Manchester Artists' Bonfire

MANCHESTER ARTISTS' BONFIRE. This is the project space for the 2012 research project, all pledges to the bonfire will be housed here.EVENT: 26 January 2012. Bonfire 6-9pm, After Event 9pm-1am. Islington Mill, James Street, Salford. From main page click bottom section (date) of image for full pledge.

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North West Visual Arts Open 2012

Rosanne Robertson will be talking about the Manchester Artists Bonfire (as well as sneaking in something about a new project) at the Manchester Salon Weekend 19-20th May as part of the North West Visual Arts Open 2012. This is two days of artist led discussion, curator insights, technology and popcorn with the 'Artist-Led Platform #1' being held at Castlefield Gallery 19 May 6-8pm. 

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Brilliant photo of the 2012 Bonfire during the Future Foundation Collective's epic Head Burn. 

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Pledge #29

Meg Woods

Practice: Miscellaneous

Blog: www.mbwetc.tumblr.com

Description of art work: Twenty four screen printed money notes that began as crude collages, on newsprint paper.

Pledge:

I feel that my work is visually quite self explanatory and would welcome interpretations and meanings from others, though here is what I have taken from the work. 

The face of "our" PM on the money note links to the opinion that we are not controlled by just one person, or just money but there are so many more people behind the scenes who use politics as their mask and justification for condemning us to a life of repetition and monotony, which we are all too happy to stand by and watch. I'd also like to seize the opportunity to burn something which encompasses many issues I disagree with.

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Manchester Artists' Bonfire 2012 Research Project- Collection of information by Rosanne Robertson.

This document is a collection of links, articles and resources which have formed much of the research that has gone into the Manchester Artists’ Bonfire. This forms part of an extended research project which will result in a publication post bonfire event.

It is encouraged that those interested use this document as a resource.

By Rosanne Robertson (Manchester based artist and director of Manchester Artists’ Bonfire)

Download the document here.

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creation>reception>destruction>creation>reception>destruction by Lauren Velvick

In January 2011 the first Manchester Artist's bonfire happened. It was spurred on by, but not entirely dependent on anger, confusion and panic at cuts in governmental funding which were being inflicted on the cultural sector. This element of the event  was emphasized in the official literature, and in some ways it felt like an extension of protests which had been taking place as a reaction to a rise in tuition fees. The question of funding for non-compulsory education is, of course, another issue whereby much of the argument relies on qualitative judgements and abstract concepts, such as ‘education’ and ‘culture’ versus the arguably more ‘real’ issue of cost versus yield. However, whilst the historical and political context of the event is important, there are  fundamental art historical questions to do with iconoclasm which the Artist's Bonfire raises, as well as evoking forms of sacred art whereby the destruction of a piece is as important as its creation. It is this which I seek to address; how the event functions as a collaborative performance, and what the destruction of a work of art means in terms of it's status as art, and especially what this means when it is destroyed by the artist themself...

To read more download HERE

This is a new short essay written by Manchester based curator and writer Lauren Velvick as part of the extended Manchester Artists’ Bonfire Research Project- which will form part of a new publication post bonfire.

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Art Mollification by Richard Shields.

Burning Art is no new thing; in fact it is arguably as old as ‘Art’ itself. It can be in protest against corruption and abuse of power or an attempt to wipe the slate clean to path the way for a new order, but does it do any good? Destroying the fruits of artistic labour pales in comparison to the effect of self- immolation but we can’t have that sort of thing, can we?...

To Read More Download HERE.

This is a new short essay written by Manchester based artist, curator and designer Richard Shields as part of the extended Manchester Artists' Bonfire Research Project- which will form part of a new publication post bonfire.

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Pledge #28

Elizabeth Murphy.

Website: www.elizabeth-murphy.co.uk

Title of art work: Dont Hate – Congratulate

Description of art work: DVD

Pledge:

The work submitted is a DVD which contains a list of names. The names on this list reference everyone I have fallen out with in 2011. This list has been translated into Morse code and sequenced together to make a split screen animation. The animation will then be burnt at the bonfire. What will remain will be an animation coded in the same way however the names will be removed with only punctuations and line breaks remaining.  Its time to pull together. Its time to get over it. You don't see the Walton's harbouring this kind of shit.

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Pledge #27

Richard Shields

Practice: Artist

Blog: http://www.richardshields.blogspot.com/

Title of art work: Art for All at Every Level

Description of art work/Pledge:

  Inside this Box is the perfect work of art. To see it would be to gaze in amazement at it's beauty and conceptual depth. It is truly art for everybody, however if you open the box you will immediately destroy the work for yourself, never to experience it again. The box has now been nailed shut and will be consigned to the flames intact.

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Pledge# 26

Jessica Mautner.

