Compressed Time Frames

Simon & UrsulaArt of Collaboration, Exhibitions, Projects

Here we are in Leeds and Dortmund, by way of this blog post, about our Compressed Time Frames exhibition: The site-specific, site-displaced installation that was destined for Basement Arts, Leeds has been postponed. Our intricate assemblage of lost, nurtured and found objects combining sound, sculpture, and imagery almost became realised last month, but Covid struck again and the delicate filaments subsided once more. At the centre of the exhibition is time, webs, and branches—and at the margins too—to break the binary, and , yes, branch out, and time out! We need more time, and so the double delay to our […]

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PYLON111

Simon & UrsulaAssemblages, Projects

We are excited to introduce a new commission through West Cumbria’s very own RE-Drift collective of artists! During October/November we’re working on this: ‘PYLON 111’ focuses on the last days of a lone pylon in the hinterlands of Workington docks that is quite literally at the end of the line. The material history of the pylon stretches back into World War Two, but it will meet its demise on Monday 9th Novemeber when it will be felled and dismembered by PLPC Ltd. This date happens to coincide with the 31st anniversary of the Fall of the Berlin Wall. ArtCouple have […]

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Out-O-Space Gallery #4: Stepping Submerged

Simon & UrsulaExhibitions

We were delighted to receive a beautiful submission from an artist we had never come across before lockdown, C-Nick. We felt the images and text spoke directly to the central preoccupations of the Out-O-Space Gallery as we move into territory unmapped. C-Nick—About Stepping Submerged: Times are different right now, society is in a flux as we’re trying to figure out what really matters, what to keep, and what to let go. But it’s not just social norms that are different, the weather here has been unusual as well. We’re in Southern California, and it rained for more than a week. […]

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Listen! It’s World Listening Day

Simon & UrsulaArt of Collaboration, Projects

A couple of days ago we did a mobile phone field experiment in preparation for World Listening Day 2020.’The Collective Field‘. We were both amazed by the size of a herd we came across on a walk on the outskirts of Maryport. Simon was fascinated by the sounds of the three different groups of sheep—above, below and beyond—in the vast rolling field. Unfortunately, he neglected to bring his main recording gear and had to make do with a brief documentation with a view to returning the next day. Ursula found the voices of the sheep very human. She always carries […]

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Out-O-Space Gallery #3: Rob Miller

Simon & UrsulaExhibitions

Work produced for the Playing at Change series reflects the incalculable absurdity of a global economy fundamentally at odds with our shared ecology – the [im]material flows of commerce, a fiction of progress constructed from pure human exceptionalism …. Rob Miller This month ArtCouple has the great pleasure to introduce the work of Rob Miller to the Out-O-Space Gallery. We’ve never seen any of Rob’s work in the metal, but we’ve been constantly drawn into his jarring assimilations—light and playful forms heroically coping with with their leaden materiality. As David Cobourne, one of Rob’s former students, puts it: They’re ‘like very […]

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Out-O-Space Gallery #2: Jeremy Hight

Simon & UrsulaExhibitions

It is our great pleasure to introduce our first (apart from us) artist to exhibit in the Out-O-Space Gallery—Jeremy Hight (writer/artist/photographer/theorist) whose shiniest things are having a work in the permanent digital collection of the Whitney Museum, and pioneering locative narrative in 2002. Check out some of his work on Instagram here. For this exhibition, the artist has chosen the following selection of 7 intriguing images that he shot on toy and cheap cameras. The scheduled opening on the 18th May was delayed due to rain, but we managed to unfold the platform and install the images on the MirrorScreen […]

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Out-O-Space Gallery #1

Simon & UrsulaAssemblages, Exhibitions, Projects

In which we discuss an unexpected opportunity in the lockdown: first Ursula, then Simon. Ursula: It’s on a scaffolding! What has become our outdoor-gallery, or gallery out-of-space, as now outside the house, out of the inside. A job had to be done that required scaffolding, they didn’t take it down before the lockdown – and now it is here to stay until whenever it finishes. Typical for the weird time we have entered: things, jobs had been put on hold, all our work had been stopped in its tracks, society at large on its head, it’s a kind of waiting-to-exhale […]

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Walking’s New Move(ment)s

Simon & UrsulaConferences

Last November ArtCouple presented a paper ‘Micro-Psychogeography: Walking as a Re-source for Re-imagining Place-Identity’ at Walking’s New Movements, Plymouth University (1-3 November, 2019). Our Paper:We were kindly invited by Phil Smith and company to deliver our presentation ‘Micro-psychogeography: walking as a re-source for re-imagining place-identity’ which provided a great opportunity to discuss some of our ongoing work with a host of fascinating and creative walkers temporarily assembled there. The following is from the abstract discussing our individual and collaborative walking practice via two routes: Ursula described how her ambulations became an ‘open studio’ after picking up sheep’s wool on Ilkley […]

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