SVA

Stroud Valleys Artspace, 4 John Street, Stroud, Gloucestershire.
28th February-15th March (Tuesday-Saturday 10am-3pm, Sunday 11am-1pm)
Preview: Friday 27th February 2009

An exhibition of the Site08 Darbyshire Award winner Emily Smith

As the winner of the Site Darbyshire award, Emily Smith was offered an exhibition at Stroud Valleys Artspace (SVA) and the manufacture of new work from Darbyshire Framemakers. Rather than simply the presentation of a cheque, the award offers a form of mentoring service from Mark Darbyshire and SVA in the form of a dialogue with the winner in order to realise work which previously could only have existed at the proposal stage.

With the award Mark Darbyshire intends to act as a conduit between the public funded artist-led SVA and the art market of gallery owners, collectors and museums. SVA is principally a site of production and it also acts as a facilitator for project-based experimental events allowing both studio artists and visiting artists to develop their work in an environment somewhere between the cell-like privacy of the studio and the glare of attention of the gallery.

The series of work that the award will enable Emily Smith to realise is itself an enquiry into the systems of realisation, how thoughts are realised in form. She is using the award as an opportunity to further her interest in how language, speech and writing both create and obfuscate meaning by developing her ‘writing machines’. The work questions objective and singular memory, and investigates how the past is recalled through both visual memory and physical trace.

Emily Smith exhibited at the Site08 Darbyshire exhibition in June 08 alongside work by national and international artists as part of the Site festival, an annual festival of contemporary arts which takes place in Stroud, Gloucestershire. UK artist Peter Liversidge selected and shortlisted the entries for the award. Peter Liversidge has exhibited widely in Europe and the US. He exhibited at the recent Europalia Festival in Brussels, having been selected by the British Council as the UK’s representing artist.

Alongside the exhibition there will be a series of talks, discussions and poetry readings on each Sunday during the exhibition. A particular highlight will be a talk on Sunday 8th March at 11am by Brian Dillon, author of a memoir, In the Dark Room, and the UK editor of Cabinet.

Associated events

• (in negotiation) a discussion led by Colin Glen Sunday 1 March 11am
• retrace: erase a talk by Brian Dillon Sunday 8 March 11am
• retrace: exhale poetry readings Sunday 15 March 11am