Edgework Artist Profile #4: Andy Day

‘Tjentiste II', 2015 by Andy Day

As part of our collaboration with Edgework an artist-led cross-disciplinary journal and store with an emphasis on place, we are running a series of monthly profiles of the artists here on Elsewhere. The fourth artist in our series is the photographer Andy Day: 

Andy Day's work examines the body’s relationship with the built environment, wilful misuse of architecture, subversive practices, appropriation of space and place, edgework and social interaction. Often, he works with climbers as they deliberately misinterpret architecture, finding new uses for both public and private space. 

Andy Day comments: ‘Practitioners of buildering deliberately misinterpret architecture, finding new uses for both public and private space. The built environment presents opportunities and climbers bring investments of meaning to aspects of the city. A playful recoding is achieved; imagined futures are enacted and recorded, and the praxis produces a fresh set of urban features. For a brief moment, a ledge becomes a crimp, a protruding brick becomes a side pull, a drainpipe becomes a layback. Routes otherwise unknown and unseen come temporarily into existence. There is a unique appreciation of mundane features with the geometries and textures suddenly containing potential for adventure and embodied encounters. These physical interventions radically insert the body into the urban landscape, bringing alternative meanings to the city, and making it a site for autotelic experimentation and earnest play.’

'Grant, University of British Columbia I', 2014 by Andy Day

International travel has informed much of Day’s work. He is a participant-observer in the international parkour scene and documented the rise of parkour photographing its communities in London in the early 2000s. He continues to play a role in shaping its visual culture today. Notable works include ‘Former’, a series of photographs taken in collaboration with parkour athletes from Serbia and Croatia at Tito-era monuments across former Yugoslavia.

Day will take over the Edgework Instagram account from 28 October – 3 November and share images from his recent exploration of three Sound Mirrors (also known as Acoustic Mirrors or Listening Ears) situated on the south coast of England. 

The takeover marks the launch of Day's new limited-edition print 'Sound Mirror' is available to pre-order from Edgework here. 

Andy Day on Edgework
Instagram
Website

Edgework Artist Profile #3: Nicky Hirst

#nothere63 by Nicky Hirst

As part of our collaboration with Edgework an artist-led cross-disciplinary journal and store with an emphasis on place, we are running a series of monthly profiles of the artists here on Elsewhere. The third artist in our series is Nicky Hirst: 

Nicky Hirst’s work is best described as an exploration of serendipity, where sources may be places, objects or words. After studying Fine Art followed by Art and Architecture she has pursued a parallel practice, working both in the studio and collaboratively producing diverse projects for the public realm. 

She takes photographs as a daily discipline, like a diary, taking note of preoccupations and looking more closely at connections and the unintentional consequences of the everyday. Both of her Instagram accounts reflect an interest in material already in circulation. She categorises her Instagram images with hashtags such as #causeandeffect63 #shadows63 and #glazed63 and has published a series of postcards (Available from Edgework) featuring her #nothere63 double yellow line photographs.

#causeandeffect63 by Nicky Hirst

Elemental Works 2012-2019 are an on-going series of visually paired images. Mark Twain once said, ‘There is no such thing as a new idea. It is impossible. We simply take a lot of old ideas and put them into a sort of mental kaleidoscope.’ These works operate within this terrain as they started life elsewhere, from another source, second hand, borrowed. Hirst states, ‘I feel the shapes of the diptych rather than think them. The limitless photographic pairings create new unspoken narratives, each with its own internal logic such as similarity, difference, scale, poetry, chance and humour.’ 

Elemental 225 by Nicky Hirst

Forthcoming exhibitions include: Off the Page | Another Place Press at The Northern Eye International Photography Festival from 7 – 20 October 2019. The exhibition features artists published by independent publisher Another Place Press and includes two other Edgework artists, Victoria J Dean and Iain Sarjeant. A selection of images from Hirst’s Elemental Works is also included in Coventry Biennial 2019 which runs from 4 October to 24 November 2019.

Nicky Hirst on Edgework
Instagram
Elemental Works on Instagram
Website

Edgework Artist Profile #2: Peter Cusack

Aral Sea, Peter Cusack

As part of our collaboration with Edgework an artist-led cross-disciplinary journal and store with an emphasis on place, we are running a series of monthly profiles of the artists here on Elsewhere. The second in the series is of Peter Cusack, sound artist and musician:

Sounds from Dangerous Places, Peter Cusack

As a field recordist, sound artist and musician, Peter Cusack has long had an interest in the environment. A member of CRiSAP (Creative Research into Sound Arts Practice) at the University of the Arts, London, Cusack initiated the Favourite Sounds Project to discover what people find positive about soundscapes where they live, and Sounds From Dangerous Places (sonic journalism) to investigate major environmental damage in areas such as the Chernobyl exclusion zone, the Azerbaijan oil fields, brown coal mining in Germany and the Czech Republic and the Bialowieza Forest in Poland. 

