Project News: A Message to... Marfa

Marfa, Texas, located at 30°18′43″N 104°1′29″W

TBC members Laura Davidson, Charley Peters and Beverley Bennett are currently working together on a collaborative project, A Message To... Marfa. Marfa is a town in the desert of West Texas, founded in the early 1880s as a railroad water stop. Marfa Army Airfield was located east of the town during World War II and trained several thousand pilots before closing in 1945, the abandoned site still being visible 16km east of the town. In 1956 the film Giant was filmed in Marfa, famously the last film featuring James Dean, who died before filming was completed. The city is now best known for housing Donald Judd's Chinati Foundation, occupying more than 10 buildings and permanently exhibiting work by artists including Carl Andre, Dan Flavin, Richard Long and Roni Horn. 

A Message To... Marfa involves Peters and Bennett, in London, providing Davidson with a list of instructions for actions that she must undertake in Marfa. These actions will generate material that Davidson will send back to Peters and Bennett, which they will curate and interpret to generate a remote 'drawing' of Marfa. The project will be realised over the next two months, and published online shortly afterwards.

TBC Artists' Collective: A Message To... Houston

Charley Peters, A Message To... Paul Neal 'Red' Adair (2011), Folded Paper on Wall

TBC's latest project, A Message To... Houston has now been completed and images of the installation of the works by myself, Laura Davidson and Beverley Bennett are now available at 12-pages.com.

My collaboration with Davidson was inspired by research into the firefighter 'Red' Adair. Davidson interpreted a set of instructions supplied by me relating to a series of drawings made from folded paper for the project (above), which are installed in my studio in London. On the 25th of August Davidson recreated the works in Houston, Texas, and scattered their subsequently burned remnants along the park in the middle of Heights Boulevard, which divides the lanes of traffic travelling across town (below). The work is the latest in TBC's ongoing exploration of drawing as performative, interventionist or documentary medium, moving the act of solitary mark making out of the studio and into a collaborative, interactive environment. For more information about the project click here.

Laura Davidson and Charley Peters, A Message to Paul Neal 'Red' Adair' (2011)

Exhibition News: Slice

TBC Artists' Collective, Still from Khoros (2011)

TBC have a newly commissioned piece of work in Slice, opening at Rich Mix, London E1 6LA on 1 September 2011. Appropriating the various and undulating spaces of Catherine Wheel Alley, E1, as a live studio, TBC applied the ideas of dance theorist Rudolf von Laban and the novelist Italo Calvino to a performative ‘drawing’, exploring and mapping the environment through a combination of lines and motion. White boiler suits homogenised the performers with the space and its architectural features, drawing attention to the symbolic red elastic lines and shapes generated as they moved together topologically. The resultant ‘drawing in space’, Khoros, plots the relationship between the artists’ physical encounters of the location and their shared experience of collaborative movement.

Slice is open 1-22 September at Rich Mix, London, and the National College of Arts, Lahore.
http://www.richmix.org.uk

More information about the Slice project and TBC's film, Khoros, can be seen on the Slice website:
www.london-lahore.com

A Message To... Houston

As part of TBC Artists' Collective, I will be taking part in the A Message To... Houston project during August. My piece of work is inspired by the legendary firefighter 'Red' Adair, who, during his career extinguished and capped oil well blowouts, both on land and offshore. The project will involve a collaboration between myself and TBC's Laura Davidson, based on Laura's interpretation of a set of instructions I supplied her with relating to a series of my drawings made for the project. The instructions and my drawings - made from folded paper, reminiscent of flame forms - are below. The second part of the project will be documented on the TBC Online Project Space, 12-Pages, at the end of August.

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A Message to... Paul Neal 'Red' Adair

I have made six drawings out of folded paper.

The drawings are now on the wall of my studio in London.

On sheets of white paper I have recorded each fold as a line, thereby producing six new line drawings.

I have given these line drawings to you and they are to be taken to Houston, Texas.

In Houston the lines should be turned into folds and the original drawings recreated.

The six recreated drawings should be burned and their ashes scattered in Houston Heights, the area where Red Adair spent his childhood, to commemorate his career extinguishing hazardous oil well fires until his retirement at the age of 77.

