the 29 artworks generously donated, we have asked each of the artists to remind us about their involvement with the gallery and what a residency means to them. 

 Ross Sinclair

Ross Sinclair is an artist, writer and musician and is currently Reader in Contemporary Art Practice in the School of Fine Art at The Glasgow School of Art. He is best known for his ‘Real Life’ project initiated when he had the words tattooed in black ink across his back in 1994. The ‘Real Life Project’ has been disseminated across a range of exhibition and publication contexts, positioned against a critical framework of contested models of audience participation, ‘Everyday Life’ and ‘The Real’.

 Ross showed an immersive installation ‘Journey to the Edge of the World’ at Aspex in 2000. The work transformed the space into a stunning representation of the island of St. Kilda, reflecting on its social and political history.

 What does a studio/place to work mean to you?

 Like the inside of your head spread out around you

 How have funded residencies supported your professional development, and what impact have they had on your work?

35 & Counting: Nick Crowe and Ian Rawlinson

 In early February we launched ’35 & Counting’, an exhibition and online auction, marking 35 years of supporting emerging artists.

All proceeds of the online auction, launching on Thursday 16 February (5pm), will support our artist residency programme.

To showcase the 29 artworks generously donated, we have asked each of the artists to remind us about their involvement with the gallery and what a residency means to them. 

 Nick Crowe and Ian Rawlinson 

 Since they started working together in 1994 Nick Crowe and Ian Rawlinson have been drawn to the ways in which power and authority articulate themselves, to the grammar and rhetoric that surrounds them. They are interested in spectacle and its cultural effects and have made work derived from military and biblical sources, from memorials and the uses of public space and most recently from the legacies of the nuclear and coal industries.

The artists live and work in Manchester and Berlin.

 “We first showed with Aspex in 2003 when we had a solo show with the gallery. It was a show we toured from Manchester City Art Gallery and Aspex’s involvement helped not only in giving the work a higher profile but also let us develop the show on tour.”

 What does a studio/place to work mean to you?

 The studio is really the centre of our practice.  It so much more than a place, it’s a constantly shifting set of possibilities.  It allows for a kind of thinking in space that you can’t replicate in any other setting. 

 How have funded residencies supported your professional development, and what impact have they had on your work?