Practice: Multidisciplinary

Blog: www.mixedfibres.wordpress.com

Title of art work: daeth is not ceratin

Description of art work:

Sixteen 15cm x 15cm black origami-paper squares, with unfinished incorrect versions of poems about death by e.e.cummings, philip larkin, seamus heaney and charles madge typed on them, folded into 16 zhezhi sycees. Remnants from the process of making a performance called 'Try to eat everything'.

Pledge:

I am burning my mistakes. Not because I want to forget them, or to move on, but because I don't want to indulge them.  Most of my pieces are made over quite a long time, the result of an intense process of reading, exploring, experimenting, talking, doubting, building, destroying, thinking and feeling. People often ask me: but will the audience get it? By which they mean will all these references and ideas and concepts and theories and factoids be readable in the final work. The answer of course is no. And to me that is only a good thing. In this age of blogging and webcams and open-studio-artist-in-residencies, I feel oppressed by the expectation to reveal every stage of my process and explain myself constantly. What's more, 'process' seems to have been elevated to an artwork in itself. This is not an argument for slickly finished articles or unfathomable abstraction, but a concern that the capitalist cult of personality, identity and individualism, coupled with fashionable relativism and kooky homespun pseudo-eco aesthetics, have come to revere the perceived offkilter charm of errors and slips. While we can all learn from our errors, I am sceptical of a trend in art to commodify glitches and mistakes as art objects in themselves. It just seems too easy. This trend makes artist-celebrities and implies a mystical attitude to human actions. And we are all so broke these days, I think perhaps many of us have learned a certain deep-set commodification-drive which can interfere with our ability to tell if art objects are actually good, or interesting; to decide for ourselves, as artists, what is art. I 'made' these papers during a kind of sausage-mill process of creating 100 identical 'gifts' (strange reminders of death, invitations to reclaim autonomous agency as mortals, part of a performance in Liverpool city centre) over two nights in November. They are a record of the 'process', direct evidence of the artist's struggle to create/labour while half-asleep and after making 90 identical biscuits and individually typed origami-folded wrappers. It was late, and I kept making mistakes, trying to type out great Modernist poems on an old typewriter. At first, I kept the mistake-papers just to recycle - into plain old non-art origami which I often do to take a break from writing or thinking. Getting them out the other day, though, I found myself thinking that the sheaf of half-written pages with all kinds of unfinished mistaken phrases about death seemed somehow.... quaintly poetic, aesthetically appealing, meaningful. I thought they might even look good as an artist's book or exhibited in a grid formation in a large frame. That's when I knew they had to go. The piece I made in Liverpool, like most of my work, was very site-specific, linked exactly to that place, that time, those feelings, the people I worked with, the time of year, that me, etc etc etc. Exhibiting 'accidents' somehow related to that piece simply weaken it, and would be self-indulgent. I've chosen to intentionally hide the aesthetic appeal of these papers, so I am going to burn them not as I found them, but folded up into zhezhi sycees. Zhezhi is the original Chinese art of paper-folding, and sycees are the ur-zhezhi form. Sycees are ingots, an ancient form of currency, and golden paper sycees have long been part of a traditional Chinese funeral, where they are burned for the deceased to benefit from them in the afterlife. Nowadays, convincing fake banknotes, huge paper constructions of fast cars, tv sets, houses etc are more common at those kind of traditional funerals. But with the sycee, I feel I am burning the currency I thought of gaining when I envisaged exhibiting or selling those papers for that split second. There's something very powerful about burning money; a direct attack to the capitalist system by literally removing some currency from circulation. Maybe I will inspire someone to actually do that. --- The texts to be burned are inextracts from the following poems:  e.e.cummings, "one x" Philip Larkin, "The North Ship" Seamus Heaney, "The Digging Skeleton" Charles Madge, "The Hours of the Planets"

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Pledge #25

Josef Minta.

Practice: Painter

Blog: www.minta.posterous.com

Title of art work: Effigy

Description of art work: Effigy of myself stuffed with artwork which I have done nothing with in the past year.

Pledge:

Burning of an effigy has long been used as a representational destruction of the person themselves. Our fairly recent tradition of burning the guy has only picked up where earlier civilisations left off. Human sacrifice made palatable? The relationship between the audience or creators of the effigy and the person they are ceremonially burning is complex and difficult to pin down, like fire itself, the meaning shifts and moves depending which side of the flame you find yourself on. I made an effigy of myself for the Manchester Artists Bonfire last year, and filled it with art which had become a physiological millstone around my neck. In burning it I also vowed to burn the person who would not share their work with anyone and that I would seek to exhibit more and develop my own practice. In that year I have done more creatively than I had for a long time, have exhibited and am constantly trying to drive my work forward. This year the effigy of myself that I will burn will again be full of redundant work but it is more of a celebration and a symbol of renewal and regeneration that I hope will continue to push me forward in the year ahead. I also take this opportunity to renew and strengthen connections with the wider arts community, to be more active and be more involved. This year it’s time to get fired up.

