Pub Cnversations: Melanie Carvalho and Ross Birrell

Please note that there has been a change in venue and this pub conversation will now be held at The Spotted Dog.

The Spotted Dog, 104 Warwick Street, Digbeth, Birmingham, B12 0NH.
Tel: 0121 772 3822
Tuesday 29th April
 7.30pm

Places are limited, so please email selfservice@hotmail.co.uk to book.

Melanie Carvalho

Melanie Carvalho is an artist working and living in London. She has shown in solo exhibitions (Cubitt gallery, London, 2002; Hidde van Seggelen, London 2006) and group exhibitions (East International, Norwich School of Art and Gallery, 2007; Where the Wild Things Are, Dundee Contemporary Arts, 2006; The Impossible Landscape, UMass Fine Art Centre, Amherst, Massachussetts, USA, 2006; Collage, Bloomberg Space, London; Solar Lunar, doggerfisher, 2004; Plunder, DCA, 2003; Viewfinder, Arnolfini, Bristol, 2002). She also co-curated The Poster Show with John Maclean that was shown at Gavin Brown’s Enterprise, New York, in 1999 and Cabinet, London, 2000. Carvalho studied at Central Saint Martins College of Art and the Royal College of Art and received a Rome scholarship in 1998 . She recently published a book entitled Expedition: A Journey in Search of Tropical Scotland, (which includes an essay by Ross Birrell) as part of a piece of work of the same name, whereby she travelled around the west coast of Scotland drawing, painting and filming the palms and sub-tropical flora that grown there. Her work is in private and public collections, including the New Art Gallery, Walsall.

Ross Birrell

Ross Birrell is an artist and writer. He has shown in group and solo exhibitions including the 4th Gwangju Bienalle (2002), Utopia Station (Sindelfingen, 2003), Envoy, Ellen de Bruijne Projects, Amsterdam and BüroFriedrich, Berlin (2003), Between the Lines Apex Art, New York (2003), Homo Ludens: Works from the Envoy series 1998-2005, Friesmuseum, Leeuwarden (2005) and most recently the survey show curated by Jörg Heiser, Romantic Conceptualism, Kunsthalle, Nürnberg/BAWAG Foundation Vienna 2007. Since 2005 Birrell has collaborated with David Harding on a series of films and installations, Port Bou: 18 Fragments for Walter Benjamin (2005) and Cuernavaca: A Journey in Search of Malcolm Lowry (2006) commissioned by Kunsthalle Basel. In December 2007 they were awarded an SAC Artist’s Film and Video Award for a new film to be shot in Havana and Miami in Spring 2008, to be premiered at CCA, Glasgow in January 2009 on the 50th anniversary of the Cuban revolution.

Ross Birrell is a lecturer and researcher at Glasgow School of Art and editor of the online journal, Art & Research. He is represented by Ellen de Bruijne Projects, Amsterdam.

Pub Conversations

For more information regarding Pub Conversations, the Pub Conversations podcasts and Self Service, go to www.pubconversations.co.uk

digbeth tweets

After a year of abstinence, I have finally succumbed to twitter.

Why?

SMS updating, time-stamping (sort of) and tomorrow’s invigilation. Here.

After the invigilation, once we’ve gathered back at VIVID, we’ll also be collating visual and aural traces here: www.flickr.com/groups/invigilator_digbeth/.

Let the quest for how best to document Invigilator continue!

Invigilator: Digbeth

paul conneally + nikki pugh + you + them
Saturday 29th March, 2-5pm
meet at VIVID at 2pm

As Digbeth continues its metamorphosis and assimilation into Eastside (Birmingham’s transforming, revitalising and regenerating regeneration project[1]) art institutions and project spaces present there are slowly increasing in number and yet, for the most part, they are safely kept behind locked gates, barred windows and access-controlled doors.

For Invigilator: Digbeth, a team of volunteers will take the role of gallery invigilator/visitor assistant outside where, rather than sitting in gallery spaces, they will be watchful over the streets and the day-to-day life unfolding there.