Berlin Sonic Places, Peter Cusack

He also produced Vermilion Sounds - the environmental sound program - for ResonanceFM Radio, and was DAAD artist-in-residence in Berlin 2011/12, initiating Berlin Sonic Places that examines relationships between soundscape and urban development. He is currently working on Aral Sea Stories, concerning the disappearance and restoration of the Aral Sea in Kazakhstan and the uses and abuses of water along its vast Central Asian watershed. As well as teaching in Berlin, Peter has also been organising a series of soundwalks in the neighbourhood of Pankow. If you’d like to learn more about Peter and his work, follow the various links below.

Peter Cusack on Edgework
Twitter
Favourite Sounds website

Edgework Artist Profile #1: Layla Curtis

Newcastle Gateshead, 2005 by Layla Curtis

As part of our collaboration with Edgework an artist-led cross-disciplinary journal and store with an emphasis on place, we are running a series of monthly profiles of the artists here on Elsewhere. Where better to start than with Layla Curtis, founder of Edgework and previous contributor to our blog:

Layla Curtis’ practice has a focus on place, landscape and mapping and often examines the attempts we make to chart the earth, how we locate ourselves, navigate space and represent terrain. 

Polar Wandering, 2006 by Layla Curtis

 Layla’s works include Trespass, an app for iphone which maps an oral history of a northern English edgeland and tempts the user to trespass in order to access the work (and which we featured here on the Elsewhere blog); Polar Wandering, a 27,856 mile long interactive online drawing charting her journey to Antarctica with the British Antarctic Survey, exhibited in solo shows at New Art Gallery Walsall, and Ormeau Baths Gallery, Belfast; and Tong Tana, a moving image work made while trekking with nomadic hunter-gathers in the Borneo Rainforest and exhibited at Matt's Gallery, London. 

 As well as featuring in international collections including the Tate Collection and Government Art Collection forthcoming projects and exhibitions include the collaged map The United Kingdom, currently on display in Ideas Depot at Tate Liverpool, UK (until 21 July).

Tong Tana production still, 2012.

A documentation of Trespass will also be included in the forthcoming exhibition This Land is Our Land at PAPER, Manchester, UK (curated by Edgework contributor, and PAPER curator Simon Woolham) from 29 June - 3 August 2019. Curtis is currently working on a series of new commissions for Tate shop to be launched later this year.

Layla Curtis on Edgework
Twitter
Instagram

In Profile: Edgework – Journal & Store

TJENTISTE – Andy Day

Here at Elsewhere we have long been proud of our collaboration with Edgework, an artist-led, cross-disciplinary journal and online store with a focus on place founded by the artist (and Elsewhere contributor) Layla Curtis. The journal gives space for artists and professionals from a range of disciplines and allows them to give readers an insight into their extended research, fieldwork and working methods. The online store then promotes their work, specialising in editional artworks on paper, publications, posters, postcards and also the work of independent publishers who share their ethos and emphasis on place… including us!

WORLD POLITICAL (Detail) – Layla Curtis

‘Edgework contributors take risks; conduct deep explorations of our cities' overlooked, forgotten and forbidden spaces; misuse, reclaim or appropriate architecture; test the boundaries of access; subvert surveillance technologies and pick apart cartography. They explore the margins of our urban spaces examining how we inhabit them, move through them and establish a sense of place. They are overland wanderers or remote viewers who reflect upon our relationship with nature and landscape.’ – Layla Curtis, founder of Edgework

Artists whose editioned work can be found in the Edgework online shop include Susan Collins, Layla Curtis, Andy Day, Alec Finlay, Joy Gerrard, Lucinda Grange, Graham Gussin, Nicky Hirst, Lee Maelzer, Simon Woolham and George Shaw, and over the coming months we will be profiling them here on the Elsewhere blog. At the same time, we would encourage our readers to explore the different posts, essays and articles on the Edgework journal pages. Recent articles we have enjoyed include ‘The Walking Library for a Wild City’ by Dee Heddon & Misha Myers, and ‘Mapping the Wild City, Fiadh-Bhaile, Orasul Salbatic’ by Alec Finlay.

PROTEST CROWD (NO BREXIT PEOPLE’S VOTE MARCH PARLIAMENT SQUARE, LONDON, 2018) – Joy Gerrard

Another aspect of the project that we have especially enjoyed over recent months is the series of Instagram Takeovers on the Edgework feed. Here, they have invited artists to post images onto the Edgework account over a period of time, highlighting a specific project or body of work and it is well worth checking out. We are really looking forward to showcasing the talents of the artists involved in the Edgework project, and we especially like the opportunity that Edgework offers to connect directly with artists, purchase their work and support what they do.

Edgework artists whose work appears in this post:
Andy Day
Layla Curtis
Joy Gerrard