June 2015

CRATE Graduate Project Space Award

For three weeks CRATE was occupied by three recently graduated BA Fine Art Students from University of the Creative Arts, Canterbury.

">Layla Moore">Madeline Jones">Verity Hime

Graduates received mentoring sessions with Leigh Clarke, Benedict Drew, Matthew de Pulford and Trish Scott, as well as being supported on-site by Charley Vines and the Programming Team.

There was intermittent public access to the space, including "INTERRUPTION", a projection/collage event on the 3rd October, where participants were invited to bring materials to create immersive and playful outcomes.

The three weeks culminated in a public opening on 10th October, demonstrate the function of the CRATE project spaces, as a site for both work, play and display.

The award is designed as a means for a brief but valuable point between the structures offered within education and independent practice.

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Photo: Madeline Jones

Leigh Clarke: A HIGHER CANNIBALISM

Events: Thursday 16 July, 6-9pm & Saturday 18 July, 12-4pm
Open: July 17, 23, 24 and 31 & 1 August, 12-4pm. (Or by appointment)

Alongside the CRATE building, LIMBO Space is hosting Dreamlandia, a solo exhibition by David Price with the same opening and private view times.  

For those who are visiting Margate for the day, the Turner Contemporary is hosting Provincial Punk by Grayson Perry and the new Dreamland Vintage Amusement park will be open.

The title of this solo exhibition by the artist Leigh Clarke is borrowed from Rudyard Kipling who described the process of psychoanalysis as ‘ The Higher Cannibalism’.  The project will exhibit new works generated from over 500 popular autobiographies bought in charity shops that Clarke has collected, dissected and altered to make digital prints, etchings, screen prints and collages.

On mass, the collection and combination of the spines confront the viewer with a visual registry of role models that shape contemporary Britain society and question the consumption of popular autobiographies in times of austerity. Clarke plays with the scale of the book spines to measure the importance of celebrity and who is worthy or unworthy of an autobiography. In his method of appropriation, he treats each autobiography spine equally with paint and printing ink, resulting in monochromatic picture plains that remove hierarchies and status.  The exhibition is perfectly located in the CRATE project space, which is an old print works in the centre of Margate. 

About the artist:

Leigh Clarke is engaged in a multidisciplinary print practice that employs mass manufactured objects or mass disseminated text to make singular political statements. His concern with public engagement has led him to curate projects at Lokaal 01 in Breda, The London College of Communication and Extrapool in Nijmegen. In 2012 he was selected for the London Open at the Whitechapel Gallery where he exhibited 30 plaster casts on scaffold poles of the negative spaces within political latex fancy dress masks. In 2014 he took part in a major residency project In Stoke-on-Trent hosted by Airspace Gallery and funded by the Arts Council England and the Esme Fairbairn Foundation. This summer he has been commissioned to work with Create London to generate alternative maps for the River Lea in the East End of London. Clarke is a Senior Lecturer in Printmaking and Illustration at the London College of Communication and Printmaking Tutor at the Royal Academy Schools.