Idea Generation

A new wave of Vauxhall Collective commissions are announced

Katie Paterson, Duncan Speakman, Seba Kurtis and Studio Glithero are this year’s brightest creative talent to be commissioned by Vauxhall Motors

Four of the most hotly anticipated artists, designers, theatre practitioners and photographers in the UK have been commissioned by the car company Vauxhall to create art works around the theme of re-inventing British classics. The result of the commissions is four stunningly imaginative and exciting works that throw open the concept of what is a British classic and highlight Vauxhall’s commitment to supporting style and design in the UK.

Chosen by a Style Council of industry experts and previous Vauxhall Collective members including Gideon Reeling and the photographer Gayle Chong Kwan this year’s members are the latest in an impressive line-up of up and coming artists that the initiative has supported, enabling them to take their work in new directions with complete artist freedom.

For 2009’s commissions, Scottish artist Katie Paterson has taken the British seaside town as her inspiration and will create an entrancing installation named Streetlight Storm, where a series of lights along a pier will flicker in sync with storm patterns around the world. The location of the installation will be announced later in the autumn. Paterson was chosen for her innovative approach to reinventing the British classic. The combination of this exciting work, bound up in the relationship between connectivity and the landscape through technology is eagerly awaited.

Theatre practitioner Duncan Speakman, using his unique form of “subtle mobs”, will take to the streets of three major cities in the UK. Combining cinematic style soundtracks and narrative on downloadable MP3 tracks, Speakman invites you to join him on a street near you and re-examine the everyday classic British city scene.
The Style Council chose Speakman for his pioneering approach to interactive theatre experiences and was excited to see how he would frame the UK’s urban landscape, turning the performances into a unique experience for each of the individual audience members.

Photographer Seba Kurtis will examine what it is to be British; combining images of Kurtis’ stereotypical idea of the classic British resident, from the English rose to the country gent, right through to his own modern interpretation of multicultural Britain. His proposition to capture the UK’s residents won the Style Council over and will be at once a compelling and a beautiful representation of Britain today.

Design partnership Studio Glithero will create a selection of ceramic objects entitled A Brief Moment of Happiness using an innovative technique that involves impregnating the surface of the ceramics with light sensitive chemicals to create ethereal and fleeting images of flowers. Taking inspiration from the blue and white china of the 18th century and detailed scientific drawings by British botanists, the Style Council was impressed by Studio Glithero’s ability to take inspiration from antiquated objects and bring them up to date with new technologies.

Last year’s commissions were based on the theme of The Great British Road Trip and saw photographs of the Scottish landscape inspired by Daguerre’s dioramas, a film that visits the self-declared King of the British Eccentrics, an art exhibition inspired by Funhouses, a 1950s tea party followed by a 1980s wedding reception, a glamorous, metallic leather driving set and a collection of design objects based on lost British craft techniques. With such strong commissions from the last year, the work of the Vauxhall Collective 2009 promises not to disappoint.

Each of the creatives will have the use of a Vauxhall car and will travel around the UK seeking out inspiration for their individual commissions. The commissions will be completed between October and December 2009 and will see a range of art works being produced by this exciting and varied group of artists.

The theme of re-inventing British classics was chosen as it chimes well with Vauxhall’s own work re-inventing the car as we know it in the form of the Ampera, its first electric car.

The Vauxhall Collective 2009 members’ biographies:

Fine Art: Katie Paterson

Katie Paterson’s artistic practice is multi-disciplinary, cross-medium, and conceptually driven, often exploring landscape by means of technology, and connectivity by way of moonlight, melting glaciers, and dead stars. Recent works include Earth–Moon–Earth (Moonlight Sonata Reflected from the Surface of the Moon), which involved the transmission of Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata to the moon and back; Vatnajökull (the sound of), a live phone line to an Icelandic glacier; and All the Dead Stars, a large map documenting the locations of the 27,000 dead starts known to humanity.

