AirSpace Studio Show - featured artist #1 - Behjat Omer Abdulla

This year's 12 artist AirSpace Studio Show kicks off on Friday 21st September, and over the next two weeks, we'll be featuring an artist and their work. First up is Behjat Omer Abdulla :

Man and His Bit of Paradise

Woman and Her Bit of Paradise III

Woman and Her Bit of Paradise II

All works are framed, graphite powder and pencil on paper.

As a mixed media artist working mainly with drawing, photography and video installation, Behjat primarily deals with people's lives. He uses art to listen to people's stories and tries to create a platform for debate. For Behjat, art is a way to raise questions about who we are and how we place ourselves in the world. It is a  way to be in touch with our responses to life and a way of speaking that allows viewers to translate, decode and change it to their own languages.

These three drawings are inspired by his father's old photographs. The project is still developing, with the digging into his family history, still in the early stages. Behjat says, "There were about 250 photo negatives. When I developed them here in the U.K., I was completely surprised by what I was seeing, as we had them all as negatives in the family for many years. I found the faces of relatives, young men and women, people we have already lost in the family, and the photos of my dad when he was in the army and when he was very young. The images are very important to me, politically powerful and I was personally discovering and going under a thick layer of family history. The most surprising moment for me was to see images of my dad and grandparents' identity cards, documents and birth certificate papers."

AirSpace Studio Show 2012

AirSpace Studio's annual show begins this Friday 21st September. After two years of external site specific shows - Common Ground in Hanley Park in 2010 and Kiss Me Quick in Margate last year - this studio show is returning to a non-themed exhibition of each studio member's current practice. 

As a group, we talked about the transference of our studio work into the gallery space, to give viewers an insight into what happens upstairs at AirSpace, and so the individual exhibits are generally not necessarily finished pieces but a presentation of works in progress. 

Our studio group is a broad church, and so while there are some common links, the show will comprise the full spectrum of contemporary art endeavour and themes. Exhibitors are listed below, and watch out over the next two weeks, as we'll be blogging about each artist and their work.

Behjat Omer Abdulla

David Bethell

Andrew Branscombe

Michael Branthwaite

Anna Francis

Janine Goldsworthy

Adam Gruning

Joyce Iwazsko 

Adam Kelly

Kate Lynch 

Pete Smith

Glen Stoker

The show this year also includes two workshops - Anna Francis will lead a Brownfield Ikebana session on the site of the old ABC Cinema on Broad Street, and Kate Lynch will run two Open Yarden events in the Gallery Yard, looking at themes of Perma-culture. Places for the Ikebana workshop are limited to 10 and should be booked through the Gallery, whilst the Yard sessions are open to all.

The first Yard session is 22nd September, while the Ikebana workshop and second yard event will be on October 6th.

The exhibition will run until October 6th  - Tuesdays-Saturdays 11:00-17:00 - admission is free.

In The Window - Anna Francis, "Brownfield Ikebana"

AirSpace Gallery's new window exhibition is currently showing - Anna Francis - Brownfield Ikebana 
The work will be on display until September16th.

In Brownfield Ikebana Anna presents part of a new series of works, which aim to draw attention to some of the brownfield sites that can be found throughout the city, in the wake of various now defunct or collapsed regeneration programmes. The schemes saw the demolition of buildings and homes all over the city, but with the funding to rebuild seemingly swallowed up with the changing political climate, the interim period between demolition and development seems set to grow. 

Empty spaces are now populated by wildflowers and other wildlife, and in some places citizen activism has seen the local population scattering wildflower seeds, improving the environment in the intervening period. Brownfield Ikebana celebrates these impromptu wildlife havens, using the Japanese art of flower arranging, but replacing the vase with items of  rubbish salvaged from 3 brownfield sites close to the gallery  replacing the flowers with 'weeds.' 

Perhaps Brownfield Ikebana can act as a call for the council to nurture these sites, and see their potential in the short-term, rather than allowing them to become fly-tipping zones.



Anna Francis is an artist whose practice examines private histories, public space and civic languages; using forms of intervention, walking, drawing, mapping, performance, consultation and photography to investigate the impact that artists can have on their environments. Within Anna's practice she creates situations for herself, the public and other artists to explore places differently: often experimenting with leading and instruction by creating manuals, instructions,  kits or leading guided tours.

Anna Francis is course leader on the BA Fine Art course at Staffordshire University.

For more information and images of work please go to:

http://www.annafrancis.blogspot.com