Open air Hotel in Utrecht, Leiden + Delft - OpenluchtHotel

Utrecht 18/19 June 2011
Leiden 21 June 2011
Delft 10 September 2011

Visitors can register to book to sleep in one of these artist-beds in the open air in one of these cities. More info in Dutch only is here: www.openluchthotel.nu our bed is an ode to Shakepeare and all of the senses including taste.

"Under perfumed flowers I lie, there I couch when owls do cry"

by Sonja van Kerkhoff + Sen McGlinn

[with apolgies to Shakepeare's The Tempest]
Peaseblossom is the name of one of the fairies in Shakepeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream who serves the Queen of the Fairies.
This open hotel location is an interpretation of the type of bed she could have made where you can see, smell and taste "pea blossoms" growing through willow branch forms.

Peaseblossom is de naam van een van de feeen uit Shakespeare's A midsummer Night's Dream die de Koningin der Feeen dient.
Dit is een interpretatie van het soort bed dat zij had kunnen maken, waarin je de door de wilgentakkenbeelden groeiende (pronk)erwt bloesems kunt zien, ruiken en proeven.

In Leiden our bed will be set amidst trees in the Kaasmarktschool, artist studio courtyard, Koppenhinksteeg 13

Darling Buds exhibition in London

For those in or around London, we have two installations in this show curated by
Davinia-ann Robinson, Rebecca Hallett, Nelly Curtis, Jessica Mautner, and Boudicca Collins

at:

Parlour Project Space
181-185 Queens Crescent, NW5 4DS
London, United Kingdom

Open: 6 - 10 May 2011
Fri-Tues: 11:00am - 6:00pm

installations by

Grace Adam, Daniel Bourke, Matt Gee, Sian Griffiths, Melissa Henderson, Sadie Hennessy, Fiona Long and Sonja Van Kerkhoff & Sen McGlinn.

There's a blog about this exhibition and a facebook page.

Oct 10th: final impressions of our video installation in the Aalmarkt studio

The five videos are:

The Tears of Rangi | Ngā roimata o Rangi,
16 min. 30 sec.

The Moving Heart | Te Ngākau Nekeneke
3min 33 sec, song: Whānau Mārama by Toroa Pohatu, Aotearoa | New Zealand

The Two Lands
16 min 9 sec., voice: Sonja van Kerkhoff

The Dark Valley,
14 min 10 sec

Heart of the Land | Te Ngākau o te whenua
3 min, 33sec

October update on our installation in an old shop on the Aalmarkt, Leiden

On October 1st Sen started building the front wall and doorway and I started work on the ceiling lights and the illumination for the suspended harakeke and piupiu.

We hope to have all the videos, sounds and lighting in place by Sunday October 10th when we will have an open day for visitors. OPEN: Aalmarkt 17, 2 - 6 p.m.

We are also on the look out for bits of carpet as Sonja will use what carpet she gets from people and the street as a layer underfoot. A layer of the land from this part of the world. Each contributor of carpet will receive a photo later showing how their carpet was incorporated into the sculptural landscape inside this structure.

"The tears of Rangi", the final video (now 16 minute long) is almost finished and I am also working on an 18 min version of the video "Heart of the Land". For the installation the most videos will be much as longer so the sounds, music and voices work more fluidly in the space. View some earlier versions of the videos on my vimeo page.

For earlier photos of this work see September 2010.
 

Update on the new installation at Aalmarkt 17

Walls are almost done. Next more work on the lighting, putting the video screens into place + work on the ceiling drawings.

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
To how it looked on September 18-19 >>

More work on the "kāinga a roto" (boat-home)

This photo shows that we have now straightened the frames so that they are vertical and started adding permanent braces which curve around the outside.

On Friday (17 September) we put in two tv dvd monitors and had these running to decide on the size of the windows we will build for these on the inside. We've gone for making the two first windows 19 inches. We also had the marante plywood cut which will be 90 planks, each 13 x 240 cm long, placed over and along the outer structure.

At the Gamma it took a man and a machine about half an hour to do all this. This was much faster than the 6 we cut using our bench saw, where all 4 of us held the large sheets.

On September 16th about 6000 Leiden citizens registered at the Waag (medival weighing house, a few metres west of our building) for the annual, free herring and white bread (google "The relief of Leiden of 1574" to find out more about this. This article in Dutch is about this). Many of these spent a good 5-10 minutes standing in the queue outside our window. Typical comments were about how stupid we were building this, because it wouldn't fit through the door. One of the advantages in speaking English to each other while working is that, we don't need to respond as most assumed we couldn't understand them. The other common comment concerned expressions of surprise that a woman as small as I was was handling tools and seemed to know what I was doing :)

The people in the queue were of all ages, but going by their comments and the fact that they didn't seem to notice the numerous images and texts on the windows explaining in Dutch that this was an art project, obviously were people who don't visit art galleries. However we had a number of interesting and friendly conversations with some who did notice that the Leiden shoe-makers shop was now a studio + gallery for the "There is beauty in the city".



More about the there Beauty is in the city exhibition is here

Studio - Aalmarkt 17, Leiden

                    
Read about how you can participate in the "there is beauty in the city" project here. This exhibition in the window combines global views with Leiden views.

I have this studio thanks to
OPEN | Makers, a Leiden city culture project which gives artists a studio for 2 months in the middle of the city.

On September 12th the first frames for the installation Kāinga a roto (Home Within) were raised in place with Tama, Toroa (his teeshirt bears the text: Das Wort "Vegetarier" kommt aus dem Indianischen und heißt:"Zu Blöd zum Jagen") and Sen doing most of the work.

More photos will be added below documenting the progress.

Four of the five videos to go inside still need a some work but you can get an impression of these on my vimeo page. These are: The Heart of the Land, The Two Lands, The Dark Valley and The Moving Heart.

For the installation there will be no titles or credits and some will be made longer so they loop seamlessly and so the soundscape of the space works as an entity.
These plus the new one I'm still working on will be for sale as a DVD package from late October onwards.

Art installations in Leiden in September 2008

Installations by Leiden based artists, Rudi Struik (www.rudi-struik.com) + Piet Franzen (he runs the Sidac Studio and organizes various exhibitions and mail art projects) in the prison cells and the torture chamber of Gravensteen, The city prison of Leiden between 1463 and 1955. Info about this on Rudi's website in Dutch

Above Left: Installation by Piet Franzen. Above Right: video projection by Rudi Struik.

>> Two views of an installation in a prison cell by Rudi Struik



The incision-like lines on the hung sheets relate to and are reminiscent of the incisions along the cell walls made by prisoners from the past.

Video Vortex exhibition at Montevideo, Amsterdam

Two works made an impression on me in the video vortex exhibition, I saw on January 17th.

This image is a detail of P.T.S. (Public Television Sculpture),
the time-based installation of 8 videos seen distorted through 32 prism-like spheres in a circular cabinet by Dutch artist, Jaap de Jonge (www.jaapdejonge.nl)

Beneath these balls, which function as lenses, are eight hidden monitors. The video material was taken from 32 broadcasts, which were made for Park 4DTV (Amsterdam cable television) in 1996. New images and image combinations are created by the 32 prisms, all of which distort the image in some way or other. By pressing a button, the viewer can trigger the sound that accompanies each image.


The other memorable work was the film Flat Earth a film by Jon Thomson & Alison Craighead (view some stills here). It is a journey around the globe using visuals and material found on the internet.

music link of the week: Dave Thorpe Fantastic slide guitar! London folkie.
art link of the week: Simone de Jong Leiden artist who's website I came across