AirSpace Yarden - some goldfinches and a blue tit - and a brief pigeon

                                      Birdlife in the AirSpace Yarden - 05.03.13

The AirSpace Yarden is coming along nicely, and certainly has the approval of a series of feathered visitors. In a break from some studio work this afternoon, I grabbed a cup of tea, and took in some spring sunshine. My break was accompanied by about half a dozen goldfinches, greedily tucking in to the sunflower seeds in the buddleia garden's bird feeder. The lone blue tit was soon chased away, but the pigeon that dropped in was more than happy to sit underneath, and await the inevitable falling scraps.

A great thing about this project, is the knowledge that in those times when the gallery is closed, the yard is still going to be a hive of unhindered activity. And that's part of the point really, as the space will work in two ways - firstly as a communal, creative place, but just as importantly as a thriving inner city sanctuary for the city's bird-life, and other complementary components of the local eco-system. In the last week alone, we've spotted goldfinches, blue tits, blackbirds, dunnocks, magpies and pigeons - who knows which other types are visiting when we're not there.

This weekend, we'll be finishing off the large raised bed, ready for planting out our assorted flora, and starting on the building of a bespoke stage, perfect for future performances, outdoor talks and workshops.

And, excitingly, the team from Bergen Academy of Art and Design who are here to install their findings from their Spode Works  investigative workshop for the forthcoming exhibition "The Site is the Question", will be enacting an archaeological dig in the yard this week, in the hope of unearthing some long lost ceramic treasures.

Coming soon at AirSpace

The Gallery's Spring programme has now been finalised and we can confirm three great new events and shows which will take us up to the end of May 2013.

The Site is the Question - 14th March - 2nd April, 2013

First up is "The Site is the Question" - an international, multi-artist exploration of the socio-economic histories, industrial architecture, and production and material remnants of the Spode factory site in Stoke Town, Stoke-on-Trent. Bergen Academy of Art and Design (KHiB) in Bergen, Norway, have been invited by The British Ceramics Biennial to deliver a series of events for their 2013 festival. 

In September 2012 the first of three interdisciplinary workshops at the former Spode Works, was led by Neil Brownsword (UK) and Anne Helen Mydland (NO), in collaboration with staff and students from KHiB and other partner universities in Britain, Denmark and Germany. 

Encompassing a variety of artistic practice, including mapping the site through various media, object appropriation and re-contextualisation, lens-based work through to performative gesture, "The Site is the Question" exhibition will be an exhaustive presentation of the workshop's findings and a fascinating and invaluable insight into the history of one of Stoke's iconic sites.

Installation for "The Site is the Question" begins at AirSpace this week, with the opening night on 14th March from when the exhibition will run until April 2nd.

click here for more information.

[OCCUPIED] - 14th-17th March, 2013

Running concurrently with "The Site is the Question", AirSpace is hosting a part of [OCCUPIED] in the Gallery's resource room exhibiting space. [OCCUPIED] is a 4-day, 7-artist, multi-venue event, where each exhibition component is a response to the space in which they occupy, encompassing a range of artistic approaches; installations, sculpture, photography, video, performance and live painting. The artists are all final year fine art  under-graduates from Staffordshire University.

For the full schedule, and venue details for [OCCUPIED] visit - http://www.occupiedevent.com/#!schedule/cj8l

Speaking in Tongues - A Solo Exhibition by Sarah R Key

"Speaking in Tongues" is AirSpace's first major exhibition of 2013 and presents a two-part series of paintings by 2011 Threadneedle Prize nominee, Sarah R Key. The exhibition presents a mix of new, previously unseen paintings as well as previously exhibited works.

Goldfinch No. 17, oil on canvas 30cm x 25cm

In Bird Songs To My Father Sarah presents a series of beautiful paintings of birds taken from a list made by her father of birds he had spotted and noted down in the back of his bird spotting book while visiting Gibraltar Point Nature Reserve, on the East Coast of England one weekend in 1976. The paintings of the designated birds are numbered according to where they fall in the list. The works highlight themes of human behaviour, and a sense of archiving, but is also a personal response for Sarah, as she notes that, 

"The list, written in the back of my father’s bird book is his only remaining personally authored document, a snapshot of a longstanding preoccupation with something."

