Cut & Mix

Beverley Bennett, Rotimi Fani-Kayode, Michael Forbes, Amartey Golding, Keith Piper, Antonio Roberts, Marlene Smith.

Cut & Mix is an exhibition that interrogates and challenges notions of race, gender, sexualities, class, place and identities in relation to Black British masculinities. The exhibition creates a dialogue between past, present and future representations.

The narrative of the exhibition is located in the emergence of the Blk Art Group’s work (1979-1984), a signifier of an emerging Black consciousness in Britain in the early 1980s and joined up with contemporary interpretations and experience of being Black and British.

The exhibition features works by seven Black British artists spanning from photography to film and from installation to drawings that defies stereotypical representations to make space for playfulness, joy, the multiplicity of being and vulnerability.

Cut & Mix also seeks for a reflection about the future and the radical imagination that evolves and takes place today when thinking about Black British masculinities.

Curated by Ian Sergeant

The Barber Collective Exhibition

The Barber Collective re-interpret the collection through interdisciplinary art, music and performance practice. Collaborating with artists, designers and musicians, the group of 16 – 21 year olds discuss, re-imagine and create. Enjoy this exhibition of work by the first cohort.

CopyCamp, 28th – 29th September

This September I’ll be flying out to Warsaw, Poland to take part in CopyCamp 2017. The Internet of Copyrighted Things.

Is your life affected by copyright? No doubts if you are into culture, as you are certainly aware that you have to adjust to it when building upon others’ work or when planning to make a living from creativity. You must have heard about copyright also if you are a teacher, a scientist, or a programmer, as copyright-protected works are used in education, research, and technology.

But were you aware that using a mixture of copyrights, other exclusive rights such patents or database rights, and technology (the so-called DRM) virtually all information goods may be appropriated? In the age of “Internet of Things” this means that more and more things you own contain a computer program or data subject to someone else’s exclusive control. Obviously, this has a profound impact on every aspect of everyone’s life.

The primary goal of CopyCamp 2017 is to broaden the scope of the debate about exclusive rights. We want to talk about culture, science, and education, but we also want to discuss how exclusive rights are used in, for example, health and food. We will listen to stories touching on real-life issues in the following thematic tracks:

  • business models, heritage digitization, remix
  • health, food, security, and exclusive rights
  • text and data mining, machine learning, online education
  • IoT: autonomous cars, smart homes, wearables
  • hacking government data, public procurement, public aid in culture

I’ll be delivering a presentation about copyright and digital culture, focusing largely on the No Copyright Infringement Intended exhibition that took place at Phoenix in Leicester and will be making it’s way to Vivid Projects in September. I’ll be talking alongside a great many copyright experts, artists, hackers and more including Mitch Altman and Nick Briz.

Did I mention it’s all free?

Many thanks to Near Now for providing financial support for me to be able to attend CopyCamp.

Permission Taken launch, 7th April

It’s been open since 2nd March and now the second part of Permission Taken, taking place at the Bramall Music Building at University of Birmingham, will be having its launch event on 7th April from 17:30 – 19:30.

Join us this Thursday 7 April in the Bramall Music Building from 17.30 for the launch of Permission Taken! This exhibition displays work by Antonio Roberts created during his 2014/15 artist-residency at the University of Birmingham. Roberts focused on issues surrounding copyright, permission culture and art: issues which become ever more pertinent as online communities become more prolific and harder to police.

Permission Taken

Permission Taken

This iteration of the exhibition presents some of the work exhibited at Birmingham Open Media alongside works made for the Remix Party! in addition to a reinterpretation of Dead Copyright.

Permission Taken

Permission Taken

Photo by Greg Milner

Please RSVP to rcc@contacts.bham.ac.uk if you wish to attend. The exhibition continues until 30th May.

Remix Party photos

The Remix Party happened on 20th January to celebrate the closing of my exhibition, Permission Taken, at Birmingham Open Media.

Remix Party!

Throughout the night remixes art artwork from the University of Birmingham were displayed in the main gallery space whilst Ryan Hughes took on DJ duties with soundscapes and the occasional R&B hit. It was really interesting to see how all the artists approached the archives and selected materials to work with.

Remix Party!

Thanks to the following artists for taking part in the party:
Dan Hett, Lorna Mills, Ashley James Brown, Shawné Michaelain Holloway, Michaël Borras A.K.A. Systaime, Benjamin Berg, Michael Lightborne, Morehshin Allahyari, Daniel Salisbury, Carla Gannis, Faith Holland, Nick Briz, Daniel Temkin, Adam Ferriss, Víctor Arce, Chema Padilla, Kate Spence, Jessica Evans, Emily Haasch.

Remix Party!

All of their remixes will be available online shortly and you’ll even have the chance to make your own! Photos from the party can be seen on Flickr.

Remix Party!

