Vauxhall Motors presents a groundbreaking reinterpretation of the Blueprinting process

Design partnership Studio Glithero complete a series of ceramic products reinventing the classic “white on blue” Jasperware style for the Vauxhall Collective

London based duo Studio Glithero present a cutting edge collection of ceramics for the Vauxhall Collective. In a contemporary take of the Blueprint, chemically infused ceramic surfaces react to ultraviolet light capturing the ghostly impression of botanical specimens, including those of weeds taken from social housing projects across the UK, bringing the theme of Reinventing British Classics right up to date.

Asked to reflect on the Vauxhall Collective’s theme, the Anglo-Dutch design studio found inspiration from the Victorian period of great discoveries, when British explorers travelled the world in search of new exotic species. In 1840 chemist and botanist John Hershel invented the Blueprinting process, marking the advent of photography and offering his fellow pioneers an invaluable tool to record and document their discoveries.

Studio Glithero travelled to the UK’s centre for ceramic heritage, Stoke-on-Trent, in a Vauxhall Astra ecoFLEX and worked with master ceramicists to produce the highest possible quality products. The result of this research is an innovative process bringing together an artisan approach to ceramics with a rare use of photography.

In keeping with the early Blueprinting techniques, a series of white vases and tiles were embedded with light-reacting chemicals. A combination of weeds and images of botanical specimens inspired to Kew Garden’s Herbarium were arranged on the ceramic surfaces and exposed to UV light causing an intense colour transformation from white to Prussian blue. What is left is a crisp white silhouette of the specimens, creating intricate floral designs on the deep blue background; a homage to the classic British Jasperware tradition of white on blue ceramics.

The series of light sensitive objects include a selection of tiles and two editions of individually numbered vases, all of which bear a unique impression on their surfaces. They can be bought from the Vauxhall Collective website, for more information visit www.vauxhallcollective.co.uk. Studio Glithero continue to work on this technique and are currently developing a lightshade as part of the range.

Blueware Tiles, 2009

Set of 12 tiles, £150

Botanical specimens are arranged on glass plates placed over tiles, exposed to UV light they operate like a photographic negative. The plates are flipped to achieve symmetrical compositions and ordered patterns.

Blueware Vases, 2009

Large numbered, limited edition vase £700
Medium numbered, limited edition vase £500

Botanical specimens are fixed to the surface of the vases using flower pressing techniques. The vases are exposed to a UV light on a rotating spit, capturing the plant-life from leaf to root, reminiscent of white on blue Jasperware cameos.

Editor’s Notes:

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.

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 Collective website
Vauxhall website

Vauxhall Motors announces the completion of a landmark photographic commission by Seba Kurtis

A new body of portraits by photographer Seba Kurtis explores the rich diversity of the British population in a new commission by Vauxhall Motors

Photographer Seba Kurtis first arrived in Europe as an illegal immigrant from Argentina. He followed the dream of a perfect life that attracts many to first world countries, considering Europe as a Promised Land. In this stunning series of portraits commissioned by Vauxhall, Kurtis explores his pre-conceptions of British people whilst simultaneously re-inventing what it means to be British in today’s multicultural society.

Fascinated by stereotypical characters like the English Rose and the British Gentleman, Kurtis wanted to analyse how their modern re-incarnation differs from the original, drawing a parallel between the idealised classic British life imagined as an immigrant, and the everyday reality.

In this cathartic work he travelled to London, Manchester, Blackpool, Cheshire, Birmingham, Liverpool, Bradford, Rhyl and Brighton, where he spent days shooting on a large format camera, documenting hundreds of people. In his personal re-interpretation of classic British characters, Kurtis captures an insightful snapshot of the UK today whilst getting to know the people who are now part of the country’s population.

People like Agata, born in the UK from Polish parents, who spent her childhood in Britain. She moved back to Poland as a teenager, but has now returned to London as a young woman. Agata belongs to two countries and embraces two different cultures; she suffers an identity crisis, a situation mirrored in Kurtis’ portrait, where the young woman is suspended in a dreamy reality and yet conveys her determination to succeed in life.

Gemma was born and bred in the UK. Having left her family, she chose to be a traveller, and makes a living out of performing with her two horses in circus-style events. The portrait depicts the English girl in her bright pink costume, jarring against her dilapidated surrounding.

Sata, an Iranian Kurd, known as Star to his friends, was only 14 when he escaped Iran by swimming to Turkey. It took him two years to get to the UK, during which time he was homeless in Greece, France and Italy. After 6 attempts he finally managed to enter the UK hidden in a lorry, four years ago. He will not be able to see his family ever again, and should he return to Iran, he could face hanging. He still doesn’t have a passport, but has been granted permission to stay in the UK. He works in a kebab shop in Cheshire.

