manchester

Creatrix Mag

New York based Go Push Pops inaugurate the premier issue of CREATRIX MAG with their story about their 2014 residency in Manchester's Alex Park and their final performance HOLY CREATRIXXX. Commissioned by Alexandra Arts for Pankhurst in the Park 2014, HOLY CREATRIXXX – ritual gathering, divine incantation and mystical neo-shamanic coven – was Go! Push Pops’ first work overseas and most comprehensive public project to date. They also facilitated a 5-week Holistic Art for Female Empowerment workshop series for the moms and students of St. Mary’s Primary School. Check it out here

The Merry Wagtail Jades, The Breeches They Do Carry

Pankhurst in the Park 2018 artist Anna FC Smith has done a write up about the work she created for our NYC adventure EMINENT DOMAIN, read about it here

The Merry Wagtail Jades, The Breeches They Do Carry: Impudent women and cuckold’s horns.

BY ANNA FC SMITH

“The title of the work I exhibited at Eminent Domain derives from the broadside ballad ‘A new summons to all the merry wagtail jades that attend at horn fair.’ Printed and sold by J. Pitts in England in 1802 and 1819, it reads: “Come all you wagtail jades, Who love to play the game: And whilst your husbands are abroad, To have some of the same”… “The breeches they do carry, And swear they will them wear, And have their sparks when they please, Though husbands jealous are.”

I exhibited three sculptural banners capped with cuckold’s horns “tipt (sic) with silver” as the broadside ballad describes. The banners themselves were Edwardian bloomers made from a fabric printed with colourful splattered eggs. Their accompanying film echoes with the dissonant sound of crashing and banging pans as the spirit of the impudent women of the past blows through the bloomers.

I was commissioned by Alexandra Arts as part of their Pankhurst In The Park centenary celebrations to explore the history of the Suffragettes and their relevance to contemporary radical feminism. I decided to explore older forms of female carnivalesque, unruly behaviour to draw comparisons with the actions of the Suffragettes and how they were perceived. My work aims to highlight a chain of symbolism in the raucous practices of dissent. My research began with the actions of spitting, pelting and egg throwing undertaken by and against the Suffragettes and led me to rough music and the phenomenon of the Horn Fair.”
— Anna FC Smith @ art511mag.com

Below is the video artist portrait that we commissioned of Anna FC Smith for the Pankhurst in the Park 2018 season

Spiraling Smoke

BY CLAIRE ZAKIEWICZ

Is now live over at Art 511 Magazine! This article was commissioned by Alexandra Arts  and first published in the special print edition of Art 511 Mag celebrating International Women’s Day and the centenary for UK women’s suffrage [funded by ARTS COUNCIL ENGLAND] during the Pankhurst in the Park 2018 season. Plus, you can download the digital version of the full mag here

“I met SOL KJØK in May 2017 at her loft in Brooklyn when I became one of her artists in residence. Her studio is the size of two tennis courts, and you can see both the Empire State and Chrysler buildings through a pair of factory windows. Acrobatic swings, harnesses and platforms dangle from 20ft ceilings. A full-sized tipi sits off-centre in the space where a Shaman performs drum journeys. World-class physicists, artists, academics and eccentrics regularly pass through. Her world is an inspiring, cross-pollinating place of collaboration and interaction. From the roof you overlook one of the most polluted pockets of America’s post-industrial wasteland – a mad dystopian scene set against one of the most inspiring skylines in the world.”
— Claire Zakiewicz

Women Hold Up Half The Sky press release

For immediate use: 11 May 2018 

Pankhurst in the Park celebrates Ekua Bayunu’s “Women Hold up Half the Sky”

Pankhurst in the Park is proud to present this year’s artist in residence Ekua Bayunu’s “Women Hold up Half the Sky”, an interdisciplinary project taking place over eight weeks between April 14th and June 9th. This is an invitation to join us on the final date, when we will take the opportunity to celebrate the project and what it’s participants have produced in Alexandra Park. There will be music, spoken words, exhibitions, a sculpture trail, art workshops, and a closing party at the Pavilion Café.

