Get down to the St Helier Town Church this month for a brand new immersive art exhibition featuring over 20 artworks exploring key issues affecting our community today.
What do you get if you cross 40 international and local artists, over 20 art installations, three of society’s biggest issues, two special events and one town centre church? The answer is Skipton Big Ideas, the Island’s largest ever art exhibition due to open to the public at the St Helier Town Church from Thursday 14 October. Read on to find out what it’s all about, and how you can secure your free place ahead of the big launch…
Skipton Big Ideas art exhibition, produced by the arts charity ArtHouse Jersey, is entirely free for everybody to attend, with over twenty large-scale 3D installation artworks filling the St Helier Town Church with art and colour to create a truly immersive experience for the thousands of expected visitors.
Each installation explores at least one of three key issues affecting our society today. Visitors will find work exploring sustainability. We live in an age of environmental and social emergencies that force us to re-examine what we value most and how we will sustain ourselves. How do we protect what we already have? How do we consume less? How might we repurpose things and what will it take to change our mindsets?
There will also be work responding to the theme of accessibility. Do we live in an accessible world? Are the arts accessible to all? Do some people feel excluded from the cultural narrative? If so, how might that sense of exclusion look and feel, and how might we better break down barriers in the arts?
And finally identity. Where do we get our sense of identity? Where is home? How important is cultural identity and how do we square this with an increasingly global community?
Alongside the installatory exhibition there will be a number of stunning evening performances, lunchtime lectures and inclusive weekend workshops, all focused on issues relating to three key themes. ArtHouse Jersey hopes to encourage the whole community to come along and soak up this beautiful and thought provoking work and perhaps even go on to engage in a debate around how we might create a more inclusive and sustainable future for our Island home.
EVENTS
The Walking Gallery showcases bespoke, wearable art and sustainable creations alongside a number of special performances, including choreographed dance and aerial performance, set amongst the installory experience of the exhibition. Only three of these exclusive events will take place on Thursday 14, Friday 15 and Saturday 16 October.
The Sound of Colour is a limited run of live music and projection concerts designed by internationally renowned projection designer and creative director Akhila Krishnan in collaboration with Berlin-based music producer Viv le Vav. This unique commission will serve as the headline event for the exhibition, with only five 30-minute performances taking place over three nights on Thursday 21, Friday 22 and Saturday 23 October.
Artists: Kerry Jane Warner and Margarida Lourenco Olivier
Artwork title: Phoenix
Themes: Identity; Sustainability
Local artist Kerry Jane Warner and textile designer Margarida Lourenco have joined forces to create ‘Phoenix’, a large soft sculptural installation. Composed of hundreds of smaller textile works, this piece explores the theme of individual identity within a wider community and the social and cultural networks that maintain them.
Artists: Kyle Moody and Heather Barrette
Title: Atemony
Themes: Sustainability
Heather Barette is a fine art painter.
Kyle Moody is a textile fashion designer.
‘Atemony’: Ate is the Greek goddess of folly and poor decisions and is known for leading people to ruin through bad choices. Antimony is a metal used in the production of PET plastic that is actually toxic to humans over time. ‘Atemony’ is a collection of couture garments crafted exclusively in sustainable materials with eco-friendly construction practices.
Artist: Anna Shipley
Title: Climate Change Emergency Poncho
Themes: Sustainability
Anna is an environmental artist, making mixed media work which considers the complex relationships between humans and the natural world. This lightweight poncho can be worn but can also pitched like a tent to shelter from the elements. It is made from small hexagonal tiles of hand-made paper which incorporate wildflower seeds from Jersey’s Pollinator Project.
Artist: Ben Robertson
Title: Spend Time
Themes: Accessibility; Identity; Sustainability
Ben Robertson is a visual artist working with paint to create bright and colourful large-scale murals in forgotten areas of Jersey. His 3D collage installation is constructed from rock-like sections, drawing inspiration from Ben’s wanderings through the natural landscapes of Jersey and his resulting journals and sketchbooks. The piece reflects the artist’s journey through tunnels of trees found on country lanes and the passageways of ancient neolithic shelters.
Artist: Ian Rolls
Title: Home
Themes: Accessibility; Identity; Sustainability
Ian Rolls has considered the significance of the home and our relationship with it as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic. ‘Home’ is a house-like structure made from reused furniture and household objects fixed together in a seemingly disordered yet carefully considered way and painted in bright colours on the outside but with a different, chaotically domestic feeling on the inside. The project was undertaken with the charity Acorn.
Karen Le Roy Harris (lead artist)
with Anthony Lewis
Title: Outside Looking In is a series of boxes created by twelve diverse people in partnership with nine artists:
Anthony has faced many challenges since his stroke. The box reflects the obstacles and his progress to overcome physical, mental and emotional issues and the windows of hope that have supported this transformation. Anthony is now working for change as Disability and Inclusion Officer for the States of Jersey.
Artist: Oliver Le Gresley
Title: Refugio
Theme: Identity
Oliver Le Gresley is an artist and craft practitioner with a BA in Fine Art and an MA in Textile Design from University College Falmouth. He spent a formative fifteen months living in Japan working with a master silk weaver and a small textile design company. His recent work has explored craft and materiality whilst seeking to represent motifs of place and experience. ‘Refugio’ is a piece of art designed in response to the way life has changed universally during the pandemic. The work hopes to distil some of these changes.
Artist: Tim Evans
Title: All Is Metaphor
Theme: Identity
Jersey-born artist Tim Evans has always had a fascination with the deepest workings of nature and has a broad interest in science, philosophy and spirituality. His ideas attempt to illustrate a unifying thread that runs through everything. This light-box-style installation creates the illusion of a portal through time using infinity mirrors and layers of laser cut perspex. The installation explores the constant evolution of fractals in a universe that can never truly be pinned down other than for a brief instance.