Ahmed, a grocer who has lived in the UK for over 20 years, Jordy, from Manchester, who has been raised in foster care and is now a social worker, Sweet, who works illegally 16 hours a day to support her three children in South America, and many others, contribute to the series of portraits reflecting Kurtis’ view of the UK: multicultural, illegal, aspirational and, moreover, deeply human.

As a trademark of his work, Kurtis purposely ruins the films whilst still undeveloped, exposing them to the sunlight for a few seconds. This action results in the photographs taking on imperfections and light, symbolising both a positive message of hope and a reminder that the dream of a perfect life is always to be balanced with reality.

Winner of the Vauxhall Collective Photography category Seba Kurtis was chosen by a panel of industry experts for his ability to create powerful and yet delicate work, drawing from his own personal experience to reflect on universally shared emotions. Commissioned by Vauxhall Motors to create a body of photographs on the theme “reinventing British classics”, he has produced a series of portraits capturing the essence of British people today; whether they are born and bred in the UK, second generation residents or illegal immigrants.

Editor’s Notes:

Seba Curtis
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.

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

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 Collective website
Vauxhall website
Seba Kurtis website

Katie Paterson contemplates the ecosystem in a new commission for Vauxhall Motors

21st December 2009 – 30th January 2010
Deal Pier, Kent

Katie Paterson’s evocative new artwork, Streetlight Storm, transforms Deal pier into a monitoring system for global storm patterns

Scottish artist Katie Paterson, one of the most exciting and closely watched artists of the moment, has been commissioned by Vauxhall Motors to create an art work on the theme of re-inventing British classics. Paterson has taken a British seaside town as her inspiration, and will create a work for Deal Pier. Along the length of the pier, out to sea, the lights will flicker in time with lightning storms as they occur live across the globe.

Starting on the winter equinox, the shortest day of the year on the 21st December, Streetlight Storm will take place throughout the darkest months of the British winter, silently conveying the weather patterns of a whole planet. In this contemplative and evocative place, the gentle flickering of the lights will unfold between dusk, darkness and dawn, reflecting on the water through the night, contrasting with the drama of the lightning strikes that spark through.

Pairing the commonplace with the sublime is a recurring theme in Paterson’s work. Viewers can gaze out to the horizon from the pier as these everyday streetlights connect the imagination with faraway places and the Earth’s ecosystem at large. A simple concept, yet expansive in scope, the work will connect people with diverse geographies, collapsing distances and timescales, the artificial and the natural.

Central to Paterson’s practice is collaboration and this commission is no exception as the artist works with technologists, engineers, meteorologists and lightning scientists within the UK and internationally. Ambitious in scale, Streetlight Storm will fuel new cutting-edge partnerships and innovation and reflect Vauxhall’s use of advanced technologies and ethos of excellence in design and engineering. The theme of re-inventing British classics chimes with Vauxhall’s own work re-inventing the car as we know it in the form of the Ampera, its first electric car.

Katie Paterson commented, “I am interested in the way the ordinary and the otherworldly intersect, and much of my work uses everyday technologies from doorbells to record players and connecting with vast and intangible phenomena such as dying stars and the moon). I hope the work’s universal content will ignite the imagination of many.”

Katie Paterson is a member of the Vauxhall Collective 2009 www.vauxhallcollective.co.uk Streetlight Storm is supported by Vauxhall Motors and Albion Gallery, in partnership with Turner Contemporary and Whitstable Biennale and runs from 21st December – 30 January 2010.

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.

Katie would like to thank Vauxhall Motors, Albion Gallery, Turner Contemporary and Whitstable Biennale for supporting the commission, along with Martin John Callanan, Kent County Council, Dover District Council, Future Creative, Ken Doyle, Martin Fullekrug and Dieter Lang.

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.

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

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.

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 Collective website
Vauxhall website
Katie Paterson website

A groundbreaking theatrical experience from Duncan Speakman

London, 12th November 2009
Bristol, 13th November 2009
Liverpool, 14th November 2009

“Putting on a pair of headphones you find yourself immersed in the cinema of everyday life. As the soundtrack swells, people in the crowd around you re-enact the England of today. Sometimes you’re just drifting and watching, sometimes you’re creating the scenes yourself. This is no requiem, this a celebratory slow dance, a chance to savour the world you live in.” Duncan Speakman

Duncan Speakman, Vauxhall Collective member and critically acclaimed theatre practitioner, invites you to join him as he re-examines the classic British street scene. Our everyday lives are set to be re-invented as Speakman takes to the streets and asks us all to reconsider the ground we walk on. Famous for his “subtle mobs” and cinematic style of theatre using soaring soundtracks and beautifully presented framed scenes, Speakman is asking the people of London, Bristol and Liverpool to arrive at a secret venue at a specific time and date in November, armed only with an MP3 file and headphones. The audience, who can sign up to take part in the free event through the website www.subtlemob.com, will be sent an MP3 file to download onto their i-pod or mobile phone prior to the event, and asked to gather at a given time and location, put on their headphones and press play to begin their own simultaneous experience of the subtle mob.

