Whitstable Biennale stages a festival every two years of new visual art film and performance. The event has grown out of Whitstable’s extensive artistic community, and has developed an international reputation for showcasing the UK’s most exciting up-and-coming artists, and engaging audiences in a rich programme.
Programme below and more details at www.whitstablebiennale.com
A coach will travel from Bethnal Green to Whitstable on Saturday 31st May, for the first day of the festival. Leaving in the morning, and returning to Bethnal Green in the evening (in time to catch tubes).
Email us at info@whitstablebiennale.com to find out more.
Book a place on the Bus, coming to Whitstable from London in the morning of Saturday 31 May 2014 for the first day of the Biennale, and going back to London the same evening. SEATS ARE LIMITED.
Pay by PayPal or credit card: £12 RETURN
Departure point:
V&A Museum of Childhood
Cambridge Heath Road
London E2 9PA
at 11:00 on Saturday 31 May 2014
Walking directions from nearest tube: Bethnal Green
Head north on Cambridge Heath Rd. V&A Museum of Childhood is less than 5 minutes away, on the right.
Arrival Point in Whitstable:
Nearby the Horsebridge Art Centre
11 Horsebridge Road
Whitstable CT5 1AF
at 12:30 on Saturday 31 May 2014
Return:
Departure Point:
Nearby the Horsebridge Art Centre
11 Horsebridge Road
Whitstable CT5 1AF
at 21:30
Arriving at V&A Museum of Childhood, London at 23:00.
Email us at info@whitstablebiennale.com to find out more.
Installations and film screenings
Rosa Ainley
Building 519
Rosa Ainley is creating an audio and text work focusing on what was the sprawling Pfizer pharmaceutical complex outside Sandwich. The text includes quotes from extensive interview material, coupled with a narrative based on the impenetrable building 519 and uncovering remains of its secret garden.
Bronwen Buckeridge
The Sorrowful and Immaculate Fall of One Hundred Grazing Sheep
Bronwen Buckeridge’s sound installation is for one person at a time, and uses layered soundscapes to transport the listener to another place – a treacherous beach with falling cliffs, powerful tides and sinking mud.
Louisa Fairclough
Absolute Pitch – Film Sculpture
Absolute Pitch is a 16mm film installation, developed out of research with composer Richard Glover and Gloucester Cathedral choristers. The work takes as its starting point a sketchbook by the artist’s sister, and continues a notional collaboration between the artist and her deceased sister. Filmstrips from the projectors echo the lines of the sketchbook monoprint, criss-crossing the space, slicing through the semi-darkness and throwing diffuse colour and shadows around the space.
Neil Henderson
Tidal Island
A video work by Neil Henderson shows time lapse footage of an artificial island off the Lincolnshire coastline. Constructed in the 1970s as an experimental freshwater reservoir, Outer Trial Bank is accessible only at low tide across an expanse of mud flats. Henderson set up his cameras at low tide, leaving them in position to capture a view normally only seen by seabirds, who nest in their thousands on the island.
Una Knox
Arising where two surfaces border each other
Shot by Una Knox in Beijing, this video follows a local tailor as he makes a traditional Chinese suit out of light-reflective material, highlighting the culture of traditional, bespoke tailoring in a country associated more with mass manufacture. As the tailor labours in his workshop with improvised tools including an old cigarette box, people from outside enter the shop, providing a glimpse of the wider world around him.
Louisa Martin
The Lighthouse: Scenes 1 and 2
Louisa Martin’s new film features a shifting character, a dancer, who at once plays the part of a socially withdrawn extrovert, and a screen for the audience’s own projections.
Jeremy Millar
XDO XOL
Jeremy Millar’s new film is about a place and the man who lives there, a man who may be a saint or madman, perhaps even the Last Man. Dressed in a suit and overcoat, he certainly seems out of place, but then this is a place which itself seems uncertain: a place between light and dark, between land and water.
