Olympic Inspiration

Life Force: The Corn Exchange, Newbury.  1 May - 14 June 2012
This exhibition, curated by Jane Vaidya, presents work inspired by the 2012 Olympics.  It includes OHOS artist Ingrid Jensen's photographs of her sculpture Poker Dice.  This was originally made for arjeea21's Olympic Ideals exhibition in Battle Library Reading in 2009 in response to the Olympic and Paralympic Values: Excellence, Respect, Friendship, Equality, Determination, Courage and Inspiration.  The five plaster forms are derived from knuckle bones, and may rest in any one of six positions.  No matter how high our ideals, our future is still vulnerable to chance - a throw of the dice.
The exhibition is part of Open Studios West Berkshire and North Hampshire.

artspeak - Art/Science collaboration

Ingrid Jensen gave an interesting talk and prompted an excellent discussion on Art and Science collaborations last Wednesday at the Keep. The event was very well attended making for diverse and insightful comments and discussion throughout.  Alongside the talk were examples of Ingrid's work and other examples and books related to the topic of the evening. This will be followed later in May with a workshop 'endosymbiosis' which closely relates to art/science collaborations. Please book to reserve a place.

Remarkable Place

Remarkable events at OpenHand OpenSpace!  Philip Lee performs in Triple Spin - a collaboration with Cally Trench and Ann Rapstoff, and definitely related to Ann's Office for Zebra Crossings.  Seventeen artists from Remarkable and Curious Conversations engaged visitors to the Keep in unexpected and intriguing conversations and contemporary art installations during a weekend event curated by Cally Trench.  A big thank you to all concerned.

Dens and Doodles

In a continuation of our Artspeak series,artist and studio member Kate Lockhart led a children's, parent and carers session at the keep on Saturday. Participant's built den installations, explored a variety of materials and techniques and had a chance to share creative ideas.  The event will hopefully become part of our future planning and attracts younger artistically minded members of our community. 

roves and roams and OpenHand OpenSpace invite you to

The Human Condition: Jessica F Hirst

on Tuesday 20th March at 19:00

Free Entry & Free Parking

You are invited to an evening with live artist Jessica F Hirst (Barcelona / USA), co-produced by roves and roams and OpenHand OpenSpace where she will perform Vocabulary and partake in an open Q&A with the audience.

Hirst, who has performed intentionally for the last decade, is interested in the intersections of personal and global struggles, in the spaces individuals create to consider our fragile human condition. How does a personal condition or experience, such as mental illness, interact with the stigmatizing commercial and social environment? How does the impetus to consume always more quantities of natural and manufactured resources square with the onslaught of information about climate change and other limits to nature?

Here is the egg in situ in St Martins courtyard, just off Mercer St nr Covent Garden in London.

If you can hunt down all 209 eggs then you could stand to win a £100,000 Jubilee Faberge egg.

Just think what you could do with that! Among the contributing artists you will find, the Chapman Bros, Andrew Logan, Zaha Hadid, Zandra Rhodes, Sir Peter Blake, Sir Ridley Scott to name but a few. Happy hunting

Another excellent artspeak talk by Jon Lockhart happened last week and went on til very late with an interesting discussion that kept us buzzing for days after. It was interesting to see the volume and breadth of Jons work and to see a common thread running through his projects.

Many thanks to Jon for his contribution and we look forward to the next talk by Ingrid Jensen next month.