THE EXCHANGE project brings together artists from across the UK, pairing peers from different networks and opening up space for new creative conversations. Participating artists are part of a new, self-directed creative exchange and workshop programme where they have been paired with a peer outside of their network and invited to begin a conversation. As lock-downs ebb and flow and social interaction is restricted, this project aims to bridge the gap, creating new relationships and friendships between artists that wouldn’t otherwise be able to connect. This open-ended process has no limits or boundaries but is simply framed by the invitation to begin a discussion. There is no formal requirement to collaborate or generate an outcome and participants are able to communicate however they wish, at a frequency to suit the pairing. Eastside Projects (EOP), CAMP, G39 (WARP), The NewBridge Project, Spike Island (Spike Associates), and Turf Projects will each select 10 artists from their network to take part in the project through this open call. In total 60 artists will participate. Over the six months, a series of networking events and activities for THE EXCHANGE artists is being hosted online by the partner organisations, with the aim of supporting artists, building networks and making further connections. At the end of THE EXCHANGE, Eastside Projects will host an online event which will be a public opportunity to share experiences, stories and, if appropriate, outcomes. Selected Artists EOP members: Bijan Moosavi / Brenda Hickin / Emelia Kerr Beale / Emma Plover / Izzy McEvoy / Krystle Patel / Rowland Hill / Ruth Waters / Sahjan Kooner / Steve BurdenCAMP: Brett Lockwood, Carly Seller, Kyra Norman, Katrina Brown, Liam Jolly, LOW PROFILE, Mark Leahy, Molly Erin McCarthy, Thais Lenkiewicz, William LuzG39: Aled Simons, Alice Briggs, Aurora/Trinity Collective, Becca + Clare, Fern Thomas, Freya Dooley, Jennifer Taylor, Philippa Brown, Rebecca Gould, Will RobertsSpike Island Associates: Anna Haydock-Wilson, Annabel Pettigrew, Ben Hartley, Carol Laidler, Cliff Andrade, Eleanor Duffin, Fiona Carruthers, Jo Ball, Kelly O’Brien, Lauren CraigThe NewBridge Project: Abel Shah (Giulia & Alex), Jade Cooper, Lisa Vigorelli, Mani Kambo, Meaghan Stewart, Pheobe Law, Ross Hamilton-Frew, Sue Loughlin, Vicki Doyle, Zara WorthTurf Projects: Angela Carratt, Anita Wadsworth, Caleb Pinnell, Daisy Young, Flora Hunt, Jhinuk Sarkar, John Messenbird, Migeul Sopena, Rebecca Sammon, Sarah DeanThe Programme Dates The following programme is only open to The Exchange artists. 4 March, 2–4pm: Eastside Projects will host a quickfire show and tell afternoon where artists can get to know each other’s practices and be welcomed to the project. 30 April, 11am: G39 / WAR have planned an in-conversation event between artists Emma Cousin and Ben Luke. Emma Cousin started 'Chats With Artists in Lockdown' A podcast of conversations with artists about their practice. Ben Luke creates podcasts for The Art Newspaper including a series 'A Brush With', which is centred on discussions with artists. They will talk about creating their different podcasts, the value of having concentrated conversations with artists, and making these dialogues public. 6 May, 5.45–8pm: The NewBridge Project will host an event looking at new ways to explore the practice of each artist pair, focusing on research, methods, processes and interpreting their partner’s approaches. It may result in collaborative outcomes. 26 May, 6.30–8.30pm: CAMP will host The Exchange Hyperspace Houseparty taking the format of a multi-room party where different spaces support different interactions and exchange… just a chat, showing images and sounds, sharing favourite artworks, memories, recipes, or strategies. The CAMP group will be your hosts for the event, and will send out digital ‘party packs’ and more details ahead of time so you can get prepared, get excited in anticipation, and find your way round. We’re looking forward to seeing and meeting you there! 29 June, 2–4pm: Hosted by Spike Island Associates- Artist Phil Root will lead a workshop exploring dwelling, local geographies and our relationship to landscape, both our collective and individual experiences. Within the workshop there will be an exchange between the group of local territories using techniques which stem from Phil’s research around new build housing estates and ancient road systems. 15 July, 2–4pm: Turf Projects will host a session exploring the ethics and logistics of collaboration, participation, and partnership. 30 July, 2-4pm: Public sharing event – the form to be determined in response to THE EXCHANGE process. Artist Biographies Bijan Moosavi is an Iranian multi-media artist based in London. He describes himself as a Muslim entrepreneur and an Islamic Futurist. His video, music, performance and installation works draw on the aesthetics of corporate advertising, sci-fi movies, popular culture and the Islamic kitsch in order to create speculative fictional situations and scenarios from the future in which the implications of the expansion of neo-liberalism in the Middle East are examined. Brenda Hickin uses a camera amongst other mediums. Her latest project is the unpacking of her late mothers china cabinet boxes. She has developed a relationship with the camera within the rules she sets in some works and not in others. She love's how details not seen on first encounter reveal later. From evidence based medium to malleable fake news the camera