Work In Common
Meet The Artists

“Work In Common” is a residency being held at Primary, Nottingham with UK Young Artists and in partnership with Biennale des jeunes créateurs de l’Europe et de la Méditerranée (BJCEM). Work in Common is aimed at artists with an interest in how we choose to work with others and across disciplines to produce art; and will encourage participants to discuss and experiment with different ways of working, to ask what it is to collaborate, and to test out speculative ideas together.

Housed in the spaces at Primary, artists will participate in this intensive micro-residency structure – consisting of presentations, crits, workshops, ‘go see’ visits, and a public event. Through the micro residency artists will have the opportunity to interrogate collaboration and interdisciplinarity in relation to their work, with input from other artists involved in the Primary programme, as well as with curators and staff at partner organisations.

We are delighted to introduce to you the eleven national and international selected artists and companies who will be taking part in this exciting opportunity! More information below:

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NICOLAS VAMVOUKLIS

Nicolas Vamvouklis (b. Greece, 1990) lives and works in Milan and Athens. He holds a BA in Philosophy from the University of Crete, a BA in Dance from the Greek National Ballet School and an MA Distinction in Visual Arts and Curatorial Studies from Nuova Accademia di Belle Arti Milano. His practice includes installations, performances and curatorial projects that have been presented in the Prague Quadrennial, Triennale Milano, Tate Modern, Mediterranea 18 Biennale and many others internationally. Nicolas is the director of K-Gold Temporary Gallery and he is a curator at Fabrica and the Luciano Benetton Collection.
http://nicolasvamvouklis.tumblr.com


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ANGELI BHOSE

Angeli Bhose (b. 1993, from London, England), lives and works in Glasgow, Scotland. She has a collaborative practice that includes performance, drawing, sculpture and writing. In one strand, performances emerge from narratives developed with other artists and audience members. In another, line drawings of disaffected figures respond to external pressures. Together, the work explores the construction of subjectivity through gender, desire and the violence of (in)visibility.
cargocollective.com/angelibhose

After the residency, we asked Angeli some questions about her experience, here are her answers:

1. How did this residency broaden your ideas on how to collaborate?

During the residency, I realised how wide collaboration can be, and how it is up to those involved to decide how they want to go about it.
One useful idea was that more than one outcome can come from a collaboration – i.e. each person presents your shared research in a way which is helpful and interesting to them. Another was that there can be several different starting points to a collaborative endeavour- either from a place where roles are very defined and you each know what you want to get from a project; or you can start from a place of nothingness, where together you explore what the roles can be. I feel that it opened up my options when imagining how to collaborate.

2. Jamie Sutcliffe and Emma Smith were both part of the residency, giving workshops and talks – can you tell us a little about this experience and what you gained from these?

I thought the discussions facilitated by both artists were really interesting.
Emma’s session was more structured, and she was good at facilitating a conversation which developed according to the interests of the group. Her approach to projects is very methodical, and it was useful to hear about that in her talks, as well as to try to develop our own ideas within that framework during the workshop.
Jamie’s session was more exploratory, and he brought some interesting topics to the table for us to discuss. I found it interesting to talk about control and desire in collaboration, sparked by the film he screened. The second half of the session, where we tried to decide what to do for a public event, felt less fruitful. I think there were too many people involved to form a cohesive plan, and Jamie was not really able to contribute to the discussion on what we should do, so maybe this was not the best use of his time.

3. How do you think this residency will affect your own practice?

The residency has given me a boost in confidence . I think it will encourage me to go forward and seek out more collaborations, and to have a collaborative approach to artmaking. I want to avoid working in isolation now, and find social situations where I can work with others to make creative outputs. I have already initiated a writing group to collaboratively write a sci-fi short story, and reached out to an artist acquaintance about exploring the possibility of a collaboration together.

4. What were your highlights of the week?

My highlights from the week were:

  • Hearing the curators and programmers from the different art institutions speak with passion and conviction.
  • The fantastic food provided by the Small Food Bakery, and the more relaxed conversations we had over those meal times.
  • Being with a group of young people with diverse approaches to art making!