Paterson graduated from the Slade School of Fine Art in 2007, where her final exhibition gained much attention and recognition among art critics, academics and the media, and was restaged a year later at Modern Art Oxford, where she was the youngest artist to be granted a solo-show. She has recently exhibited at Altermodern: Tate Triennial 2009, Tate Britain, Universal Code, Powerplant, Toronto, and Lifeforms, Bonniers Konsthall, Stockholm. Upcoming shows include PERFORMA 09, New York.

Theatre: Duncan Speakman

Duncan Speakman is an artist based in Bristol, UK. Originally trained as a sound engineer at the Liverpool Institute for Performing Arts, his work now examines how we use sound to locate ourselves in personal and political environments. Seeking out the poetics of the everyday, he creates socially relevant experiences that engage audiences emotionally and physically in public spaces. Alongside his art practice he is a senior lecturer in Media Practice at the University of the West of England and is currently developing site-responsive soundwalks, street games and pervasive theatre works.

He has been exhibited internationally and in 2001 was awarded the Clark Trust Bursary for digital arts and has received critical acclaim for his videoblog, 29 fragile days. In 2007 he was peer advisor on the Almost Perfect locative media residency at Banff New Media Institute and since 2008 has been an artist in residence at the Pervasive Media Studio, Bristol.

Photography: Seba Kurtis

Seba Kurtis is an artist and photographer who grew up in Buenos Aires. He studied journalism and was a political activist. With the political difficulties in Argentina, he left for Europe and remained in Spain as an illegal immigrant for over 5 years. This experience became the main inspiration for his work, an exploration of the dynamics behind irregular migration and the subsequent impact on culture, society and the individual. His recent work 700 miles, a series of portraits of illegal hispanic immigrants living on the US border, explores the identity of these often nameless people and celebrates the story behind the sitter. In Drowned, Kurtis highlighted the plight of tens of thousands of Africans who head for the Canary Islands every year. Many are suspected to have drowned off the coast of Spain, Kurtis recorded scenes around the Canary Islands and dropped the negatives into the ocean. The images that washed up on the shore are the images that survived.

Craft & Design: Studio Glithero

Studio Glithero is a London based Anglo-Dutch design alliance. Founded by Tim Simpson and Sarah van Gameren, who met at the Royal College of Art, the studio creates miraculous time-based installations, and processes which give birth to unique and wonderful products. With their own concoction of design performance, they aim to bridge creative disciplines and reach a universal audience. Recent projects include Pique & Double Pique, a pair of self-supporting candles, a series of vases impregnated with light sensitive chemicals and Big Dipper where an audience can witness the complete life of a product, from the moment the chandeliers are conceived until the moment they burn and perish.

Editor’s Notes:

Vauxhall Motors

With an ongoing commitment to championing style and design in the UK, British car marque Vauxhall is a keen supporter of creativity through initiatives such as the Vauxhall Art Car Boot Fair 2009, the Vauxhall Fashion Scout and the Vauxhall Collective.

Latest models include Insignia, the 2009 European Car of the Year and New Astra, a car that shares the same design language as Insignia and that will be built in Ellesmere Port, Liverpool.

Vauxhall is reinventing the car as we know it with Ampera. Vauxhall’s first electric car. The wheels are turned electronically at all times and all speeds and can be plugged into any household 240v outlet for charging.

Vauxhall Collective

The Vauxhall Collective is one of the most ambitious commercially-funded creative support schemes in the UK.

Members of the Vauxhall Collective are supported financially to carry out projects, consequently raising their profile in the industry and in the media, and giving them the resources to fulfil their creative potential.

In previous years Vauxhall successfully ran the VX Collective based on collaboration between members. Previous members have included Giles Deacon, Christopher Kane, Jonathan Kelsey, Simon Hasan, Ben Rivers, Gayle Chong Kwan, Matthew Darbyshire and Gideon Reeling.

Contacts:
For further information / Use of pictures / Interviews
Idea Generation: +44(0)20 7749 6850
Ellen Harrison: ellen@ideageneration.co.uk
Marta Bogna: marta@ideageneration.co.uk
Vauxhall Collection website
Vauxhall website