Venue: Union 105
105 Chapeltown Road, Leeds LS7 3HY.
Dates & Times:
Wednesday 29th May 2013 (6:00pm – 9:00pm)

This month Union105 will be hosting this month’s Chapeltown Conversations. Chapeltown Conversations is a series of events to give people the chance to talk about the future of the community and ways in which it can move forward.

The conversations allow relationships to be developed around common causes and provide a platform from which action and progress can happen. They are an opportunity for those who live, work, learn or play in Chapeltown to talk about important issues and the opportunities that we have to make things better.

The conversations allow you to talk about what matters most to you and meet others who share your enthusiasm.  You will be able to set the agenda.  Whether it is things for young people to do, bus fares, jobs, housing, policing, bin collections or whatever – you will be able to talk about it.

If you can bring some food along to share we’d really appreciate it, but don’t worry if you can’t. There are limited cooking facilities at Union 105, i.e. a microwave, so if you are able to bring something make sure it’s cooked or can be eaten cold/uncooked. We will have tea, coffee, juice and some snacks available for everyone.

As always, be prepared to talk about anything – or bring a subject you want to discuss. The discussion topics depend on who turns up. If you want to find out about something or want to know what people think about an idea, suggest it as a topic and join in the conversation.

Venue: Leeds Library
18 Commercial Street, Leeds, LS1 6AL.
Dates & Times:
Wednesday 22nd May (6:00pm – 7:00pm)

On Wednesday 22 May, as part of the Leeds Big Bookend Festival, East Street Arts member Rose George appears at the Leeds Library.

Rose George is an author, journalist and TED speaker who specialises in the unspeakable, the invisible, the overlooked. 

Her first book, ‘A life removed: Hunting for refuge in the modern world’, looked at the day to day realities of life as a refugee or displaced person. In her second book ‘The big necessity: adventures in the world of human waste’, Rose travelled the world looking at the state of sanitation, trying to answer the simple question of “where does our waste go?”

For her new book due out in the autumn, ‘Deep sea and foreign going: inside shipping, the invisible industry that brings you 90% of everything’, Rose spent 5 weeks on a container ship, passing through pirate waters, to cast a light on this invisible world.

To find out more information, please visit: www.theleedslibrary.org.uk

Deadline for Submissions:
Monday 10th June

This July, East Street Arts presents a new programme of artistic events exploring the potential of cycling: Juliana’s Bike.

As part of Juliana’s Bike we will be curating a series of exhibitions of artwork exploring, challenging or responding to bikes and cycling, from photography to performance, drawing to video, we are open to all mediums.

If you would like to submit your work, please send a short statement (150 words) and a couple of images or link to your website or blog. We are also open to more detailed exhibition proposals. The exhibitions will be hosted in a central venue in Leeds and will take place in July 2013.

Please send your submissions to Hondartza with the subject line “Juliana’s Bike Open Call”
Hondartza [at] esamail.org.uk

For more information about Juliana’s Bike, please visit our Julianas Bike page.

In March 2013, East Street Arts members rednile used a shop on Shields Road as a base to research and develop a project which celebrated the hidden treasures of Byker. Focusing on capturing the everyday and overlooked features, patterns and detail found around Byker; rednile talked to local businesses and explored the area with community groups using urban treasure hunts.

Images gathered during the residency have inspired the intricate and ornate ‘Byker Barcodes’, an 11 metre artwork installed in Byker metro station that is revealed this week.

The artwork is also interactive, embedded with codes which can be scanned by smartphones to reveal stories and information about the area. The layered content of the piece aims to reflect the complexity and constant state of change of our urban spaces, whilst questioning the role public art often plays in oversimplifying what makes a place.

With thanks to the Byker Inbetweeners at the YMCA, Northern Architecture and the Byker Lives project. This work forms part of Next Stop Byker, a series of temporary commissions at Byker funded by Newcastle City Council, Arts Council England and Nexus as part of Tyne and Wear’s Art on Transport programme.  www.nexus.org.uk/artontransport

Venue: Multiple Venues
(See below for full details.)
Dates and Times:
Wednesday 1st May – Friday 31st May 2013
(See below for exact time details.)

Throughout May 2013, renowned Leeds photographer Peter Mitchell will exhibit a series of photographs Quarry Hill Flats Revisited at venues in the Quarry Hill area, providing a revealing glimpse into Leeds’ Quarry Hill community, before the estate’s demolition in the late 1970s. This photographic art walk includes an exhibition of his seminal work A New Refutation of the Viking IV Space Mission at The Gallery (Flannels) from May 14th.

