A MODEST SHOW
ARTISTS MENTORING PROGRAMME
An opportunity for artists living or actively working in Greater Manchester.
Mentors:
Will Lunn, Dean Kenning, Nat Pitt, Larry Achiampong, Claire Mander
A MODEST SHOW
A Modest Show is the collateral programme to British Art Show 9. As British Art Show 9 reached the 3rd city on its year-long tour, Manchester responded with a parallel programme of artist-led activity. A Modest Show asked artists to devise work under satirical themes of food, hospitality, consumption and dining... and it invited audiences to EAT MANCHESTER ARTISTS!
The full curatorial statement can be found here:
A Modest Show was devised as a response to the British Art Show 9 programme; and as important as it to attract and create events and new exhibitions - our focus is on positioning Manchester's artists alongside the internationally profiled artists on the BAS9 tour.
A MODEST SHOW IN SUPPORT OF GREATER MANCHESTER ARTISTS
Alongside its public facing programme, A Modest Show is creating opportunities to support artists in their endeavours and professional development.
Our mentoring programme, places UK exhibiting artists, curators and arts professionals with emerging Manchester artists to take part in a series of 1-1 sessions and studio visits, funded by A Modest Show.
Each selected artist will be connected with their mentor, and can then directly arrange times for a face to face studio visit of 2-3 hours, followed up by two 1 hour video calls to follow up on progress and milestones created in the sessions.
APPLICATION
This opportunity is open to artists and curators living or actively working in Greater Manchester.
Please read the details below and submit the following to help us with selection and, if successful, pair you with a mentor:
Submit a PDF document including:
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Either a short text, CV or video/sound recording maximum 500 words / 10 mins detailing your artistic practice. Please include a reference to 2-3 recent exhibitions, commissions or projects that have been a highlight of your current practice.
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Include a short text, bullet points, or video/sound recording maximum 200 words / 5 mins on what you would like to get out of this process, any areas you would like mentorship on.
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A link to your website or an online portfolio if you have one
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Your name, address, email and telephone
Submissions should be sent to: lydia@unculturedcreatives.co.uk
Deadline: November 1st 2022 12pm
Enquiries: curator@amodestshow.com
MENTORS
Dean Kenning is an artist and writer. From Hounslow, west London, he studied Fine Art at Goldsmiths College and completed a PhD at the London Consortium, developing a critical theory of ‘idiocy' in art.
He makes motor and sensor based kinetic sculptures that seek to generate nervous and affective responses (‘vitalist kinetics'). He also has a wide-ranging diagramming practice (‘exploratory diagrams') traversing art practice, theory and pedagogy. His video and performance-based works adopt a parodic approach to social and cultural material.
Kenning was winner of the Mark Tanner Sculpture Prize 2020-21, making new robotic works for the touring exhibition ‘Evolutionary Love'. Other recent solo exhibitions have taken place at Matt's Gallery (2019), Beaconsfield (2019) and Piper Keys (2018). He has shown works internationally at group exhibitions and events including, recently: The Soft Display, Paradise Works (2020); Guest, Ghost, Host: Machine, Serpentine Marathon (2017); and EXO EMO, Greene Naftali (2017). Collaborative projects include the Diagram Research Group at Flat Time House (2020), the Social Morphology Research Unit at Space Studios (2019), the Capital Drawing Group at Bergen Assembly (2019), Sick Monday at various screening venues (2018-19), and Diagram Research Use & Generation Group (DRUGG) at the ICA (2015).
He has published articles on diagram theory and practice, artistic pedagogy, ‘idiot art', and the politics of the art world and art education in journals including Third Text, Arts, Visual Culture in Britain and the Journal of Visual Art Practice.
Nat Pitt (1975) trained as an artist at Falmouth School of Art in 1997 and gained his MA from Wolverhampton University 2009 before becoming a fellow at De Appel in Amsterdam, ‘curating in the gallery field.’ Since 2013, Pitt has served as the Director for the gallery Division of Labour.