2018 marks both the centenary of women (over thirty) winning the right to vote in England and the third and final year of the Pankhurst in the Park program. We commemorate this historic achievement and reflect on the ongoing issues with the political agency and representation of women today. One of the ways we have responded to this is by using this project as a platform to showcase the wealth and talent that female artists, in Manchester and internationally, have to offer.

Ekua’s proposal led to her being awarded the artist in residence commission by a selection panel of eminent figures within the Manchester art community, among them John McGrath, director of the Manchester International Festival and Helen Wewiora of the Castlefield Gallery. Other commissioned local artists include Anna FC Smith and Tasha Whittle.

Of being awarded this position in the project, Ekua said this:

I was thrilled to hear I had won the residency. It means so much to me to be able to work with Alexandra Arts, with all their passion and creative energy AND it means so much to me to be able to bring the local communities that I cherish, into this creative enterprise.

In between the opening and closing dates of “Women Hold up Half the Sky”, Ekua will be coordinating local community engagement and off-sight female artist studio initiatives in the form of a series of meetings and workshops. Ekua’s project is run in association with Global Arts Manchester, a group she co-founded.

Alexandra Arts teamed up with NYC-based publication 511 Magazine to produce a special edition for this year’s Pankhurst in the Park, published on March 8th, International Women’s Day. It includes an article on Ekua’s work by NYC-based artist Katie Cercone. It also features art, prints, and articles by a number of other artists who are contributing this year including Anna FC Smith, Tasha Whittle, Go! Push Pops (2014’s artist in residence), Marilyn Minter, Melanie Banajo, NARCISSISTER and much more. Printed copies are available at all our events and as a free download.

Find out more at www.alexandra-arts.org.uk.

ENDS

Comments, photos, and interviews are available. Please contact Lotte Karlsen by phone on +44 (0)7816683171 or email press@alexandra-arts.org.uk.

OPEN CALL FOR INTERSECTIONAL FEMINIST ART

EMINENT DOMAIN: A Flash Art Exhibition in the former Robert Miller space in West Chelsea is a curated selection of radical feminist art by female artists, eco-femmes, ghetto brujas, elders, queer/trans artists and other magical gender nomads reclaiming their rightful space in the Art World. We can unpack Feminism here and define it, as critical theorist and activist bell hooks does - “a movement to end sexism, sexist exploitation and oppression” - at the roots of which is gender stereotypes and narratives perpetuated by heteronormative white male capitalist patriarchy, not men themselves. Based on the logic that the white male western canon has always revolved around a discourse drawing from, exploiting, misrepresenting and objectifying female bodies and the racial/sexual Other, EMINENT DOMAIN seizes a white box space in the heart of the commercial art world for a militantly utopic “flash flood” of new media, live performance action and artworks of every size and stripe that explode the old derogative archetypes and tell another story about Art, ritual, community and the divine feminine mysteries. Intersectional, post-colonial, queer, social-justice oriented and community-minded works of Art from folks that defy the status quo and get knee-deep in the paradigm shift will overwhelm the space and stake ground for new dialogue, new ideals and new marketplace tactics. Visionary video, installation, new and mixed media as well as painting and sculptural objects will snake through the gallery space animated by the din of performance, music, spoken word and new genre time-based pieces.  A handful of the contemporary art world’s key non-profit organizations will join us to present what they do and how you can get involved.

