Anthony Gross
Michael Curran and Lucy Gunning
Pil and Galia Kollectiv
Joseph Walsh
Lilli Hartmann
Dafna Talmor
Upper Gallery 1, Canteen Gallery 2 & Arch Gallery 3
Exhibition 18 September – 17 October 2010
Tuesday – Sunday 11am – 5pm
Exhibition Preview 17 September 6 – 9pm
TestBed 1 Artists’ discussion 19 September at 2pm.
Millions online… video… home-editing… YouTube… conversational spectacle overnight… gulf between cinematic and lo-fi narrows… viewers become creators… anarcho-democracy.
TestBed 1 is a series of new screen-based digital commissions produced from open residencies with Beaconsfield between March and September 2010. TestBed is Beaconsfield’s curatorial mentoring scheme for emerging artist-curators.
The project has been an extended process and evolved from a discursive event with fellow video-film artists presented by Dafna Talmor and Joseph Walsh as part of Beaconsfield’s exhibition Chronic Epoch, 2005. Further dialogue with Beaconsfield exploring aspects of performativity, economy of means and the impact of accelerating technology on screen-based art began in 2007, and the project was expanded in scope and ambition. Early in the process Dafna and Joe were invited to consider taking their active research a step further by making work alongside their curatorial role – and chose this route. A number of other artists were asked to engage with Beaconsfield’s identity as a space – physical and conceptual – for critical enquiry. The brief was to produce a screen-based work for exhibition through readily available means of production. The commissioned artists used the Beaconsfield resource as a creative base in a series of residencies that were open to the public over a six-month period. These delivered diverse experiences but were commonly characterised by collaboration, cooperation and a strategic use of resources.
Click here for more information on the TestBed 1 Artists’ Residencies.
The project TestBed 1 has been curated by Dafna Talmor, Joseph Walsh and Beaconsfield. We would like to thank all who have participated in TestBed 1, giving their time, energy and goodwill in the spirit of the project.
Beaconsfield Commissions 2010
Image: TestBed 1: Joseph Walsh, Rise of Treble, Ode to Bass, 2010, Work in progress, courtesy the artist and Beaconsfield