Bonington Gallery was pleased to present the fifth in the series of Bonington Film Nights. This screening was the last in the season curated by Joshua Lockwood.
This film screening took place amidst the Publishing Rooms exhibition.
Visit the Facebook event page.
Bonington Gallery was delighted to present Publishing Rooms, a commissioned exhibition concept by Andrew and Iain Foxall of Foxall Studio, London.
Over the past decade, mass-publishing has moved from the print houses into the hands of anyone owning a smartphone. Publishing is no longer a privilege, but an involuntary expression of our multiple identities and allegiances.
Exploring themes of self-expression and posterity, Bonington Gallery became a facility for self-publishing.
Set within a constructed environment that combines the appearance of an abstracted newsroom with the functionality of a photo booth, visitors were invited to interact with technological and analogue devices designed and implemented by Foxall. These tools for self-publishing will provide opportunity to further explore our obsessions with mediated forms of self-expression.
Referencing and subverting everything from zine culture to the selfie phenomenon, Publishing Rooms provided opportunities to go beyond the prescribed presets found in our social media outlets, generating new variables for the production of self-imagery and the subjective understanding of ourselves.
Referencing and subverting everything from zine culture to the selfie phenomenon, Publishing Rooms provided opportunities to go beyond the prescribed presets found in our social media outlets, generating new variables for the production of self-imagery and the subjective understanding of ourselves.
Brothers Andrew and Iain started Foxall Studio in 2006 to combine their experience and vision in art, fashion and innovation. As a multi-disciplinary studio, Foxall direct brand-led experiences ranging from brand creation, art direction and magazine design, through to exhibition design.
The brothers work with designers, developers, photographers and artists to create collaborations that challenge the paradigms of brand / experience building. Recent projects include a commissioned brand campaign by British jewellery designer, Jo Hayes Ward; contributions to an installation for Selfridges, London; and a music film released exclusively on Nowness.
Andrew and Iain also regularly lecture and run workshops at The British Council, London College of Communication, The Royal College of Art and Liverpool John Moores.
All the images created within Publishing Rooms were published directly to publishingrooms.com. Here, you can view and save your scanner camera portraits, and view the most recent images made using the Body Scan and Wall Scanner installations. From there, you can also share these elsewhere on the web, with the ability to share them directly to social media platforms. Tag your posts #PublishingRooms on Instagram and Twitter and share your exhibition experience with us.
Our Gallery invigilators and Foxall Studios’ intern Marion will also be kept us up-to-date with the exhibition via the blog. In case you missed it, you can read Andrew and Iain’s introduction to the project and get an early look at the scanner camera development here.
An informal discussion looking at the changing importance of printed matter and whether it still holds up as a relevant and vital contemporary media format. This will take place on 26th April, 1 pm, in the gallery space.
Guest Speakers:
Matt Gill (Raw Print), Andrew Foxall (Foxall Studio), Iain Foxall (Foxall Studio), Hugh Frost (Landfill Editions), Alex Smith (Ideas on Paper), chaired by Tom Godfrey
This exhibition was open as part of the Nottingham Art Weekender on Saturday 14 and Sunday 15 May 2016, where many of the venues listed on the Nottingham Art Map invited the public to take part in their events and exhibitions in a celebration of the visual arts scene in Nottingham.
Here is a selection of Posts relating to the exhibition Publishing Rooms:
Foxall Studio have extended Publishing Rooms out into the city of Nottingham – presenting a selection of scanned portraits from the show in Tunnel Vision, a new digital exhibition space in the Broadmarsh bus station:
Publishing – whether that be images or text – is now an inherent part of social media. Tweeting 140 characters or posting pictures of your cat is fundamentally a decisive act of self-publication. Once published, you relinquish control over what it is the post truly does. Even now in the workshop run by the Foxall brothers, conversation steers towards ideas of branding and promotion. All public activity on social media is an act of branding – branding yourself in the way in which you want to be perceived and building a digital collage of who you are (see Reece Straw’s earlier blogpost, ‘Adidas or Nothing’, for more on this). What is it you are trying to say or be? How decisive can you be in these acts?