Charley Peters, A Message to Red Adair (2011), Folded paper on wall

Project News: A Message To... Houston

During August TBC Artists' Collective will be taking part in a project in Houston, Texas. A Message To... Houston will involve TBC members - Beverley Bennett, Charley Peters, Laura Davidson, Paul Mendez and intern James Tuitt - researching notable residents of Houston and creating a new piece of interventionist work inspired by their findings. The final works will be installed in locations around the city. The works and their placement in sites in Houston will be recorded and can be seen on the TBC Online Project Space at the end of August.

Sketches: Slice Visual Essay

Charley Peters, Sketches for Slice (2011), Ink on Paper

Over the next two weeks I am continuing to work on a series of drawings that will be part of a visual essay in the publication that accompanies the Slice project that TBC Artists' Collective have been involved in. The latest sketches towards developing work for the publication are a response to the shifting virtual lines suggested by the red elastic stretched between TBC members during their 'drawing in space' in Catherine Wheel Alley.

The Slice website documenting all works created for the project by artists in London and Lahore will be live on Friday, after a launch event at the Ideas Store, Whitechapel on Thursday evening.

Project News: 'Slice' Visual Essay, a collaboration with Beverley Bennett

Charley Peters, Sketches for Slice (2011), Pencil Crayon on Paper

I am currently collaborating with artist Beverley Bennett to produce a visual essay as part of the publication associated with the international Slice project, featuring artists from London and Lahore. During a studio session this week we generated a series of drawings in response to the performative 'drawing in space' produced by TBC Artists' Collective in Catherine Wheel Alley, London. The works produced this week in the studio will be developed over the forthcoming weeks and published in September to coincide with the opening of the Slice exhibition at Rich Mix, London.

Project News: Altered States (Coming Soon)

Coming soon on TBC Artists' Collective's online project space is Altered States, a publication featuring newly commissioned work from a range of international artists. Altered States will be edited by TBC member Laura Davidson and will be available on 12-pages.com later this month.

Project News: Radicals (Coming Soon)

The new issue of 12-Pages will be available on TBC's online project space on 8th June. Entitled Radicals, it features newly commissioned work by TBC artists and international collaborators.

Commission News: SLICE

Slice, a Pakistani–UK collaboration, curated by Fatima Hussein and Scale

TBC Artists' Collective have today been commissioned to produce work for SLICE, a Pakistani–UK collaborative website and accompanying exhibitions in London and Lahore curated by Fatima Hussein, artists and co-director of Other Asias, and Scale, the collaborative arts project run by artists and theatremakers Simon Daw and Paul Burgess. SLICE aims to encourage dialogue between two diverse cultures by linking communities in both countries via the creation of a new artwork that enters into dialogue with the social and physical fabric of two iconic, complex and historically linked cities. Ten artists from London and ten from Lahore have been commissioned to participate in SLICE.

TBC members Beverley Bennett, Charley Peters, Laura Davidson and Paul Mendez will produce a collaborative work for the project, which will be exhibited in both cities on online. The group members will also participate in two international web conferences.


The exhibition dates are as follows:
July 2011 Exhibition opens and SLICE website launch at Ideas Store, Whitechapel, London
September 2011 Exhibition opens at Rich Mix, London
September 2011 Exhibition opens at Zahoor ul Akhlaq Gallery, Lahore

TBC are very excited by the project and will post more news about their developing work on their Online Project Space, 12-Pages, and here on Carbon Particles, during the duration of their involvement with SLICE.

Project News: Windows (Coming Soon)

Charley Peters, Window V Windows (2011)

Window V Windows is a new work for TBC Artists' Collective's forthcoming publication 'Windows', which will soon be available to view on the 12-Pages Online Project Space. It used the photograph View from the Window at Le Gras as source material from which to make a work for the February issue of TBC's online publication. View from the Window at Le Gras was the first permanent photograph, created by Nicéphore Niépce in 1826 in Saint-Loup-de-Varennes, France. Niépce produced his photograph—a view of a courtyard and outbuildings seen from the house’s upstairs window—by exposing a bitumen-coated plate in a camera obscura for eight hours on his windowsill. In Window V Windows Niépce's seminal work has been glitched by opening it in Wordpad for Windows and intervening in the image's coding, creating a mash-up of analogue and digital photographic data.

'Windows' by TBC Artists' Collective will be online at www.12-pages.com soon, featuring specially commissioned work by TBC Members and their invited guests.

Nicéphore Niépce, View from the Window at Le Gras (1826)

Project News: A Message To...

A Message To... Ann Oakley (2011)

A Message To...