Katrina Palmer
Did Anyone Read the Book?
In this new audio installation by Katrina Palmer, shown in a lecture hall above Whitstable Library, we hear what sounds like members of a dysfunctional reading group trying to recall the opening paragraph of an influential piece of C20 literature. The source text, in which a character moves between a state of wakefulness and dreaming, is half-forgotten and misremembered by the group.
Colin Priest
The Dance of the Neptune Plant
Colin Priest takes a seaweed known as Sea Fir as its inspiration, presenting it as an evanescent character bridging animal and vegetal existence, for this new film. The soundtrack is by Romantic Kent-born John Jenkins composed in 1650.
Kieren Reed
From the Ground up, (A) Social Building
From the Ground Up, (A) Social Building is a new social artwork by Kieren Reed, creating a unique space that is, in effect, functional sculpture – acting through the Biennale as our visitor information centre, the HQ. Reed is interested in exploring participatory practice, and the possibility of creating innovative learning environments within the public realm. Within the HQ, Abigail Hunt’s limited edition for children will be available throughout the Biennale. Also, Collaborative Research Group (CRG), an alternative education programme, will be in residence at the HQ, creating a programme of talks, tours and other events.
Margaret Salmon
Oyster
Oyster is a short black and white film by Margaret Salmon, shot on 16mm and presented on video accompanied by a flip book. The film is a minimalist documentary, or cinematic poem, exploring the form and fragility of the oyster, the oyster trade, and ultimately the future ecology of its habitat, while being experienced as an avant-garde work, bringing elements of modernism and abstraction to its natural subject.
Mark Aerial Waller
Welcome to the Association Area
Mark Aerial Waller’s film programme Welcome to the Association Area presents new and classic artists’ film and video alongside science fiction tv, video sharing and digital photography to explore the disjunctures that distance us, then connect us to contemporary art, and includes works by artists including Vito Acconci and VALIE EXPORT, alongside footage from video-sharer Wet Canuck.
Laura Wilson
Black Top
Laura Wilson’s project, Black Top, focuses on Brett Aggregates, who have been based in Whitstable Harbour since 1936, when they sited their first tarmacadam plant there. Wilson’s work, including film and sculptures, will be sited in the Harbour, in the shadow of the factory.
Performances and one-off events
The ARKA Group
Beginnings
The ARKA Group’s Beginnings is an immersive installation that tells the story of our universe from the point of view of a meteorite.
Louisa Fairclough
Compositions for a Low Tide
As day turns to dusk, a group of Rochester Cathedral choristers will walk out with a small group of people along the line of an ancient shingle spit in Whitstable that stretches out a mile out into the sea at low tide. As the group make their way out to the distal end of the spit and back, the choristers perform a new composition, taking loss and consolation as their theme.
Force Majeure
SUM PLACES: In the real world, we’ve been active
Inspired by Italo Calvino’s Invisible Cities, singers will wander through Whitstable during the day staging impromptu performances in odd, out of the way public spaces in the town, each singing parts of a whole At the end of the day the singers will come together to perform the composition in its entirety on the beach, around a fire.
S Mark Gubb
It all began with Richard Burton…
S Mark Gubb will be giving a performance lecture on a coach winding its way through east Kent, revealing a peculiarly personal relationship with the place the artist grew up in. The work, titled It all began with Richard Burton….. will feature a landscape of strange connections and events, hearsay, C-list celebrities and coincidences. It’s the kind of history that exists anywhere, but one that can only be gathered over a lifetime of being somewhere.
Fiona James
The Incident, A Diagram for Whitstable
Fiona James works as an artist and choreographer, and this new performance will take as its starting point enacted simulations of disaster situations that beach lifeguards use as training exercises. Taking place on the beach at 1pm on the first day of the Biennale, accompanied by flares and whistles, the work will examine how attention plays out in heightened, stressful, situations where individuals have to think for themselves and, at the same time, act as a team.
