| E m e r g e D / RAW press release.
RAW: Real Art Week 10th – 18th April 2004 Nine days in April for you to experience a feast of contemporary Scottish Art. RAW 2004 is a collaboration between eighteen key organisations in Glasgow – all of whom want you to sample some of the most exciting contemporary art happening in Scotland today. For a taste of RAW, visit eighteen different spaces across the city for art, food and drink to suit your palate. Watch out for exclusive RAW offers as you travel around the City on the free RAW bus and finish your day at the official RAW Club at the Arches. Participants include the Arches, CCA, Cossachok, E m e r g e D, Glasgow Art Fair, Glasgow Independent Studio, Glasgow Print Studio, Glasgow School of Art, Glasgow Sculpture Studios, GOMA, Market Gallery, Project Ability, Street Level, Switchspace, Sorcha Dallas, Sharmanka, Tramway and Volume. More information is available at all participating venues. A shorter credit may read something as follows: E m e r g e D is part of RAW: Real Art Week, a programme of events and exhibitions
across the city involving the Arches, CCA, Cossachok, Glasgow Art Fair, Glasgow
Independent Studio, Glasgow Print Studio, Glasgow School of Art, Glasgow Sculpture
Studios, GOMA, Market Gallery, Project Ability, Street Level, Switchspace, Sorcha
Dallas, Sharmanka, Tramway and Volume. E m e r g e D is an artist-led, not-for-profit organisation, founded in Glasgow in April 2002 by amy SALES and lucy GIBSON. E m e r g e D aims to promote and enable up-and-coming artists across a broad range of disciplines with a fresh focus on site specific, context led art works. Based in Glasgow, E m e r g e D has no fixed abode; instead it uses the nucleus of the organisation, www.emerged.net to disseminate information on site specific projects/exhibition/events and opportunities for artists. This ensures a translucent and flexible operation which is visible to the general public as well as to local and international artists. E m e r g e D has a distinguished reputation for realising and managing projects that bring artists and alternative venues together. E m e r g e D initiatives are not housed in traditional art spaces; instead artists are encouraged to work in orphaned spaces. Sites include empty or disused shops, youth hostels, hairdressers' basements, and aim to draw public attention to areas in the city that are used on a regular basis, giving them a fresh perspective on spaces which have been rendered invisible through over use. By housing art in such locations there is a renewed sense of community and pride amongst users of these city spaces.
Making contemporary art available to new audiences is a large part of what
E m e r g e D do, striving to create projects that are inclusive and accessible
to the general public. To support this we provide informative back up to all
projects/exhibitions/events in the form of catalogues and artists' talks which
aim to give the audiences a deeper understanding of the issues explored and the
artists' motivations in creating their work. The web site also houses a full
archive of current/previous projects/exhibitions and E m e r g e D were invited to take part in RAW, Real Art week on the basis' of their clear commitment to site-related, context led art work and their ability to offer something very different to this years RAW programme. Curated by amy SALES, with no fixed venue, selected artists Steven Dickie, Alan Kean and Ric Spencer will continue the spatial dialogues E m e r g e D has been exploring in its site-specific collaborations since its inception in 2002. By having site-specific art works on show throughout Glasgow, and placing the artists firmly within the context of the city E m e r g e D aims to merge traditional art audiences with 'chance audiences' made up from passers by and local communities. Artistic excellence is at the core of E m e r g e D’s practice, whilst directly addressing concerns that galleries are removed from cultures and contexts, by replacing contemporary art at the heart of communities; identifies directly with its audience and surroundings. For RAW, Steven Dickie will be orchestrating an audio-visual work that can be seen on the big screen above the Glasgow Royal Concert Hall on Wednesday, 14th March 2004. Dickie’s work, Simultaneous Equations, choreographs video, radio broadcasts and public participation to bring scattered information to a convergence point…in the viewer. Alan Kean’s piece for RAW is Small Voice of Calm, an audio work that interrupts the natural acoustics of St. Mary’s Cathedral on Great Western Road by literally pitching the Cathedral’s sounds back into its own space, dismantling the harmonic rhythms that lull and roll through the Cathedral’s day. Kean’s “dis-quieting” can be experienced daily through RAW from 10 am - 5 pm. From 12 April to 15 April Ric Spencer will be walking barefoot along the River Clyde’s edge, cutting, and abrasing and generally toughening up his feet’s soles along the way. The conversational residue of Spencer’s Barefoot [I Cover the Waterfront] can be viewed 24 hours via www.emerged.net. Each artist attempts to engage with their surroundings physically, socially
and on an individual level. The works draw in the local citizens, reflect their
individual experiences and places them in the context of the -end- Artist Talk Time: 2pm RAW Bus Tour programme: Thursday, 15 April / 2 pm / Switchspace - Glasgow Sculpture Studios - Cossachok
- Project Ability - Market Gallery. Amy Sales |