pumphousegallery.org
makeitOK

Freddie Robins will be showing as part of the Blackwater Polytechnic at Sluice_2015, Bargehouse, Oxo Tower Wharf, Bargehouse Street, South Bank, London SE1 9PH
Friday 16 – Sunday 18 October 2015 from 11.00am – 6.00pm.

Freddie Robins will be showing alongside other Essex artists: Ben Coode-Adams, Simon Collins and Justin Knopp (Typoretum) with friends from across the Atlantic; George Ferrandi and Brent Owens.

The 2015 edition of the Sluice__ art fair will host approximately 40 artist/curator-run and emerging galleries from around the world. Sluice__ positions the fair in the centre of London during Frieze week in order to create a counter-balance to the predominant model. Sluice__ occupies the form of the art fair but is not beholden to the art fair model in its current state. Entrance to Sluice_ art fair is free.

sluice.info
blackwaterpolytechnic.com

Touring exhibition, opened at Pump House Gallery, Battersea Park, London SW11
27 August – 1 November 2015

I’m so bloody sad, 2007-2015, machine knitted wool, foam, sand, knitting needles, 980 × 400 × 2100 mm

What Do I Need to Do to Make it OK? is an investigation into damage and repair, disease and medicine, and the healing and restoration of landscapes, bodies, minds and objects through stitch and other media.

The exhibition’s five artists have varied approaches to the theme: Dorothy Caldwell’s hand-stitching explores how humans have marked and visualised landscapes from the Arctic to Australia to create maps of land and memory. Whilst Freddie Robins uses precision machine-knitting, combining hand-crafted and found objects to examine preoccupations with crime, illness and fear; Karina Thompson’s high-tech embroideries navigate complex data, from cardiology scans to bones exhumed from a medieval cemetery for lepers. Celia Pym’s interest in process has led her to knit her way round Japan and to rescue discarded garments – and Saidhbhín Gibson’s work focuses on our human interactions with landscape, showcased in stitch-led interventions with natural objects. With deliberate ambiguity in their titles, her work poses the question: is it art that makes things better, or nature?

Curated by Liz Cooper

Make it OK? is a touring exhibition supported by Arts Council England and the International Textile Research Centre of the University for the Creative Arts.
For more information

Photography: Eoin Carey

The Blackwater Polytechnic present Brocki, an Open Studio event (part of Colchester and Tendring Open Studios 2015) at
Feering Bury Farm Barn, Coggeshall Road, Feering, Colchester, Essex CO5 9RB
Open on Sunday 20 September + Sunday 27 September 2015 from 11.00 – 5.00

Freddie Robins will be showing alongside other Essex artists: Ben Coode-Adams, Simon Collins, Dale Devereux Barker, Simon Emery (The Paintbox), Sara Impey and Justin Knopp (Typoretum). The international artist group, Myvillages, will be present with their project Company: Movements, Deals and Drinks and antiques, collectables and curiosities will be for sale courtesy of Rebecca Weaver. Ben Coode-Adams and Freddie Robins have finally managed to haul most of their collections out of storage and into display cases. In so doing they have de-accessioned a fair few objects that will also be available to buy alongside art from the archive and surplus artists materials. The surprisingly successful Lambros Café, nominally run by 11-year olds, will open it’s stable door for the second time. Please join us.

blackwaterpolytechnic.com
colchesteropenstudios.org

Touring exhibition curated by Day + Gluckman
The Exchange, Penzance, Cornwall, 22 October 2016 – 7 January 2017
Collyer Bristow Gallery, 4 Bedford Row, London WC1, 2 July – 21 October 2015

Mad Mother, 2015, machine and hand knitted wool, 2300 × 1520 × 20 mm

Bad Mother, 2013, machine knitted wool, machine knitted lurex, expanding foam, knitting needles, glass beads, sequins, dress pins, crystal beads on maple wood shelf, 780 × 160 × 160 mm. Private Collection

Liberties, an exhibition of contemporary art reflecting on 40 years since the Sex Discrimination Act.

Works by over 20 women artists will reflect the changes in art practice within the context of sexual and gender equality since the introduction of the Sex Discrimination Act (1975) in the UK. Some artists confront issues that galvanised the change in law whilst others carved their own place in a complex and male dominated art world. From the radical movements of the 1960s and 70s, the politics of the 80s, the boom of lad culture in the 1990s to the current fourth wave of feminism, encouraged largely through and because of social media, all of the artists’ question equality and identity in very different ways.

The exhibition presents a snapshot of the evolving conversations that continue to contribute to the mapping of a woman’s place in British society. Body, femininity, sex, motherhood, economic and political status are explored through film, photography, sculpture, performance and painting.

Exhibiting alongside: Guler Ates, Helen Barff, Sutapa Biswas, Sonia Boyce, Jemima Burrill, Helen Chadwick, Sarah Duffy, Rose English, Rose Finn-Kelcey, Alison Gill, Helena Goldwater, Joy Gregory, Margaret Harrison, Alexis Hunter, Frances Kearney, EJ Major, Eleanor Moreton, Hayley Newman, Monica Ross, Jo Spence, Jessica Voorsanger, Alice May Williams and Carey Young.

Liberties is part of A Woman’s Place project curated by Day + Gluckman
awomansplace.org.uk/liberties-london
awomansplace.org.uk/liberties-cornwall

Photography: Stephanie Rushton