gives a concept of time and is understood as a form of measurement too, but our relationship to images and application keeps her debating the camera’s autonomy and her input and the interplay between herself the camera the subject and the spectator. Emelia Kerr Beal is a Nottingham born artist and recent graduate of Edinburgh College of Art currently based in Glasgow. They utilise drawing, sculpture and textile to explore mental and physical health realities and the role of imagination as a tool for coping with complex conditions. At the moment they are researching and making work that centres interdependence, dedication, exhaustion, and methods of visualising better futures. As a person with ADHD, they are passionate about neuro-inclusion and celebrating neurodiverse ways of making and thinking as meaningful artistic approaches. Emma Plover explores their relationship to the spaces and landscapes they call home. Emma is interested in the ways they share these spaces with those around them, especially those who aren’t often seen. By giving voice to their rural Queer experience, Emma seeks to explore how their ADHD influences their practice as an artist and experience of the world. Emma’s work often uses video, collage, writing and podcast making as its main outputs. Izzy McEvoy is an artist currently based in London. Her work is concerned with the mechanics and representation of mental processes. Working across moving image, installation, writing and performance she touches on topics that aren't easily articulated either because they're not talked about or are invisible. Her work sometimes draws from personal experience which to date have included the ageing of her father, the loss of her mother, psychedelic trips for therapeutic purposes and her ongoing fight with OCD. Following on from an interview with her mother’s undertaker she is beginning a series of conversations with women who work in positions of guidance and care, facilitating experiences of transformation for others. Krystle Patel is interested in language as a medium in its most abstract and literal senses. This influences her current research and the modes with which she aims to communicate via a layered multisensory framework. Concepts of emotional, spatial and temporal infiltration and connectivity direct her making as well as the impact of technology on our humanity. Krystle works via multiple process and media, often without a clear resolution in mind and relationships therefore form an anchor around which she may navigate. In her use of geometry, colour and texture, she attempts to locate a space between opposing ideas to create a sense of uncertainty, the answering of a question with yet another. Rowland Hill is an interdisciplinary artist based in Manchester. Her work often presents performers interpreting written texts, enacting choreographic regimes and engaging in cycles of reenactment. She draws on prescribed systems of expression in an attempt to re-work established relations between gesture, voice, perception and ideology. She also organises events which have recently included ‘Soundings’, a listening event for people of different hearing capacities at Raven Row (London), and ‘Body as Archive’, an exhibition of 30 live performances. She is currently working on a 1990s Eurodance fan project and adapting a performance script delivered via English and BSL into a book. Ruth Waters, born Kendal, UK, 1986, is a visual artist working with moving image installation. At the core of her practise is an interest in how pressures exerted upon us by late capitalist networked society impact our mental health. Her works are often humorous reflections on what it is to experience - and try to overcome - anxiety. Recent shows include The 2020 Taiwan International Video Art Exhibition, Taipei & Seep at Peer Gallery, London. In 2019 she was A-I-R at ARCUS, Japan where she collaborated with astronaut Naoko Yamazaki on a project exploring existential anxiety. In 2021 she will have her first solo exhibition at Kingsgate Projects, London. Sahjan Kooner is a human being who uses digital technologies to make video installations which explore memory, race, identity and material violence in relationship to place. They have been increasingly exploring ideas around intergenerational memory and experience in the Indian diaspora, recent works have been constructing multifaceted narratives that explore migratory relationships. Sahjan often uses their own life and familial experience of migration as a point of departure. Sahjan is interested in how migration shifts, morphs and embodies subjective experiences in peoples and non-peoples. They see migration as a technology in itself, a technology that moves, disrupts and mutates breaking free of representational violence. Steve Burden works most in painting to investigate dystopian themes and ideas associated with British housing estates, partly inspired by his personal experience growing up on the Pepys (a brutalist high-rise council estate in Deptford, south London). He is driven to understand what it means to be working-class in today’s society and the urban context in which he grew up which continues to influence his visual aesthetic. His current practice explores the under-representation of those from lower socio-economic backgrounds in the arts and education. Steve graduated from Goldsmiths College, London with First Class Honours and Bath Spa University with a Masters Degree in Fine Art (distinction). https://vimeo.com/526239781