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Pledge #24

Eve Marguerite and Charles Stanton-Jones.

Practice: ARTISTS

Blog: http://evemargueriteallen.blogspot.com/;http://stanton-jones.com/

Title of art work: CITY MAP #1

Description of art work: CITY MAP #1 is a map of a fictional city. The map is a representation of what will be a meticulously built-to-scale model of a city, also destined for destruction by the artists. The paper map will fold out and be thrown into the flames.

Pledge:

  In the essay ‘How to Build a Universe That Doesn’t Fall Apart Two Days Later’, science fiction writer Philip K. Dick confessed that he liked to create universes that fall apart, in order to see how his characters would adapt to change.

CITY MAP #1 is a new piece created for burning. What initially seems full of dark intent, we wish to announce as an inaugural celebration! It is an exercise in getting started. We want to share the act of burning the map as the opening ceremony to this joint venture. The project is built on the destruction of something that is painstakingly made. It is a cathartic and certainly not an unpleasant act. Destruction by fire: a launch pad to a new trajectory!

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Pledge #23

Scarlett Pimlott-Brown.

Practice: Fine Artist

Website: www.flickr.com/photos/armchair_cannibal/

Title of art work: Ø

Description of art work: An empty nest, approx. 25cm in diameter, woven from a variety of scavenged natural materials intended to burn at different rates -supplemented with intertwined Sparklers to add to the mechanics of the burning.

This is predominantly a process piece, rather than one with any loaded metaphors. And I intend to document both the construction, and deconstruction, through a series of photographic stills, and etchings.

Pledge:

Initially I began to think about why I'd be comfortable with the regression of something I'd shaped turning back into it's pre-existant materials, why burning my work did not come from a dislike of it, or a need to take action against something I had created. Making the decision to burn it feels like as much a part of it's organic cycle as creating/forming it in the first place did. My practise primarily entails working with analogue photography, and 19th century techniques, supported by drawing, print making, and painting; this shift into spatial three-dimensional work has come about through an inquisitiveness about place and space, both in the physical and metaphysical. I've become interested in situational and location-specific works. And by taking away from the bonfire photographic images of the event, I will begin to further question why it is that I always revert back to where I feel most comfortable within art -working with flat mediums. There have been continuous themes of the Specimen, and Ornithology -the study of birds, throughout my work for the past year or so now, I like their patterning, and how repeating patterns can change in scale so dramatically throughout nature. I will be looking at the weaving structures used in nest building to inform this piece. Bonfires originated from the act of burning a dead body to crack the mortal shell open, allowing the soul's release and ascension. Putting ourselves back into the natural cycle by force, rather than decomposition. In this context the nest will be reduced to it's purest form, but not without a display in the process.

Following on from this action I intend to weave a much larger one around myself in the woods on the first day of spring, thus enclosing myself within the physical object that at an earlier stage was externalised and could have been thought to symbolise that I felt within; whilst simultaneously juxtaposing a man-made object in the image of a natural one, back into it's original intended habitat. This is similar to when eggs hatch, yet are still encased within a larger protective environment. “Ø” could be seen to touch on allusions to the hierarchy of the art world, and the development of new ideas and movements relying on the renewal and stemming-from of previous forms. However, throughout my time as a political activist and an artist, I've found this a very uncomfortable coupling of my interests, and so choose to refrain on a base level from mixing my art with my rejection of particular current structures.

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Pledge #21

Lucy Jackson.

Practice: Photography 

Title of art work: Galaxy/Mould

Description of art work: A3 Photographic print

Pledge:

  I am pledging this piece of work to be burned in order to try to get some sort of catharsis after becoming jaded and disheartened with my practice since completing university last summer. I am hoping that my personal reaction to seeing my work being burned may help me to decide what to do next in terms of my practice and my life.

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Pledge #20

 Ash Van Dyck.

Practice: All available formats

Blog: http://megnomad.blogspot.com/

Title of art work: The Liar

Description of art work: Using Mixed media on canvas, newspaper, toy soldier and paint,

This piece was created as a reaction to the worldwide deception that led us all into an unjust and inhumane war.

Pledge:

I have created protest pieces in many different formats over the years, cut and paste zines, found object mixed media and graphic design as well as photography, it seems there is always something to protest and art is a very strong way to get this message across.

There are many reasons why I chose to incluse this piece in the bonfire.

If we hold on to the anger and resentment of the past and those who perpetrated it we are doomed to repeat it so let it all go up in smoke and we can clear our lives of this and move forward, being one reason.

As an artist I have moved into more digital media and feel this fire is a good way to define and farewell one part of my artistic life to make way for another.