Fin

Permission Taken at Birmingham Open Media officially closed on 23rd January 2016 after opening on October 23rd 2015. It was my first solo exhibition and I’m extremely grateful to Karen Newman/Birmingham Open Media, Clare Mullett/Research and Cultural Collections and Arts Council England for helping it be a great one.

Permission Taken

The next iteration of the exhibition will be coming in March. Until then do check out Common Property at Jerwood Space for more work from myself and other artists following similar themes

Remix Party, 20th January

To celebrate the closing of Permission Taken, on 20th January I’ll be having a closing Remix Party at Birmingham Open Media from 19:00 – 22:00

remixparty

Artwork from over 20 national and international artists will be projected onto BOM’s walls, floors and ceilings in celebration of artists that appropriate, remix and rework. All this set against a backdrop of Copyleft/cut-up music from Ryan Hughes.

Artists include
Dan Hett, Lorna Mills, Ashley James Brown, Shawné Michaelain Holloway, Michaël Borras, Benjamin Berg, Michael Lightborne, Morehshin Allahyari, Daniel Salisbury, Carla Gannis, Faith Holland, Nick Briz, Daniel Temkin, Adam Ferriss, Víctor Arce, Chema Padilla, Kate Spence, Jessica Evans, Emily Haasch

During the evening Nomad, the newly opened restaurant next door the the gallery space, will be serving food from their ‘no rules’ pay-what-you-want menu.

Hope you can join in and celebrate remix culture!!!

Remix Animation Workshop, 19th January

With the closing of my solo exhibition at Birmingham Open Media fast approaching, on 19th January I’ll be holding the final workshop. In the Remix Animation Workshop we’ll explore the art of remixing and reappropriation!

remixworkshop

In this workshop I will introduce open source software programs and discuss ideas around free culture. You will then have time to rework images downloaded from the Copy Bombs and from the University of Birmingham’s archives. Participants need to bring their laptops with the following free and open source software installed:

Any things made in this workshop will be included in the Remix Party on 20th January (more info on that sooooooon). Places free but limited, so book now to avoid disappointment.

Common Property, 15th January – 21st February

For my first exhibition of 2016 I’ll be taking in Common Property at Jerwood Visual Arts fom 15th January – 21st February 2016

common_property

Curated by Hannah Pierce, Jerwood Encounters: Common Property seeks to demonstrate how artists engage with and relate to copyright through the work of six emerging and mid-career artists, including three new commissions. The exhibition and accompanying events programme seeks to generate new conversations about how copyright is currently impacting the way visual artists make and distribute their work, and demonstrates how artists are challenging the limitations of copyright through their practice.

The exhibition takes its title from a response Sol LeWitt made in Flash Art in 1973 to the accusation that he had copied the work of Francois Morellet and Jan Schoonhoven. He stated: “I believe that ideas once expressed, become the common property of all. They are invalid if not used, they can only be given away and not stolen…”

Copyright has expanded exponentially over the past two decades in line with the unprecedented free-exchange of information and content that takes place over the Internet. In October 2014, in an attempt to make the copyright system better suited to the digital age, changes to UK legislation came into effect allowing the parody of copyrighted works. This change allows individuals to make limited but reasonable use of creative content previously protected by copyright, through ‘Caricature, Parody and Pastiche’, without having to gain permission of the rights holder – provided that it is considered ‘fair and appropriate’.

Jerwood Encounters: Common Property comes at a hugely significant time in the continuing chaotic development of the law on copyright. It comes also at a time of markedly increasing interest in the nexus between art and law generally. Copyright law is currently in a state of flux amidst the coincidence of emergent new digital realities, a proliferation of appropriation based cultural expression and the prospective move towards a more creativity based standard for protection. Further complexity is added to the terrain by impending and potentially radical EU reforms and a growing awareness of the importance of achieving balance within the IP system, with an increased emphasis being placed on exceptions and limitations to the scope of copyright protection. The works in Common Property address many of these concerns exploring, inter alia, the themes of cultural transformative re-use, technology’s impact on the boundaries of infringement and the contemporary challenges to the fundamental notions of authorship inherent in copyright law.

There will be a number of new commissions in Common Property, reflecting the current and evolving artistic interest in ‘playing’ with copyright frameworks and associated issues.

I’ll be debuting some newly commissioned work alongside new and existing work from Edwin Burdis, Hannah Knox, Rob Myers, Owen G Parry and Superflex.

Archive Remix prints

The Archive Remix print pieces are a continuation of the remix pictures that I have been making as part of my residency at the University of Birmingham’s Research and Cultural Collections. The content that I have been making for that has focused on what can be lost when restrictive copyright is enforced. In keeping more with the themes of this exhibition the Archive Remix print pieces focus on the effect of corporate branding on imagery.

Archive Remix

The most central imagery consists of 3D scans of artefacts from the archives of Research and Cultural Collections. These then become obscured amongst the visual barrage of slightly distorted corporate branding, something which might not seem so visible at first.

Archive Remix