11:10   Tony Trehy

Speaking on the formation of the Text Art Archive and launch of the 2019 Text Festival.

11:30   Philip Davenport

Objects ventriloquising human concern; Heart Shape Pornography (2004) onwards. The ways in which this work (featured in the RANDOM Archive exhibition) influenced practice since.

Images – Phil Davenport.

12:00   Helmut Lemke

Performance The Archive of Failure, an interim outcome of the residency Listen Backwards to Advance at Bury Museum. (Below) Helmut’s recipe for processing and archiving your own rejections.

Helmut Lemke specialises in sound and installation art and he has developed site-specific concerts, performances and installations in a whole variety of sites and settings since he began his work in the 1970s. Lemke works with a variety of sounds, some ordinary, some unusual and combines them with other media and art-forms in his exhibitions. Venues that he has explored and used in his performances include: concert halls, outdoor markets, galleries, museums, the frozen sea off Greenland, function rooms of pubs and international festivals. His latest project examines European sound art practice through rigorous investigations of past work. This project unpacks one person’s creative practice and collaborations across Europe. Lemke has moved everything associated with his art practice throughout his life into the Fusilier Museum, opposite Bury Art Museum & Sculpture Centre. He will create a public archive over the course of the project, investigating a 40 year career in sound art as a durational public performance.

12:30   Lisa Wigham

The Two AM Press Pop-up Library – including pieces from working with Book Works studio, collaborative multiples from the mid 90’s, fanzines and postal art. http://www.twoampress.com/ 

Lisa Wigham began working under the name The Two a.m. Press in 1997 when she graduated from a BA in Fine Art at Kent Institute of Art and Design, Canterbury. This venture was initiated to make and disseminate artists books and multiples as conversation starters with democratic intent- outside traditional gallery spaces. Lisa curated happenings and exhibitions through collaborations in parks, bookshops, cinemas, public houses and homes around London until 2007 when she relocated to the north west. Since then her practice has extended through teaching workshops and public art commissions; one of which is visible on the windows of Preston Train Station Waiting Room as flickering gold type visible from moving trains.

13:15   Afternoon session

Three practitioners working with text as a means to highlight hidden lives, protest, dissent, social injustice and overlooked histories.

13:20   Penny Anderson

Penny Anderson is a writer, artist, and researcher, making text art in Glasgow. Anderson is a published writer of fiction and also social issues for inter allia The Guardian and The Pool. Artwork often takes the form of sewn embroidery, either as traditional style samplers or as labels attached to ready-mades such as doll’s house furniture or mass-produced domestic crockery. Text is painted onto surfaces such as sandpaper and tracing paper. Together this is placed into larger installations, intended to encourage conversations. Much of this is gleaned from the hypothesis of ‘Speechbubbles’. People say amazing things in public, and unless heard, conserved and recontextualised, their thoughts, beliefs and memories will disappear.

Images: Original text pieces by Penny Anderson

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

13:40   Lauren Velvick

Lauren Velvick is a writer, artist and curator based in the North of England. She is currently Programme Co-ordinator at Bluecoat, Liverpool and is a Liverpool Biennial Associate Artist. As Co-Director of The Exhibition Centre for the Life and Use of Books Lauren has produced exhibitions, events, performances and screenings including Butterworth: the Use and Abuse of Books, WE (Pil & Galia Kollectiv) & Onion Widow performances, Simon Bookish & Jennet Thomas performances, and in 2015 was featured in Modern History Vol.I, curated by Lynda Morris. Lauren has recently co-ordinated a six-person residency and commissioning project based around the work of Christopher Joseph Holme, an unknown Preston artist whose prolific oeuvre she is custodian of, and is writer-in-residence for In Certain Places during their ongoing ‘Expanded City’ project. She is a regular contributor to national and local arts publications including Art Monthly, The Skinny, The Double Negative and This Is Tomorrow and is a Contributing Editor of Corridor8.

Images: collection of artworks by CJH now an archive in the custodianship of Velvick, and work done by invited artists and writers to interpret these artefacts.

14:00   Jez Dolan

queer identity and the codification of language, secrecy and hiddenness. He works with a range of media according to the needs of each project and his work is research driven, often utilising archival material in the creation of new work. He is currently exhibiting in the major show, Coming Out at The Walker Art Gallery Liverpool, which subsequently tours to Birmingham Museum & Art Gallery later this year. His work is also currently exhibited at The People’s History Museum, The Britten-Pears Library at Aldeburgh, and The House of Lords.

http://jezdolan.com / @jezdolan

Images: collection of original work and visual research by the artist

14:20   Panel Q+A

Discussion focussed particularly on the ethics of creating and curating archives which might be otherwise excluded from institutions and historical dialogues. That attempting, even resulting in perceived failure, is preferable to allowing these histories to be lost and the voices silenced. Need for discussion and sharing of best practice amongst amateur and DIY archivists and artists, although there will not be one standard approach for all. One of the advantages of the amateur approach means we can tailor the model used to the content it contains.

(Audio of this session to be added)

Close – Tours  

Helmut Lemke tours his residency space at Bury Museum.

Rachel Defay-Liautard, Performance tour within Pavé Numérique installation – (meta;dia)logos

Rachel Defay-Liautard is a French poet born 1973. Her work which consists of concrete, vispo, e-poetry/net-art, installation, street and mail-art, performance and videopoetry has appeared in the following publications – nokturno, GAMMM, zswound, InternaPwoWriMo, new post-literate, REM, coupremine, PE#64, batterie faible (LP), She has performed/exhibited in the 2014 Bury Text Festival, The Other Room (UK)as well as, Klebnikov carnaval (Holland), and Overwriting, Le placard (live + streaming performance, 4ninabis (radio).