News!

Hello and welcome to Apartment’s blog, as you can see from the links below we have been busy with Artranspennine08 over the last few weeks, over sixty artists have taken part and we’ve been delighted by the response. Though we have also been busy with other projects, we recently went on a curatorial research trip to Berlin with a selection of Northwest based curators, a blog outlines the trip and is intended to act as a resource for other curators who may be thinking of visiting Berlin so do have a look if you’re interested. In our endeavour to showcase other new activity we were pleased to note a new artist-led space in Manchester, ‘Pavement’ is a new exhibition space housed in a former drapery store, for more information click here, the current exhibition by Rut Blees Luxemburg was of particular interest to us ‘Caliban Towers’ depicts a group of tower blocks at night, (image above). In Liverpool we recently attended the opening of an exciting new commercial space; Ceri Hand Gallery is housed in a converted warehouse on Cotton Street in Liverpool click here for more information. We have also updated our links section to the right with new spaces, activities and projects located in the Northwest so do have a browse. Paul Harfleet and Hilary Jack are artists too and have been busy with their own projects so do have a look here and here.

Artranspennine08

Above is 'The Reading Room' by Nick Crowe and Ian Rawlinson, curated by Lewis Biggs as part of Artranspennine08; The work is part of the large scale cross-regional exhibition that we are curating with over fifty emerging and established artists working in a variety of disciplines. Artists from across the transpennine route and beyond will be placing work at a variety of locations from painted beer mats in pubs to augmented rugby balls in fields. There will be a special launch event at Internaional3 on Friday June 13th 5-9pm. To view the work above e-mail the above address or atp08@hotmail.co.uk.

Clown Crash } Dirty Honky

Clown Crash - Dirty Honky

a performance and exhibition by Dirty Honky; the pig nosed clown

Thursday 20^th March from 3pm to 9pm

Exhibition will continue until April 25^th, view by appointment.

Unable to pay escalating rent and council tax, Dirty Honky, the pig-nosed clown alter-ego of artist Alexis Milne, has been kicked out of his home and is looking for a place to crash. The solution is to install his purpose built performance shed, in Apartment.

On Thursday 20^th March from 3pm to 9pm Dirty Honky opened his shed doors to the public inviting them inside to play “Honkopoly” his own version of the popular board game Monopoly. In doing so he allowed property starved citizens to become property tycoons, enabling them to temporarily enjoy the prestige and social status that comes with climbing the property ladder. His actions highlighted the urgent need for affordable housing for young creatives, such as Honky, who are all too often ousted from developing urban areas that they have culturally enriched. ‘Clown Crash’ by Dirty Honky subverts the conventional realms of clowning to comment on the social constructs that both celebrate the masses and alienate the individual.

Dirty Honky’s performance shed started its life in a Salford backyard. After receiving backing from Contact Theatre as part of The Manchester International Festival, Milne transported the shed to Selfridges department store in Manchester, inviting shoppers to write their filthiest confessions on the inside walls of his shed. Honky was then invited by the Manchester Doodlebug collective to exhibit his dirty secrets shed at the Big Chill festival in the Malvern Hills. Most recently the shed featured in the ‘Future Can Wait’ exhibition during London Art Week.

Horst - Review

A review of Nikola Irmer's 'Horst'; Apartment's current show can be found on 'INTERFACE' a-n's platform for critical writing, an excerpt from which is below:

"Horst is a sixty year old 18 stone drag queen whose idiosyncratic response to Nikola Irmer’s habit of advertising for models in the personal column of the local paper initiated a three year collaboration. The resulting paintings depict Horst’s creation of a spectacular drag persona; the domestic context of Apartment facilitating an intriguing intimacy to this encounter with a series of works that delves into a usually elusive transformative process.

The cosiness of an art show taking place in the domestic setting of Apartment is of course somewhat disingenuous and deceptive; the gallery and its location always complicit in its playful ambiguity and sense of the absurd, and in this show in particular the traditional 'frame' of paint and canvas adds to the queerness and confusion often accompanying a visit to the tower block. A 60’s modernist design, it has the feel of a clean white cube but is also a fully functioning home, and one too cramped, too snug to be either an impersonal temple to art or the festival circuit’s fashionably industrial temporary ‘unlikely space’. Its proportions are simply too tight for the customary ‘long view’, a convention imposed to appreciate displayed work in the prescribed tradition with which we are encouraged to look at Art; from afar and with due reverence. At Apartment art is almost uncomfortably close; we cannot escape it or the cosy ephemera that disturbs and confronts our contemplation." Read on:

Nikola Irmer ~ Horst

Nikola Irmer ~ Horst

Preview

Thursday January 17^th 2008 - 6pm – 8pm

Exihibtion Jan 18th - Feb 29th

Veiw by Appointment

Apartment is delighted to announce Horst the first UK solo exhibition of German artist Nikola Irmer. Irmer studied Fine Art at Glasgow School of Art and at Hunter College, New York. She now lives in and works in Berlin. Her practice investigates the complexities and revelations of the artist/model relationship; Irmer seeks out her models through the distribution of flyers, and the placement of advertisements in the personal columns of local newspapers. What begins as a simple exchange has the potential to develop into a collaborative relationship which creates sensitive and revealing portraits of unexpected subjects.

Horst is a sixty year old, 18 stone, drag queen whose unusual response to one of Nikola’s advertisements initiated a three year collaboration. A series of these paintings will be shown at Apartment. The paintings depict Horst’s creation of a spectacular drag persona; the domestic context of Apartment facilitates an interesting intimacy to the experience of the work that delves into this private transformative process.

Nikola Irmer

Above one of Nikola Irmer's paintings in Apartment along with a selection of five paintings in the bedroom. The show consists of a series of paintings that depict Horst's transformation into a drag persona. Also included in the show is a collage that reveals a creative dialogue between artist and model; Horst uses sketches and images of the work created during their sessions to create new imagery that celebrates the relationship that the artist and model have developed over a the years. Postcards and collages sent to Irmer by Horst extend the creative process beyond the studio, Irmer's willingness to include these images in this exhibition reveal the value she places on her subjects as model and in this case as collaborator.