The transmutation between digital and physical is of particular interest to me. As an artist, writer, and curator, I cannot escape the intrinsic necessity of using both formats. While the lean towards digital (tweets, posts, e-books…) is getting a more apparent lean in ideas of successful circulation, like many people, I cannot help but relish in handling a physical object. What Publishing Rooms highlights is the possibility for a more succinct dialogue between the two.
Having paid witness to the evolution of social media in my teenage years, of course I know how impactful the digital is – so why wouldn’t I use every opportunity for self-promotion? With the exhibition being such a delightful and useful self-publication tool how could I not try to promote my other work of self-publishing?
Beginning as an exercise in curation and extending from my own interests in creative writing, oneiroi is now almost ready to launch.
Starting with the first issue – entitled ‘withholding’ – oneiroi aims to showcase creative writing that shows unique and original flair. Curated, designed, edited, printed, and hand-bound by myself, ‘withholding’ contains writings by 12 young artists and writers from around the country. The original intent of the zine was to create a casual yet polished surface for people to put their writing out to the world. As a young creative it is often hard to know where to place work in the wider landscape, and often not have the confidence to put it anywhere at all. Being on a visual arts course creative writing is not often looked at with great scrutiny, but it was clear to me that artists are writing regardless. After all, writing is inherently a visual thing, whether it be a meticulously organised piece of concrete poetry, or a simple paragraph on Word. As an extension of aural language, humans have constructed the written word to help convey messages, and now most of us are taught (potentially brainwashed) to understand characters and symbols. Even while reading this you cannot avoid decoding the sequence of letters to understand their symbolic meaning.
For my own practice, creative writing and poetry is a great enabler in making messages that I find difficult to convey in other visual forms. Writing has the potential to create an infinite combination of images, emotions, ideas, tones etc. A picture can say 1000 words, but a word can create a million images, purely because a word is an absolute construction of human knowledge. Every individual has their own experiences and inevitably, this has a knock-on affect on their perception of particular words and phrases. It is for this reason, I thoroughly enjoyed reading through the submissions for oneiroi‘s first issue. Each piece chosen has that certain quality of withholding information, making it hard to avoid not wanting more. Personally, I tire easily when presented with a narrative that gives information too willingly – I enjoy the game of a teasing chase.
Alongside this, I was also particularly interested in the eclectic range of styles and formats in the submissions. Each writing has a clear personality to it and a definitive message to voice. The launch of the zine will be coming soon, with a launch party to be hosted in Nottingham, with some of the featured writers doing reading of their work. For more info, follow oneiroi on social media sites listed below.
Instagram – @oneiroi_zine
Facebook – /oneiroizine
Twitter – @oneiroi_zine
Joseph Winsborrow
As a studio, Andrew and Iain have worked with scanners a few times in the past years. Here are two examples:
Bond Street Windows
The 243 windows of four big buildings on New Bond Street were the canvas. Vacated during Crossrail work, we were commissioned to make a feature of their facades during the construction.
With just two weeks to go until Publishing Rooms opens here at the Gallery, Iain and Andrew Foxall have been busy working on tests for the scanner wall installations.
Iain also shared some thoughts on Instagram and zine culture:
“…I liked what Simon Armitage said when asked about whether he would be a poet if poetry was mainstream, and replied a quick ‘no’, because he got into poetry precisely because it was on the edges. So it’s interesting to think how a punk zine-founder would have used instagram.”
Iain Foxall
You can see more from behind the scenes of Foxall studio by following them on Instagram, and using the #PublishingRooms on Instagram and Twitter.
In the run up to Publishing Rooms, Iain and Andrew of Foxall Studios introduce us to the project, giving you a glimpse into the scanner camera tests and some of the plans for the exhibition:
Currently we are surrounded by 103 flatbed scanners with cables and computers everywhere. Living with the flatbed scanners, and testing various configurations and optical adjustments, and involving good minds and hands has uncovered a lot. The collective, innate curiosity to see what will happen once we collide the variables seems to be the main driver for our daily work.