This is the fifth in the Invigilator series[2] where a single set of directions has been transposed onto different locations to determine the exact place for watching over; we can choose our significant starting points, but then a pre-determined sequence of lefts, rights and straight-ons takes us on a not-quite-random walk to an unplanned invigilation site.

Invigilator: Digbeth will consist of several invigilations taking place simultaneously throughout the Digbeth area. The significant starting points will be the galleries, studios and project spaces that would normally host the invigilators. The same galleries, studios and project spaces responsible for Digbeth’s renaissance…

Digbeth is also significant as the starting point for the Invigilator series as a whole since the directions used to arrive at the invigilation sites were derived from those used to get from home to a part-time job invigilating at VIVID.

All are welcome to join us for Invigilator: Digbeth. We will meet at VIVID at 2pm, borrow some of their red t-shirts and then walk to our respective invigilation sites (about 4 people per team) where we will be watchful for about 30 minutes before returning to VIVID for refreshments and feedback. No special equipment required: just bring yourselves, suitably warm clothing and a willingness to interact with the city.

Queries on the day phone: 0121 766 7876 (VIVID office)
Further information on the Invigilator series: www.npugh.co.uk/projects/invigilator

invigilations

references:
[1] http://www.birmingham.gov.uk/eastside.bcc
[2]New Forest,Derby,Tokyo and Nuneaton

Invigilator:Digbeth has been supported by Access West Midlands

invigilator invites

Invigilator : Digbeth

We’re currently getting excited about the re-appropriated business cards we’re using for the Invigilator: Digbeth invitations. Hope you do too!

[link to vimeo page]

INVIGILATOR: DIGBETH
paul conneally + nikki pugh + you + them
Saturday 29th March, 2-5pm

meet at VIVID at 2pm

bring a red top if you haven’t already arranged to use either one of ours or one from a different venue

npugh.co.uk/blog/invigilating_digbeth
 enquiries@npugh.co.uk

invigilating Digbeth

Since May last year, Paul Conneally and I have been invigilating.

First I invigilated some of the New Forest. Then Paul replied by hopping on the train with the morning commuters and invigilating a building site in Derby.

Shortly after that I wanted to explore what would happen if you had more than one invigilator. I wanted to see how the presence of multiple invigilators affected the dynamics of an area that has to be walked through (rather than just a point location that people can walk past).

invigilating Tokyo

I was in Japan at the time so this gave rise to Invigilator: Tokyo and - inevitably - a whole barrage of further questions!

More recently, Paul and I met up in Nuneaton for the first of the invigilations that we have done together. More questions!

We now feel it is time for us to turn the process around on itself and use the next invigilation to examine its origin: my old part-time job invigilating the gallery space at VIVID.

We want to dissect what we have learned so far.

We want you.

We’re currently gathering people who would like to don red t-shirts and join us on Saturday the 29th of March for Invigilator: Digbeth. We want to scale up the Tokyo action and send small teams of invigilators percolating out through Digbeth: turning the whole cultural quarter thing inside-out to extract people from their barricaded, security-protected warehouses and onto the street for an hour or so.

As a nod to how this series of works came about, we’ll be using VIVID as a base, liberating their red t-shirts, and also returning there for the debrief session and refreshments afterwards.

The invigilations themselves involve following a set of left/right/straight-on directions and then probably about 30 minutes standing around that location being watchful. What we’re after, in order to give Invigilator: Digbeth some clout is a) as many invigilators as possible so we can properly cover a large area and b) some suggestions for relevant starting points for the random walks.

So, for now, we’d like you to do three things for us:

  • Put that date in your diary: 29th of March, 2-5pm.
  • Suggest some cultural venue/art institution-esque starting points that the random walks to the invigilation locations can start from. We know about the obvious ones near to VIVID such as Ikon Eastside, the Custard Factory and the soon to be opened Eastside Projects, but we’d like more. Are there any? Bung something in the comments and let us know about it!
  • Let us know if you’d like to take part. All welcome, but we’d be particularly keen to hear from anyone who would normally work as one of the aforementioned venues.

More details to follow a bit closer to the day, and further invites are being circulated in the real world too.