Currently...

Working on a cool wee video about the process of setting up our exhibition (:

Nice

An article posted on Cloak and Swagger describes #01 as a 'success'! The article is about Rachel Ridge's fantastic work Channel Zero. You can find Rachel at her blog here.

Following the success of the first Forum Arts project, a mixed media exhibition; We present here the new work by Rachel Ridge – Channel Zero. Her exploration into politically charged photography is available in full on our Facebook Gallery.

Channel Zero are images of the recent Tahrir square riots in Egypt in which the world gasped and watched as political turmoil and uprising unfolded live on the web and was shown on every channel on the box. In Rachel’s own words, she was ‘exploring the mythical output and structures of images of reality in mass media’. She wanted to abstract and change the language of these images in order to illicit new responses from the viewer.

We’ve loved what we’ve seen of her work so far, although Channel Zero is political in nature, Rachel’s other pieces look at a variety of other topics, including the Royal Wedding! We look forward to more from this bright young thing, but in the meantime you can follow her blog.

Cloak and Swagger

a big thank you...

to the Rebel Dogs for being awesome hosts and letting us use their space;

to Naomi, Kay, Jaspar & his awesome folks for putting so much time & effort into making Forum Arts work;
to Owen for dealing with the video when we were too busy enjoying ourselves to worry about it;

to Holly, Bettina, Ada, Delia, Rachel, Annarita, Andrea, Tommy, Gerry and Zoltan for bringing in so much fantastic work and helping put it up

and to everyone who came and made our opening such a good night, not to mention everyone else who turned up for the rest of the time we were open!

Phew, think that's everyone. Now on to #02...

ps. pics & video incoming (:

Andrew

All systems go & a word from our lovely artists

It's been a crazy, crazy week and all the FA team has been working flat out getting everything together for our first show! Thank you so much to everyone who got in touch about showing work, we're sorry we couldn't accomodate everyone, but hey, this is just the beginning of something which we hope to continue in a big way, and it's so great to know that people are interested in what we're doing (:

So below is a list of all the lovely artists who are showing work in a couple of days. It's going to be really cool seeing everything finally come together and we hope you can all join us for a drink and a gander on Thursday night for our opening.

Holly Goodwin

I'm Holly, I'm an illustration student in the second year. To be a part of an exhibition that is focused on being unpretentious is important to me because that is what I aim for within my own work, as it is all pretty much aimed towards marketing and product etc. The creative world should be made more accessible to all and some courses and tutors do foster a sort of cliquey attitude which is making it hard for interdisciplinary work and collaboration to happen.

http://hollyanngoodwin.blogspot.com/

holly_livesinabox@hotmail.com

Ada A

My name is Ade A and I represent a art collective called Coldblack arts . This company specialises in art, and music production. I believe that art does not discriminate. Art is for everyone and should have no cultural or visual boundaries. I want my art to engage with people, to make them ask questions about culture, class and society.  

The artworks, are about exploring the Urban environment, living in a urban jungle filled with steel, concrete and glass.  

Rachel Ridge

The series is made up of long exposures of TV news footage of the Egyptian revolt against president Mubarak in tahrir square.

I was exploring the representation of violence in the news structure and recontextualising it for the viewer to question how forms of mass media portray conflict and violence in a diluted and desensitising way. 

The images are taken on transparency film then cross processed to have hyperreal tones and colours

Annarite Livoti

The photographs are the result of an experiment with a handmade matchbox pinhole camera (camera without a lens with a small hole). It's the process of creating or modifying a camera which makes photography exciting for me.

These are digital prints of scanned negatives, left as the pinhole has captured them. Emphasizing the relation between the nature of photography and the developing technologies, my work is a continuos investigation of the possibilities of a camera.

Andrea Morreau

Andrea Morreau completed her BA at Middlesex University. After that she had her first child. After that she started making these pieces. She works as a community artist, and has won awards for her workshops.

This work like any other is a result of a combination of setting,  circumstance and a culture. The setting is domestic, the circumstance early motherhood,the culture a material one. 

The technique was chance. A friend studying textiles came round one day and showed me how to make pictures with wool, a technique she called dryfelting. The materials were portable and inexpensive enough for me to experiment with and eventually develop a practice that allowed both physical and temporal space for me to continue making work whilst caring for my young son. I don't want to comment on the meaning of the work, but it's from a series entiled 'Whatever you think: I am'

 Andrea Morreau 2011

Come check me out on MySpace at http://www.myspace.com/andreamorreau

Delia de Siervo

Tommy Ting

I was born in 1989 in Vancouver, Canada to Chinese parents. Currently, I am at the London College of Communications, University of the Arts London completing my BA (Hons) in photography.

My work investigates the ideas of identity and the loss of identity, especially of the Asian diaspora, through cultural and social vehicles that drive assimilation. I am also interested in the collision of culture that results from this. My style is heavily influenced by romanticism and Chinese Traditional painting. My work is a combination of photography, sculpture, textiles, drawing and video. 

Bettina Nelles

Bettina's work focuses on the bizarre and beautiful world of the circus. Using second hand garments to create something new, she has tried to capture the playful mood of the circus combined with the mysterious atmosphere of the rainforest. 

Bettina is from Germany and is currently studying BA in Fashion Design at University of East London. I'm an observer.

You can always contact me on: bettina.nelles@googlemail.com

Zoltan Karpati

The world is reproducing itself through my images, which is an amazing process to see and showing it to others makes it even more fun. I want to capture beauty and truth for others to feel and learn.

#01 artists

As we near the opening night of our first exhibition, we're getting together the work which will be shown. So far, (in no particular order) this is our list of exhibiting artists:

• Holly Goodwyn
• Ade A coldblack
• Rachel ridge
• Annarita Livoti
• Andrea Morreau
• Naomi Menashy
• Jaspar Wyatt

We've got all sorts of photography; soft toys made out of old material; T-shirt & album designs and everything in between. It's going to be an interesting couple of weeks...

#01 flyers!

But what does it mean?

#01 dates

We've just confirmed with Rebel Dog that our first exhibition; #01, will be taking place from the 5th to the 8th of May. We hope to have an opening do with some booze on the evening of the 5th, then it will be a pretty chilled out atmosphere for the rest of the time if you want to have some tea and cakes with us :)