The Philosophy of Constant Movement, 2012, oil on canvas,  60cm x 50cm

Birds are also prevalent in the series of paintings comprising The Sky Is Falling In, though the focus here is less personal and more conceptual and theoretical, investigating themes of failure, hope and the abstraction of death and the ability of painting to adequately communicate these ideas. Sarah says about this series, 

"The impossibility of using painting to make pictures that can cope with these subjects, leads the work into areas of digression: And to imagined scenarios and relationships between people, animals and birds."

Over the past decade, Sarah has developed a profile in contemporary painting, both nationally and internationally, exhibiting in major art venues in London, Stockholm and Dresden. Sarah’s work is represented in numerous private collections, has been awarded Arts Council Grants, as well as garnering art prizes and nominations over the past five years.

In 2010 her work was selected for the Royal Academy Summer Show; in 2011 for the prestigious Mostyn Open and Threadneedle Prize, where Sarah was a shortlisted finalist. Sarah has had four solo shows since 2009.

Currently Senior Lecturer and Award Leader in Fine Art at Staffordshire University, Sarah has been teaching in higher education since completing her MA in Painting at Wimbledon School of Art in 2001. During this period she also completed a PhD in Fine Art at Loughborough University.

Speaking in Tongues opens on 20th April and runs until May 11th and has been commissioned as the final act of Conjunction 12 to coincide with the grand opening of the Bi-ennial's YARDEN project which is looking at the transformation of an unused small urban space into a communal creative activity space with a focus on becoming a haven for local urban birdlife. 

AirSpace Yarden - paint, plants and a pond

The sun shone all day today, as Springtime reached Stoke-on-Trent, and in the Yarden, a bit of spring cleaning was top of the agenda. We had decided that the gallery's rear wall, which is a mix of bare brick and a big patch of rough plaster, could not only do with a bit of sprucing up but, if we painted it white, could also help to reflect a bit of much needed light into the space, which due to its close proximity to such a tall building, is predominantly shady. It took no time at all to do, and once finished, looked great and gave us the feeling that the yard had got a new hat.

Earlier in the week, Anna and Andy had made a start on bringing in some of the designated plants, chosen in particular for their suitability for a variety of birdlife. Trips to Trentham Gardens Garden Centre, and Bridgemere Nursery and Garden World proved really fruitful, in particular at Bridgemere where the most helpful of workers took the time to go and find out for us the RSPB's top ten plants for birds.We were encouraged that we had already identified most on the list, but a couple were new to us, such as Knapweed (Centaurea), Flowering Tobacco (Nicotiana) and Millet (Panicum miliacium).

the yarden plan

Once the wall was painted and the main part of the yard was cleared, we started to lay out the breeze blocks which are going to make up the base structure of the raised planting beds. We aim to have these mortared into place next week, ready to be painted. The bed is going to be about 6 metres long, and about a metre at its widest, but tapered across the full length due to the shape of the yard. At a depth of about half a metre, there will be plenty of root space for a variety of plants. These will include, echinacia, cotoneaster, lavender,  salvias, clematis, honeysuckle, dog-rose, jasmine and pyrocantha, plus a few astrantias and some alyssums. We also put together a bench from some rescued slates and 2 halves of a pallet, which we can use as a work station.

Late in the day, we turned our attention to installing the pond, which sits in a sunken spot in the Buddleia garden, and which we hope will attract some dragonflies and, hopefully, some amphibian life. And we managed to get some plants into this part of the yarden too -  a couple of ferns, a whitecurrant and redcurrant and a flowering helleborus.

Today's feathered guardians were a tiny dunnock, who accompanied us throughout the day, keeping a watchful eye on our activities, and a few goldfinches who sat impatiently, chirping away on the gallery roof, waiting for us to finish up so they could make inroads into the replenished stock of sunflower seeds.