The audience will at once be transported from an average street in a big city to another world where nothing is quite as it seems. Speakman applies the poetry of our routines to his work, creating invisible public artworks, inviting us all to look at the everyday in a creative light. Working closely with a plethora of performers, actors, sound engineers, musicians and contemporary “makers”, as well as speaking to local residents in each of the cities and asking them to contribute to the voiceover in each location, Speakman will lead the public in a very personal re-interpretation of life today in Britain.

Each individual audience member will become part of a larger group, all experiencing slightly different versions of the same events. A pattern of activity will slowly emerge as participants see a plot unfolding through the events and information presented throughout the walk. Both spectators and participants, the audience members will see the street they walk down framed in a very different way as Speakman offers them an alternative view of their surroundings.

Winner of the Vauxhall Collective commission for theatre, Speakman was chosen by a panel of industry experts from Soho Theatre, Pleasance Theatre and interactive theatre specialists Gideon Reeling who were last year’s Vauxhall Collective members for the category. The Bristol based theatre practitioner was selected for his ability to create compelling experiences that both physically and emotionally engage audiences in public spaces.

Speakman was commissioned by Vauxhall Motors to create a piece of theatre with the theme of “re-inventing British classics” and he has produced the three performances as part of his ongoing exploration of how the use of sound influences the perception of public places. He toured the three UK locations in his Vauxhall Astra EcoFLEX to get a feel for each city. The theme of re-inventing British classics was chosen by Vauxhall as it fits well with the re-invention of the car, something the car company is doing with Ampera, their first electric vehicle.

As If It Were The Last Time soundtrack has been co-written with Sadie Anderson of Chrome Hoof, with additional contributions from Laura Groves (Blue Roses) and will be devised with members of Uninvited Guests (Lynn Gardner’s Edinburgh festival favourites), Action Hero and a number of other contemporary theatre/performance makers and performing arts students.

To sign up to be part of Duncan Speakman’s subtle mob performances visit www.subtlemob.com

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.

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.
tables.

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 Collective website
Vauxhall website
Subtle Mob website

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

The Vauxhall 48-hour road movie challenge will be held at the Branchage Jersey International Film Festival from 1st to 4th October 2009

7 teams of hotly-tipped emerging UK filmmakers have just two days to plan, shoot and edit a classic short film to be shown at Branchage’s Saturday Night Drive-In in Jersey’s People’s Park, 3rd October.

The Vauxhall 48-hour road movie challenge is set to be a race against time as 7 teams of film makers from across the UK sign up to create a classic road movie short in just 48 hours. The challenge will be headed up by prolific and multi-award winning filmmakers Chris and Ben Blaine (Hallo Panda, Death of the Revolution). Each team will be guided by the Blaine Brothers as they explore Jersey’s 9 by 5 mile landmass.

The teams of filmmakers, directors and actors from mainland UK and Jersey alike, will explore the islands cliffs and beaches, towns and villages, fields and ancient ruins in vehicles including an Astra Sport Hatch to create their films. Staying in a ‘Filmmakers Camp’ at Jersey’s Bleu Soleil campsite, the teams will work round the clock to produce their films in time for the Branchage Saturday Night Drive-In in Jersey’s Peoples Park, where they will be screened before the main feature – The Wizard of Oz.

Film makers, actors and directors already signed up for the movie challenge include; Robert Morgan, a director who has received commissions from the UK Film Council and FilmFour and has made the films His Passionate Bride and Monster; the actress Nathalie Pownall who has appeared in Spring Awakening and Doctors; comic actress Jessica Fostekew fresh from Edinburgh where she worked with Mark Thomas and on her own solo show; Emma Rozanski who is currently working on The Storymaker, a dark fable about a woman who kills herself with her imagination; Ellie Paskell who has played diverse roles in programmes such as Holby City, Burn It, Blood Strangers, Children’s Ward, and The Illustrated Mum; film director Alex Jacob who made his first short film Marbles with a budget of just £50 and Gaelle Denis who directed City Paradise, After the Rain and Fish Never Sleep.

For more information on Branchage Jersey International Film Festival and the Vauxhall 48 hour road movie challenge visit www.branchagefestival.com

Contacts
For further information / Use of pictures / Interviews
Idea Generation: +44(0)20 7749 6850
Ellen Harrison: ellen@ideageneration.co.uk
Natalie Tacq: natalie@ideageneration.co.uk
Branchage website
Vauxhall website