As the saying goes, an artist only sells work when he runs out of wall space, well I ran out of wall space long ago and have always sold and given away a great deal of my work, I have not freely given away an artwork for a long time and this is a cleansing of sorts and a reminder of my priorities.

I am also really looking forward to talking to other artists who are doing the same and learning from and being inspired by one another.

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Pledge #19

Fiona Ledgard.

Website: http://www.mixcloud.com/anythinggoes

Title of art work: Continued.

Descripton of art work: 

The current image is that of a work in progress. The final piece (before it is burned) will be multi-coloured, multi-faceted using a variety of media and possibly framed.

Pledge:

My love of making art ended 7 years ago. I haven’t done any art since leaving the oppressive private sixth form college I went to. The burning of my piece is to signify the fact that I have now finished a piece I wanted to make, that the art teachers wouldn’t allow. I have got back into making art as an expression, not as a means to an end, especially in the context of a frighteningly bleak future under the conservative cutbacks. I will continue to make art, empowering myself and others. I will not copy art that has been done before. I will have the confidence to take new things on and trust my own creativity.

Having always had a love of making art (I used to draw nearly every morning as a child before my family woke up) I chose Art A Level on starting the new college. I came from a state school where the art teachers knew what they were talking about and continually tried to challenge us. I was instantly disgusted at the attitude of the college (exam technique and results, results, results) because parents were paying for the education and wanted to see the grades.

This awfully limiting approach to teaching had infiltrated the art department. Ironic as it sounds, we were taught that art was not about expressing yourself; it was about knowing how to win the examiner over. Students were encouraged to do ‘artist appreciations’ looking to an artist of choice so that we could link our work to them. However the only way we could ‘relate’ was by choosing one piece by our chosen artist and using the same colours to make something new. Colours. I asked to speak with both of the art teachers privately to express my concerns because I had an idea about my art project about Women, I was enthusiastic and told them I wanted to smash a piece of glass into pieces and relate my work to Barbara Kruger’s ‘You Are Not Yourself’ (1984) Straight away one of them stopped me and said, ‘No no no Fiona, the work we do here is much more simple than that, you can’t go smashing things up.’ This is in the context of a supply art teacher working for a term at the school then having to leave, having had too many arguments with the 2 other teachers who literally would sit in students’ seats and do their work for them, even when we didn’t want them to take over. My friends and I regularly talked with this supply teacher about our shared disbelief at the system in place.

Since leaving college in 2005 I haven’t done any art, not even painting and the lack of real education I got at the college made me feel less inclined to learn about up and coming artists because I didn’t know where to start.

However at the start of 2011 things started to change. I’ve spent a lot of time around Islington Mill with my band Womb since we first rehearsed together that January. We did our first gig at the Artists’ Bonfire at the end of the month. The bonfire inspired me massively. I saw all different kinds of artists talking about their art unapologetically and I learned loads. Being around a diverse group of women in Womb has done me so much good over the past year. As well as making music with Womb, I have really got more in touch with my body, with meditation and my self-confidence has increased. Some of the band are artists and I have learned an invaluable amount from them and their confrontational art! I now have friends all around me who are pushing the boundaries in art, from using found objects to make sound art, to swinging bones around their head with a rope made of human hair, to making a plaque for someone’s garden bench with a sentimental message.

I have witnessed many of my friends expressing things I would have never imagined seeing or feeling. And over the past few months I have been making things out of wax, wire; painting, sketching and taking photographs. I want to do so much more now and I want to celebrate the power we have in sharing experiences and sharing our art to inspire others. I hope to never underestimate my creative ability again or let another person stop me from enjoying making art.

‘You Are Not Yourself’ – can imply many meanings, but for me it relates to:

*the governmental bullshit and lies

*the consumerist society where money, material goods and results are more important than feelings and genuine expression

*the art teachers that lied and failed to really educate young people, as A grades were more important than encouraging people to think for themselves

I am burning this art as a protest against the unequal distribution of wealth in this society which perpetuates state, private, public and boarding schools; against hierarchies of power; against the institutionalisation of art; against the cuts and FOR the continuation of the arts in general.

From now on, my art is about genuine expression, not a means to an end. To be continued.

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Pledge #18

  Jennifer McDonald.

  Practice: Artist/Musician

Blog: http://jennifermcdonald1.wordpress.com/

Name of art work:

Description of art work:

  Pledge:  

I don't want to burn anything. I want to create. I want to create even when there is nearly no respect for the artist. To create even when I have to break the law in order to be an artist. To create even when there is nothing much to be inspired by. create even when human inquisition seems to be at an all time low. To create when there is mostly shit art around me. To create even when I might alienate people I want to connect with. To create even when the work I'm making is sociopathic and destructive.