An area now populated by dual carriageways, office buildings, theatres, and car parks, Quarry Hill was once one of the largest social housing complexes in Britain. Known locally as ‘The Red Ruin’ its concrete buildings had radical and modern features – such as solid fuel ranges, electric lighting, a state-of-the-art refuse disposal system and communal facilities. This ‘city within a city’ offered three thousand people, previously tenants of slum landlords in Leeds, the key to a brave new world. Sanitised and shining, it brought a sense of personal and civic pride that had all but disappeared by the time of its demolition.

Peter Mitchell had a special interest in Quarry Hill and the Quarry Hill flats, and saw an understated beauty in the dilapidated buildings and personal struggles of the residents who attempted to maintain the area. His reportage documented the buildings’ demise and deconstruction in the late 1970s, a crumbling fall from their ambitious Utopian beginnings in 1935. The Quarry Hill complex was originally designed by R.A.H. Livett as a modern solution to urban poverty and was hailed as a model for other cities in the years before the Second World War.

Quarry Hill Flats Revisited provides a glimpse into this failed architectural ideal, revealing images of buildings and communities that existed before the levelling of one of the city’s most ambitious housing schemes.

Mitchell held the UK’s first landmark colour exhibition at Impressions Gallery (York) in 1979. The photographs depicted Leeds’ urban landscape. Shop owners and factory workers were photographed from a stepladder to show a version of what aliens might see if they landed in the city from space. Images from this historical exhibition A New Refutation of the Viking IV Space Mission will be displayed at The Gallery in Flannels, on Vicar Lane, from mid-month.

About Peter Mitchell:

After a period at Hornsey College of Art, from 1968 to 1972, Mitchell moved to Leeds. Working as a truck driver, he photographed the inner city areas and the Chapeltown localities on his evening shifts.

Mitchell’s cartographic imagination of cities was formed during his time at The Ministry of Housing in Whitehall as a draughtsman, straight from school, in 1959, and later for Colin Buchanan and Partners

Described as ‘The Alan Bennett of Photography’ his work has been exhibited at Hasted Hunt Kraeutler in New York, PSL Gallery in Leeds, and Tate Britain in London. He is also a lecturer in photography at Leeds College of Art.

A new monograph Strangely Familiar is published this month by Nazraeli Press and features a foreword by Martin Parr.

Further Information:

Quarry Hill Flats Revisited (A Photographic Art Walk)
1st – 31st May 2013, venues across Quarry Hill
Free entry

The Peter Mitchell Photographic Art Walk begins on 1st May and can be seen at the
following venues on Quarry Hill:

Café 164 & Lobby (Munro House, Mon-Sat 9am-6pm)

West Yorkshire Playhouse (Gallery Space, Mon-Sat 10am-6pm)

Northern Ballet (Lobby, Mon-Sat 9am-8pm)

This exhibition aspires to encourage a greater interest in the history of art and artists in Leeds. East Street Arts are working towards the creation of a public archive of Leeds art – to be available online and in a physical space. If you have five minutes to spare, please complete this short online survey about art in the city: surveymonkey.com/s/20YearsofArt

Peter Mitchell ‘A New Refutation of the Viking IV Space Mission’
May 14th – July 20th
The Gallery at Flannels, Vicar Lane, Leeds
Free entry

A New Refutation of the Viking IV Space Mission shows a vision of Leeds on the cusp between the world that Quarry Hill Flats tried to leave behind and the vision for the future that was ‘Leeds: Motorway City of the Seventies’. The exhibition is a remarkable document of a time that considered itself at the peak of modernism. As a counterpoint to Peter Mitchell’s work, a parallel gallery display by Leeds City College Photography Foundation students What is it to be Northern today? examines the same landscape thirty years on through the eyes and lenses of a new generation of photographers.

Dr Kill is Head of School at The Leeds School of Art, Architecture and Design at Leeds Metropolitan University. A practicing visual and performance artist and social media expert, she also works as a DJ. Her recent talk Facebook is like Disco and Twitter is like Punk has attracted international interest online and has also appeared at two notable ideas festivals.

Having been involved with East Street Arts for over ten years as a member and former studio holder at East Street Mills, Dr Kill has also worked alongside the organisation as an artist, studio holder, writer and academic, running student projects in collaboration with the team at Patrick Studios. She comments, “The role of chair is very important and one that I’m fully committed to. This is a very exciting time for East Street Arts, a time of growth, of development and of change. I’m really looking forward to the next few years.”

Dr Kill joins board members Felix Odeh (Bank of Australia), Linda Broughton (freelance-IT consultant), Gillian Holding (ESA studio holder), Mark Doyle (Contemporary Arts Society), Marcel Baettig (Bow Arts Trust), Joyce Connolly (Leeds Metropolitan University), Dan Thompson (Retail Ready People), and Claire Slattery (Calderdale MBC).