On 22 January 2011 members of TBC Artists' Collective - Beverley Bennett, Laura Davidson, Paul Mendez, James Tuitt and myself - travelled to Oxford to complete the first part of a long-term project, 'A Message To...' 

Each artist made a piece of interventionist work inspired by someone who has contributed to the cultural life of Oxford. My work, a drawing in dirt for sociologist Ann Oakley, who has written extensively about women's experiences as housewives and mothers, was installed in a display cabinet in the Pitt Rivers Museum. 

The cabinet, on the first floor of the museum, is directly underneath a vitrine containing ethnographic objects relating to marriage. Oakley graduated from Somerville College, Oxford in 1965, where she is now a Fellow.

 

The site of the dirt drawing intervention in the Pitt Rivers Museum, Oxford

Project News: TBC Do it Again, and Again, and Again

The Double Walkers (2010)

The Double Walkers, 100 drawings of a photocopier 'copy' button is my contribution to the current issue of 12-Pages, which can be seen now on TBC Artists' Collective's online project space. Edited by James Tuitt, 'Do it Again, and Again, and Again' focuses on the repetitive and absorbing nature of contemporary drawing practices.

See more at www.12-pages.com

Project News: A Message To...

A Message To... Ann Oakley (2011)

TBC Artists' Collective are working on a new long-term project called 'A Message To...' The project will take members of TBC to various UK and international locations to make ephemeral interventionist works based on the cities they travel to. This week the group will travel to Oxford and install postcard-sized art works we have made specifically as a message to a person linked to Oxford who has contributed to national cultural, creative or academic history. 

My work pays homage to Ann Oakley, a writer and a sociologist who graduated from Somerville College, Oxford. She has written extensively and influentially around issues of sex and gender, housework, childbirth and feminist social science. Her 1974 book 'Housewife' inspired my 'A Message To' work, in which she wrote, 'Housework is work directly opposed to the possibility of human self-actualisation'. My drawing is made from dirt samples collected in my studio.

A Message To... Ann Oakley (detail)

2011: Back to the Studio

Ben-Day Dot Sketches 2011
Graphite on Paper

Yesterday saw my return to the studio after the Christmas break. 2011 will be a busy year with exciting new projects from TBC Artists' Collective and my forthcoming solo show at Electric Blue Gallery in October 2011 (www.electricbluegallery.com). Work started on a number of new sketches that suggest the fragility of the mass produced image, exploring the relationship between the autographic image and the visual language of mechanical reproduction.

Carbon Particles will be regularly updated with progress of all Charley Peters projects in 2011.

Project News: Do Something Wrong

The new issue of 12-Pages, TBC Artists' Collective's online journal is now live on the TBC blog - www.12-pages.com. Edited by Charley Peters, the project challenged TBC members and their invited associates to 'Do Something Wrong'.

Project News: Artificial Intelligence

Detail from Document V: The I with which I see / Conversations with Berger (Helvetica 60pt)

Wrong, the new issue of TBC's 12-Pages Online Project Space features new work from me called Artificial Intelligence. On Friday 26th November 2010 I entered a university library in London and took a copy of John Berger’s influential text ‘Ways of Seeing’ from the shelf. During the next two hours I cut out all the references to sight, seeing and the visual from Chapter One of the book, rendering it meaningless. I replaced the book on the shelf and left the library.

New Homepage

A new homepage with links to online galleries of my work, TBC's 12-Pages and Carbon Particles:
charleypeters.net

Project News: The Show / Trace Elements

Along with my fellow TBC artists Beverley Bennett, Laura Davidson and Paul Mendez, I will be participating in The Show. The exhibition of drawings, 'Trace Elements' selected by curator Eddie Otchere will open 20th November as part of The Show's cultural events programme on Millbank.  The Show presents 'the freshest concepts and objects amongst the spectacle of art, music and magic' (theshowlondon.com)

More information to follow...

Delineation, Contemporary Dialogues with Drawing Closes

Selected works from Delineation

After a successful five-day run, Delineation closed its doors to the public yesterday. The Delineation project however, continues to develop. A post-exhibition catalogue, featuring critical responses to the exhibition and essays exploring contemporary drawing practices, will be edited by TBC over the forthcoming months.

Anyone interested in being kept up-to-date with the progress of this and other TBC projects should join the TBC mailing list by emailing with the subject heading 'Mailing List' to: info@tbcartistscollective.org.