EMINENT DOMAIN was an impulse seeded by Art 511 Mag’s recent partnership with the Manchester, UK-based Alexandra Arts collective. This Spring, Art 511 Mag and Alexandra Arts teamed up to produce a limited edition 74 page full-color print commission celebrating International Women’s Day and the centenary for UK women's suffrage (funded by ARTS COUNCIL ENGLAND) for the 2018 Pankhurst in the Park season. The edition, available as a free download online here, features critical essays, interviews and artworks by notoriously brilliant siren radicals such as Marilyn Minter, Narcissister, Melanie Bonajo, Samantha Conlon (Bunny Collective), Go! Push Pops and Ekua Bayunu among others. Included in this curated selection is film stills from the infamous performance artist Narcissister’s first original feature film Organ Player, which reflects on the personal impact of her mother’s illness and death, also a 2018 selection at the Sundance Film Festival. Marilyn Minter’s bush painting gracing the back cover is part of a series partially inspired by a set of photos which were the result of a 2014 photography commission Minter attempted to complete for Playboy magazine. Minter’s editorial was rejected by Playboy for its depiction of women’s pubic hair au natural, and later became a book and subject of the paintings included in our special women’s issue. Meanwhile a narrative photo essay by Bunny Collective director Samantha Conlon explores the relationship between illness, the medical industrial complex and women’s agency.

As Alexandra Arts director Lotte Karlsen and Amy Clancy outline in the forward: “The art world still bows to a model created by white European men. The top three museums in the world, the British Museum, the Louvre, and The Metropolitan Museum of Art have never had female directors. Female artists earn less on average than their male counterparts and make up a fraction of the work in permanent exhibitions and auction market. It’s not enough to be good at their game or even the best; it’s rigged. So, it’s time to devise our own, not just for and by women, but in collaboration with all those whose voices, opportunities and rights are stifled.” In this spirit, EMINENT DOMAIN is a guerrilla exhibition mounted in the global art epicenter of the world which boldly carries the torch for alternative models promoting the power, equality, magic, pleasure, creative self-expression and financial freedom of women, people of color, and gender non-conformers. 

EMINENT DOMAIN opens July 12th in Chelsea followed by a Women In the Arts Panel comprised of a diverse cross-section of female thought leaders in the International Art World playing the fluid roles of curator, organizer/activist, gallerist, artist and arts administrator.

Download full ART 511 Alexandra Arts Commission here

SUBMIT work for the exhibition here

AIR Ekua's full event schedule

April 14th, 2018, marks the launch of the 8-week interdisciplinary project “Women Hold up Half the Sky” led by AIR Ekua. Bayunu will be running community-oriented sessions in the park and an offsite female artist studio initiative. On June 9th, 2018, you are invited to a celebrate the AIR showcase event, hosting happenings all around the park, culminating in a closing party at the Pavilion café. All in association with the Global Arts Manchester.

If you are a female artist and are interested in taking part in the 'Women Hold Up Half The Sky' Studio, then contact Global Arts Manchester on ga.mcr@outlook.com

Happy International Womens Day

Happy International Women’s day and HELLO Pankhurst in the Park centenary magazine edition!

For Pankhurst in the Park 2018 we have teamed up with online publication and NYC based Art 511 Mag and commissioned a limited edition printed copy of the mag.

Curated between Alexandra Arts and Art 511 Mag, this special print edition features a host of inspirational contributors to whom we owe huge debt of thanks – Scotto Mycklebust, Katie Cerone, Gia Portfolio, Christopher Booth, Pablo Melchor, Marilyn Minter, Anna FC Smith, Melanie Bonajo, Go Push Pops, Laura Weyl , ULTRACULTURAL OTHERS, Samantha Conlon/ Bunny Collective, High Prieztezz or Nah, Sol Kjøk, Claire Zakiewicz, Ekua Bayunu, Elisa Garcia de la Huerta, Lauren Velvick, Hannah Leighton Boyce, Ruth Barker, Castlefield Gallery, Helen Wewoira, Naomi Kashiwagi, NARCISSISTER and Tasha Whittle.

To celebrate International Women’s Day, we are heading down to the exhibition launch for Hannah Leighton Boyce and Ruth Barker at the Castlefield Gallery. To find out more about the artists’ research, and their residencies with Glasgow Women’s Library and the University of Salford. For the Art 511 Mag centenary edition we commissioned local artist and writer Lauren Velvick to write about the exhibition. Inside you will also find an interview of Helen Wewoira, Director of Castlefield Gallery.

Download it here or flick through the online copy below.

Pankhurst in the Park 2018