East Street Arts was established by Karen Watson and Jon Wakeman in 1993. Based at Patrick Studios, it is a registered charity that supports the development of visual artists and provides studios, services, resources, and opportunities through its membership programme at locations across the country.

“We are delighted to welcome Dr Kill as Chair at East Street Arts. She is a highly respected member of Leeds’ arts community, and is also an established mentor and academic whose practice fits in well with the ethos and aims of our organisation. We would also like to take this opportunity to thank Andrea Stephenson for her hard work over the previous 18 months and wish her all the best for the future.” – Artistic Directors of East Street Arts, Jon Wakeman and Karen Watson

Venue: MillSpace Gallery
Armley Industrial Museum, Canal Road, Leeds, LS12 2QF.
Dates and Times:
Wednesday 24th April – Friday 10th May 2013
Everyday except Mondays (10:00am – 4:30pm)

The Ghosts Group of artists, in residence at Armley MillSpace since the beginning of March, have produced multimedia work in response to the fabric of this former great woollen mill, and its extensive contents.

The Ghosts Group are David Honeybone, Jonathan Lindh, Jean Sagheddu, Lynette Willoughby, Terry Wragg and Sue Wray.  Most met as students on the part-time Fine Art degree course at Leeds College of Art. They have been working together since 2005, collaborating on art projects that explore specific sites and their histories.

For more information, you can follow the group on Twitter: @leedsartghosts

Venue: The Angel Inn
Briggate, Leeds, LS1 6LN.
Dates and Times:
Friday 3rd May 2013 (6:00pm – Late)

As we mentioned recently, we have started piloting our East Street Arts members social. It is happening on the first Friday of each month and gives all of our members a chance to meet up and share ideas and opinions. The idea of the East Street Arts members social is a relaxed informal gathering of like minded, creative people, where we can all share ideas. It’s a chance to meet up with the East Street Arts members of staff, as well as the other East Street Arts members.

So come down and join us, we hope to see you all soon.

Venue: Patrick Studios
East Street Arts, St Maryʼs Lane, Leeds LS9 7EH
Special Exhibition Preview:
Wednesday 24th April 2013 (6:00pm – 8:00pm)
Dates and Times:
Thursday 25th April – Thursday 23rd May 2013
Monday – Friday (3:30pm – 6:00pm)
Or by appointment: mail [at] blipblipblip.co.uk

The Doubles Series asks a mid career artist to invite another artist, with whom they have some form of artistic relationship, to make an exhibition with them. In the third of the series Juan Cruz has asked Robin Jenkins to exhibit with him in a show that references oblique personal histories.

Juan Cruz’s objects, pseudo paintings and prints extend a practice that has developed in response to specific contextual opportunities and involves a visual response to various forms of text.

Robin Jenkins exhibits a selection of recent work associated with the sea, and considers the fears and tales that we are all familiar with, just when we thought it was safe to go back in the water.

Juan Cruz studied at Chelsea College of Art and Design. Following a period of working independently as an artist and critic he took up a year-long fellowship with Kettle’s Yard. He was appointed Director of the School of Art and Design at LJMU in 2012. He has exhibited at Tokyo Institute of Technology; Galeria Estrany de la Mota, Barcelona; Crate, Margate ; Edinburgh International Festival and Murcia, Spain. Cruz is represented by Matt’s Gallery.

Robin Jenkins studied at The Architectural Association in London. He has worked with Giorgio Armani, Paul Smith, and Manolo Blahnik. Robin is a guest lecturer at Chelsea College of Art and Design and currently teaches Interior and Spatial Design at MA and BA level. Recent exhibitions include ‘Film as Measure’, Chelsea College of Art and Design; ‘A Second on The Severn Sea’, Test Bed 1, London 2012 and ‘H2O’ at Future Space, London 2011. Robin will also be taking part in a joint show at The Chopping Block during May in Brixton.

For more information, please visit: www.blipblipblip.co.uk

Deadline for Applications:
Sunday 28th April 2013 (Midnight)

The deadline for this year’s Beacons Festival Arts Open Call is fast approaching!

Beacons are once again seeking the brightest and best in site art, installation, roaming performance, spoken word, workshops, sound-based work and more, to excite, engage and intrigue Beacons’ festival-goers throughout the festival weekend from 16 – 18 August 2013.

This year, they also have a brand new call for film, animation and moving image work to create guerrilla projections that infiltrate and animate those dark Dales nights…

More information and application forms can be found at www.greetingsfrombeacons.com/open-call