The main events so far that bring us to today have been; finding a palette of flatbed scanners in a recycling plant, rewriting the scanner drivers so that they can be called through a web browser remotely, having 4 scanners running concurrently from one computer, etc.
Please be in touch with anything that you think would be relevant. We are promoting resourcefulness with this show. We reconfigure simple, everyday, ubiquitous elements to enable inventive expression. So please keep an eye out for anything that we can utilise. That could be a box of old magazines for a library, or a roll of fabric that you’re not using.
For the show, our intern Marion (photographed on a scanner camera test, below) will be keeping the outside world up-to-date on progress.
Publishing Rooms is officially open!
Thanks to all who came along to last night’s preview – it was a great to see everyone interacting with the installations. Here’s a few photos from the evening, along with some of the results of the scanner cams:
Here is a selection of posts by students commenting on our exhibition Publishing Rooms.
As a photography student at NTU, it is great to see an escape from the stereotypical, orderly space of an art gallery. Through the use of projections, scanners and the ability to interact with the technology in the room (allowing you to feature in the work itself), the space becomes more of an installation over the course of the exhibition. Even with this mechanical process of mass publishing, there is something very intimate about the images produced from the body scans specifically, more so than a piece of art done by hand.
You could propose that this practice is a style of photography and a medium that I have not previously considered using as a student. However, after experimenting with the devices and seeing the results, it is something that I am looking forward to exploring further.
Just come and take a look for yourself!
Adidas or Nothing – Reece Straw
Self Expression ≡ Brand Dedication ≡ Identity ≡ Community
Living in our post-internet world we are able to define our ‘unique’ identity though various outlets online and display them for the world to see: sharing an article of a cause close to us, an image of celebrity we admire, a piece of music. Not anything new by far, we have just exhibited ourselves on a smaller scale within a more immediate community before we had the technology to instantly share it with the world.
Interestingly, social media and branding has made us less original: we are pigeon-holed into ways of expression through proxies of design, the ‘sub-culture’ is dead. A ‘sub-culture’ brings people together of similar interests, a choice has to be made, the obvious being which side of the fence to sit on, dependant on which subject the community is built around e.g. Manchester United or Manchester City, loving or hating Kanye West, being a ‘Mod’ or a ‘Rocker’. This being an old model of society; black and white being the only way to define oneself, whereas the younger generations allow themselves to invest more in the grey area of this model to include themselves within multiple outlets without quarrel. The world is still catching up with this development as ‘sides’ do still exist and there is still something important about where our fundamental choices are made as they will define who we are, something to do with authenticity one expects as we value people who remain the ‘same’. Objects in the world now are very much culturally loaded and our immediate associations reveal the owners’ assumed interests and choices. And as all good evolution goes, as a species we buy into this as it benefits the development of community.
A classic example of this is the band t-shirt. It once meant that you were an avid fan of the band; if someone else was in the same band t-shirt you had an instant friend. But when a Guns ‘n’ Roses t-shirt is seen as a (low) fashion item in Topshop, the whole culture is boiled down into that single object, appropriated and removed by people who gauge it on the aesthetic alone or false inclusion by solely knowing ‘Sweet Child O’ Mine’ (as you can see, sides do still exist). Our inability to think that we can create something completely original due to our extended history of culture may be the reasoning for this endless recycling of culture. Just look at the current state of the film industry: endless superhero movies adapted from over 50 years of comic book characters from the 1940’s onward; reboots, remakes and re-releases (I’m looking at you, George Lucas). Even the new Star Wars: The Force Awakens is nostalgiagasm, trapped within itself and what its fans would only let it be or become.
On the flip side, the Adidas brand, who champion themselves on reinterpreting the past and being true to their roots doesn’t seem to have the same reputation as the re-releases of the original Star Wars trilogy. If anything, to see someone in the same shoes as yourself gives the indication that they ‘know what’s up’ or equally, you aren’t as original as you once thought you were. But that all depends on the choice that was made when purchasing the shoes: in personal preference or the idea that they in some way will change one’s presence.