Ben Judd
Vast as the Dark of Night and as the Light of Day
Ben Judd’s Vast as the Dark of Night and as the Light of Day, is based on research into collectivity and ritual, such as the annual Blessing of the Waters ceremony held annually in Whitstable associated with St James, patron saint of oystermen. This new performance will take place at sea, on a traditional Thames Sailing Barge, with audience members and performers creating a temporary, fragile community.
Hannah Lees
Everything That Happens Simply Happens
Wine and home-made bread will be served by Hannah Lees for Everything That Happens Simply Happens, to be consumed at a long communal table. A 1970’s rock music film will play in the background – an alternative ritual of communal gathering, excess and worship.
Samuel Levack & Jennifer Lewandowski
Das Hund & the Pilgrim Shells
In a large, old boatshed full of Harbour equipment and paraphernalia of fishing boats, Samuel Levack & Jennifer Lewandowski will present a new multi-disciplinary work including a performance by their band, Das Hund, video projections and an elaborate stage set.
Rachel Reupke
Letter of Complaint
Known for her films, Letter of Complaint will be Rachel Reupke’s first live performance. Formed of three tableau vivant (living pictures), each pose will be held for ten minutes, allowing the audience time to scrutinise the scene down to its finest detail. A live narrative will feature a bitter, neurotic voice, drawing from Reupke’s research of complaint letters.
John Walter
Turn My Oyster Up
John Walter is transforming a beach hut on the seafront into a ‘slang bar’ where he will act as host, serving gin and tonics and (local delicacy) gypsy tarts. Featuring videos, special wallpaper and flooring, and including special performances by Max Leonard Hitchings and Susannah Hewlett, Turn My Oyster Up will use the local oyster culture as a linguistic hook upon which to engage the audience in verbal and visual games addressing slang.
Richard Wilson and Zatorski + Zatorski
51° 21’ 45″ N, 1° 01’ 13″ E: Whitstable Sounding
Beginning in the last hour of light on 21 June, the longest day of the year, 51° 21’ 45″ N, 1° 01’ 13″ E: Whitstable Sounding is a special event by Richard Wilson and Zatorski + Zatorski. Taking place offshore, and designed to be viewed from Whitstable’s beaches, a number of historic vessels will paint the seascape with steam, smoke and light, as the sounds of ships’ steam whistles, bells, horns, hooters, flares and sirens drift back to shore.
Special events, workshops & talks
Martin John Callanan
Wars During My Lifetime
Martin John Callanan’s Wars During My Lifetime is Whitstable Biennale’s first permanent online commission. The digital work gathers together wars that have taken place all over the world during one individual’s lifetime so far. Read by a newsreader, the film makes no comment, but quietly and forcefully brings the long list to our attention.
Trifarious Projects
Foreign Agents: Jonathan P Watts in discussion
Talk: Jonathan P Watts chairs a discussion with Clunie Reid and John Walter, about the relationship of contemporary fine art practices to design, advertising and fashion.
Jeremy Millar, Rachel Lichtenstein
Estuary Talk
Talk: exhibiting artist Jeremy Millar in conversation with writer Rachel Lichtenstein in conversation about their new works, both of which are set in the Thames Estuary, and about some of the characters and myths that inhabit this complex body of water, where the river meets the North Sea
Laura Wilson
Black Top talk
Talk: exhibiting artist Laura Wilson talks about her new work, in the Harbour, in the shadow of the aggregate factory, Bretts.
Children’s Workshops
Two workshops for children in response to Margaret Salmon’s new film Oyster run by the artist together with children’s reading expert and storyteller, Emily Guille-Marrett.
Kent Students Open Call
Students studying film, or recently graduated, from the University of Kent, the University for the Creative Arts and Canterbury Christ Church University, were invited to enter short films by open submission. Competition was fierce, and six entries were selected to be screened at a special evening.