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TOM VERITY

Tom Verity’s work explores a variety of everyday materials and objects through mixed media sculpture and compositions. A large portion of his work comprises ropes and weights which are used to display balance, tension, gravity and trapped material. He uses rope in these works both as functional building material and as a tool for drawing, mimicking the painted line. Tom’s use of weights adds a constantly active factor to the work that he uses to trap objects, fixing their positions as in a still life.
www.tomverity.com


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HYEJI WOO

Hyeji Woo mainly addresses the chaos and conflict of energy, and the relationship between the disorder of entropy and human routine. She is particularly interested in the movement of energy. She rejects stationary forms and statements, which enables work to move and change by itself, using the laws of nature and energy of substance that activates the movement within her work. She currently explores the temporality of material and its metamorphosis by the passage of time.
www.hyejiwoo.com


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GUILLAUME LO MONACO

Originally from Nice, with a Master’s degree from Aix-en-Provence School of Art, Guillaume Lo Monaco is a young artist who uses a variety of mediums, from installation to graphic design, to serigraphy.
Under their colourful and playful exterior, the work of Guillaume is marked by anxiety and fear.
www.guillaumelomonaco.fr


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FAXEN

Since 2004, Clemens Mairhofer, Lucas Norer and Sebastian Six have been working together in the artist collective FAXEN.
FAXEN explore acoustic experiments in connection with items of everyday life, sculptural assemblages and the physical element of sound are the main aspects of the group’s musical and visual compositions. The work deals with moments where noise becomes music and the difference between hearing and active listening is explored.
Alongside their artistic work FAXEN run the gallery bb15 in Linz/Austria.
www.faxen-collective.ne


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GEORGE CHINNERY

George’s interdisciplinary practice skirts the peripheries of art, poetry, design and craft; a playful apparatus through which to explore the basic poetic urge of placing one thing next to another, in fertile proximity. Whether through intricate photoshop artefacts, amputated word arrangements or sculptural installations, George’s seemingly disparate approaches are unified by a shared atmosphere of humour and tragicomedy. Spaces of anti-climax are pervaded by melancholic and fallible narrators. The artists intuitive vocabulary is defined by its constant flirtation with obscurity, detail and a sensitivity to language and gesture.
http://www.georgechinnery.co.uk


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MARWA BENHALIM

Marwa Benhalim is a Libyan/Egyptian artist. She received her MFA in Studio Art at the Southern Methodist University, Dallas, Texas in 2017, a BA from the American University in Cairo, Egypt in 2014 and a Foundation Diploma in Art and Design from the University of the Arts, London, UK in 2010. Marwa’s interdisciplinary practice is concerned with power, memory and identity. It spans the mediums of text, video, performance, sculpture, painting and installation. Her work has shown in Egypt, USA, UAE, Italy and Spain.
www.marwabenhalim.com

After the residency, we asked Marwa some questions about her experience, here are her answers:

1. How did this residency broaden your ideas on how to collaborate?
The residency was full of thought provoking discussions on the nature of thinking collaboratively and how one can be ethical in their collaborations. This is of high interest to me as the line between audience and participant in regards to  labour concern me.
2. Jamie Sutcliffe and Emma Smith were both part of the residency, giving workshops and talks – can you tell us a little about this experience and what you gained from these?
Emma Smith was interested in discussing how, when, why to collaboration and the ethics of labour that come along with it. I was very interested in her practice and enjoyed the opportunity to get to know her and learn from her journey.
Jamie Sutcliffe was innovative in his discussion, bringing a different take to collaboration, especially questioning the ethics of working with non-human living collaborators (such as bacteria)
3. How do you think this residency will affect your own practice?
I think that meeting and engaging with my fellow residence, visiting artists and program administrators has encouraged me to further pursue collaboration in my work.
4. What were your highlights of the week?
Visiting the vast array of cultural institutions, museums and galleries in Nottingham.

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WINGSHAN SMITH

Wingshan Smith is a eurasian female artist and curator based in London and Hong Kong. She holds a BA and MA degree from The Courtauld Institute of Art. Her artworks negotiate the everyday tensions in (re-)discovering self-hood, authenticity, and spirituality in an increasingly commoditised surveilled world.
cargocollective.com/wingshansmith


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SAM BAKER

By deliberately twisting, bending and pinching linear forms Sam is creating a new, physical act of communication. The works stand as sites of a past performance where he has laboriously cut into materials creating conversation about production, finesse and dexterity. Sam Baker is currently an MA Sculpture student at the Royal College of Art. He graduated in 2014 from Kingston University with a first class degree in Fine Art.
www.sambakerartist.co.uk


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JÜRGEN KLEFT

Jurgen Kleft is based in Vienna. In the beginning was the tent. Wandering like a nomad, on the steady quest for the oases of the mind, Jürgen Kleft has battled through woods, steppes and frozen wastelands, has scaled vertiginous mountain tops and swum through wild rivers, crossed turbid fords, discovered the jungle and finally came to squeeze outdoor fashion in the tight corset of urbanity. Newly released, Shellpunk is the first collection of this daredevil adventure.
www.juergenkleft.com

BJCEM is supported by:

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