The Adidas NMD in the image above, created using the technology in Publishing Rooms from Foxall Studio, is a rarity in today’s sneaker culture. To own these is to be recognised by those in the know, it brings the satisfaction of taming such a rare beast with resell values now double the price. Although nothing on the Yeezy Boost range it still means something culturally: these shoes are noticed, and not just for the 4 or 5 logos on the actual shoe.
So where does this leave us? In a world saturated with everything our choices are evermore important if we care about how people view us, because as insincere and shallow as it is, the reality of the situation is that if you aren’t ‘on fleek‘ in one way or another you may be passed by. This unfortunate event in society – only caring about surface value – is tragic, but you can’t deny that you have (at one point or another) judged someone at face value. It’s instinctive, and in my opinion benefits the development of society.
‘You’d be sick if you saw my Adidas collection…you would be physically sick if you saw it. I’m not gonna say where it is.’
Ian Brown
A Student review of our exhibition Publishing Rooms from a second year BA Fine Art Student, Dominique Phizacklea
A topic of late in the studios is the idea of originality. The “I thought of it first”, or “did you know so and so is also making XY and Z in the same way I am?!”
Sitting here in the Gallery I once again hear this conversation; “turning scanners into engineered cameras has been done before, it’s not new or original”. I find all of this thought odd.
For a start artists are thieves, we all know this. That is as old as time. We steal what’s around us, pop it in the blender that is our minds and reform it. The same but new. It can’t not be new, because someone has added their interpretation. Even an ‘exact’ copy of a clay pot, made by hand will never be an exact copy, even if it’s very close. Different fingerprints will exist within the clay. The same but different. Modern technology gets us close, but we all know that faint greying caused by a photocopier or the cold starkness of mass production.
Going back to the studio, I am not surprised similar work is being produced. We are all feeding from similar (if not the same) troughs. Nottingham is after all a city, a concentration of humanness with all the things that go along with that. We are sharing the same culture, we see the same art on a daily basis. We have the same tutors. We all ‘eat’ the same, washing it down by being surrounded with each other’s ideas constantly. Similar conclusions will be drawn and similar problems faced, followed by similar solutions. I would be surprised in a course of nearly 300 students, having access to the same facilities, the same local culture and being all mixed together, if 300 completely different practices were born with 300 completely original works being produced, which didn’t even reference the work of another, just slightly.
Yeah maybe, maybe scanners have been turned in to rudimentary cameras before. Yeah maybe they have been set up in a gallery before. But never in this gallery, never in this arrangement by these artists, Andrew and Ian Foxall, from Foxall studios. Never being experienced by this exact group of people. Never with the same references behind the idea. Never with these exact scanner models, or even these exact machines (allowing for the minute differences between each resulting from teeny tiny differences in part placements). Never with the same coding, as the coding has been developed specifically for the exhibition, and is changed and becoming more efficient as the show goes on.
This exhibition is unique, and will never happen again in the same way. The idea is timeless, fed from history, pop culture and social etiquette. From technological advancement and human behaviour.
Am I saying the ideas used to make Publishing Rooms are new and never before seen? No. Am I saying they will never appear in art again? No.
I think it is not possible, or at least very rare, to have these sought after completely new ideas. In my opinion that’s just not how we learn. We build upon the work of others, the knowledge of others and each time add that next layer of thought, of research, of experience. What is new? Can anything be new? When we say we have something new, usually what we mean is it is new to us.
This exhibition is interactive, allowing you the opportunity to add to the website, creating an ever-expanding collection of faces – some of which are even added in to the room, changing the backdrop, evolving it as much as the changing code. If you want to add the experience of this exhibition (and I thoroughly recommend it) to your own brain blender then come and see it for yourself. It will be up in Bonington Gallery until the 20th of May.
Iain & Andrew Foxall took a trip to Nottingham last week to visit the gallery. Whilst here they also took a look around the various workshops and met with technicians and teaching staff, all in preparation for their ‘Publishing Rooms’ project taking place in the gallery next year in April. Inspiration was found all across the site, here’s a few snaps taken by Andrew during the day…