With research interests in labour and work, regional art market development, art and education and collaborative practice, projects have included artists Robert Barry, Victor Burgin, Brian O’Doherty and Carey Young. Pitt has developed an international profile for his gallery, with past presentations during the 2015 Venice Biennale, Brussels, Rotterdam, New York, Hong Kong, Basel, Vienna and Dallas. Pitt is the current curator for A Modest Show and The Manchester Contemporary www.divisionoflabour.co.uk
Larry Achiampong's solo and collaborative projects employ film, still imagery, aural and visual archives, live performance, objects and sound to explore ideas surrounding class, gender, cross-cultural and digital identity.
With works that examine his communal and personal heritage – in particular, the intersection between Popular culture and the post-colonial position, Achiampong crate-digs the vaults of history. These investigations examine constructions of ‘the self’ by splicing the audible and visual materials of personal and interpersonal archives, offering multiple perspectives that reveal the deeply entrenched inequalities in contemporary society.
Achiampong recently shot his first feature and most ambitious film to date - Wayfinder. Set during a pandemic, the film tracks the movements of its central protagonist - The Wanderer, a young girl (played by Perside Rodrigues), on an intrepid journey across England. Travelling from North to South, The Wanderer passes through different regions, towns and landscapes, encountering people, stories and situations on her way. Presented across six chapters, including ‘The North’, ‘The Land of Smoke’ and ‘The Kingdom of the East’, this epic film builds a dialogue around the themes of class and economic exclusion, belonging and displacement, cultural heritage and the meaning of home.
Recent projects include commissions with The Line, London; The Liverpool Biennial 2021 and Art on the Underground, Roundel designs and a permanent sculptural intervention for Transport for London's Westminster Underground Station, London (2019 and 2022).
Recent solo exhibitions include Wayfinder, Turner Contemporary/MK Gallery/BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art, Margate, Milton Keynes, Gateshead (2022-2023); Relic Traveller: Where You and I Come From, We Know That We Are Not Here Forever, Phi Foundation for Contemporary Art, Montreal (2021); Beyond the Substrata, curated by Norman Rosenthal, Copperfield Gallery at Frieze Focus, 12 Piccadilly Arcade, London (2020); When the Sky Falls, John Hansard Gallery, Southampton (2020); Pan African Flag For The Relic Travellers Alliance & Relic Traveller, Phase 1, 019, Ghent (2019); Dividednation, Primary, Nottingham (2019).
(ONLINE ONLY with optional invitations to meet in London or Rotterdam)
Will is the founder of Copperfield, London and has curated more than 100 past exhibitions both at Copperfield and at public institutions and initiatives in the UK and abroad.
He has closely fostered artists like Larry Achiampong and curated shows including the likes of Lawrence Weiner. Recently Copperfield artists have been exhibited at the Venice Biennale, Manifesta, Domcumenta (resident) and acquired by the likes of Tate, Moma and Centre Pompidou.
(ONLINE ONLY with optional invitations to meet in London)
Claire Mander is the Director and Curator of independent curatorial practice, theCoLAB. theCoLAB collaborates with conviction and inventiveness and creates opportunities for contemporary sculptors to use unusual sites as experimental laboratories to realise their most ambitious, far-flung and life-affirming work. She recently transformed a neglected half-acre roof terrace on London’s Victoria Embankment into The Artist’s Garden, a raised platform for interventions by women artists. She has curated over 40 mainly site-specific interventions including Sculpture Shock.
residency/commissioning programme for interventions into subterranean, ambulatory and historic sites in London, Headlands to Headspace landscape art commissions across Morecambe Bay and Skulptur showcasing the work of seventeen Nordic sculptors across three sites in London. She runs Body and Place drawing residencies which take drawing out of the life room and into the landscape, historic or architectural contexts to reignite the connection between mind, eye and hand. Claire Mander sits on Westminster’s City of Sculpture panel and is a Board Member of the National Festival of Making and of the artist-led 303 Projects in Lowestoft, Suffolk. She was formerly Deputy Director of the Royal British Society of Sculptors and a Trustee and Chair of the Steering Committee of UK Friends of the National Museum of Women in the Arts (Washington DC). She is a member of AICA and has published two books and numerous catalogues and has given/chaired many talks about women artists and site-specific commissions including at RCA, The National Gallery, Manchester Art Gallery and about Skulpturlandscap Nordland. Women sculptors, the importance of making, reinvigorating drawing, site-specific interventions She holds an MA (Distinction) from the Courtauld Institute of Art and an MA in French and History of Art from Edinburgh University.