COMING SOON FROM COEXIST ARTS: A PRE LAUNCH SHOW (...is that allowed?)

In the Winch Tower: 

'Tantalum Memorial, Reconstruction 2008' winner of the Transmediale Prize, Berlin 2009 -  Graham Harwood, Richard Wright, and Matsuko Yokokoji.

“Tantalum Memorial” is a series of telephony-based memorials by the artists group Harwood, Wright, Yokokoji, to the people who have died as a result of the “coltan wars” in the Congo. The installation is constructed out of electromagnetic Strowger switches – the basis of the first automatic telephone exchange invented in 1888. The title of the work refers to the metal tantalum, an essential component of mobile phones.

The movements and sounds of the switches are triggered by the phone calls of London's Congolese community as they participate in “Telephone Trottoire” – a concurrent project also built by the artists in collaboration with the Congolese radio program “Nostalgie Ya Mboka”. The precisely poised movements and sounds of the switches create a sculptural presence for this otherwise intangible network of circulating conversations. In “Tantalum Memorial”, Harwood, Wright, and Yokoji weave together the ambiguities of globalisation, transnational migration and our addiction to constant communication."  

Taken from the Media Shed website:   http://mediashed.org/TantalumMemorial

In the Gallery:

 As we embark upon the first exhibition in our new project space, we realise how it sets the foundation and forms the base of our two year stay. How ironic that the building once had a well, thousands of feet deep, now capped with concrete - the people who used to work here still tread nervously around the edge of the room. The winch still present in the water tower makes reference to the buildings use in the past.

'BASE:'  The thing on which something rests, a place to stay, the main ingredient in paint or a center of operations? 

The artists in BASE: have transformed ordinary functional materials into provocative pieces of work. Playing with the mundane, and hinting at human presence (or absence), these works appear familiar and yet strangely foreign. They are ambiguous and left open to the interpretation of the viewer.

Artists include:  Michael Bowdidge,  Beth Shapeero and Lisa Temple-Cox 

In the Screening Room:

The White Bus will be running events and screenings.  http://www.thewhitebus.org.uk/

For more information please visit: http://www.coexist.org.uk 

If you would like to receive an invite to the private view in Southend on Sea, July 22nd - please email: coexist@hotmail.co.uk