Rituals Are Tellers of Us

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Rituals Are Tellers of Us Lindsey Bull, Tereza Bušková, Matthew Cowan, Jeremy Deller, Hew Locke, Eleanor Moreton, Abigail Reynolds, Anna Sadler & Jon Greenland, Tim Shaw 4th May - 29th June 2013

Newlyn Art Gallery
New Road, Newlyn TR18 5PZ
United Kingdom 

A feast of real invented and re-made rituals, this group exhibition brings together works by artists that take inspiration from rich folk traditions or communal acts, such as protest. Rituals Are Tellers Of Us is curated by MA Curatorial Practice students from Falmouth University, in partnership with Newlyn Art Gallery & The Exchange. Artist’s Talk: Falmouth University, Wednesday 1st May, 5pm. As part of the MA Art Lecture series Eleanor Moreton will talk about her work, which will be shown as part of Rituals Are Tellers of Us. Free, booking essential at: The exhibition will open with a celebration of the rituals of spring including folk dancing on Friday 3rd May 7.30-9pm www.newlynartgallery.co.uk www.ritualsaretellersofus.wordpress.com

NURTUREart Gallery: Videorover season

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Videorover: Season 5 
Dec 14 - May 17, 2013 

Opening Reception: 
Fri. December 14, 
7-9PM NURTUREart Gallery, 
56 Bogart Street, 
Brooklyn NY 
USA


NURTUREart is pleased to present Videorover: Season 5, the fifth installment of its semi-annual video series. Curated by Rachel Steinberg, this season’s gallery selection features Artists: Matthew Cowan, Yael Frank, David J Merritt, Zach Nader, Jessica Segall, Adrien Siberchicot, and Frank Zadlo.

This exhibition celebrates the physical nature of video art through it’s relationship with objects. Whether depicting a time activated object or body, or the absence of an expected physical element, each work challenges the typical medium of moving images by presenting a product that is sculptural, not just transient. Although the video timeline creates the intrigue and impression with each piece, the medium of video itself is only a surrogate for a tactile interaction. This is as much an exhibition of objects as video; a guided tour of images and manipulated objects that form new situations and angles of observation.

Videorover is NURTUREart’s ever-expanding forum for local and international video artists, aiming to present a wide range of videos which are willing to extend the perceptual and conceptual limitations of their medium. The videos were displayed simultaneously as an installation for a period of one week in the main gallery space from December 14 – 21. The works have now moved to NURTUREart’s screening area and will play on rotation of one video per day, running concurrently with the regular exhibition schedule for the duration of the season.

Beaconsfield: Experiments in Ritual

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Tereza Buskova & Matthew Cowan
Experiments in Ritual

Friday 30 November 2012, 6-8.30pm

November LAST Fridays

Earlier this year Tereza Buskova and Matthew Cowan joined Tamsyn Challenger in her ongoing investigations into monoculture. The three set out to cross-fertilise each other’s practice.

This special screening will premier new screen works from this engagement.

Buskova presents her new film Baked Woman of Doubice, for which both Cowan and Challenger made costumes and Cowan presents The Barbers Pole and The Devils.

Baked Woman of Doubice and The Barbers Pole are single screen video works made in response to notions of monoculture. Both works are filmed in agricultural settings where, paradoxically, idiosyncratic practices often linger on in the presence of a homogenized culture of cash crops.

Click here to download a full text on Buskova and Cowan’s new works.

This event forms part of the South London Art Map LAST FRIDAYS late openings.

Beaconsfield

22 Newport St, 

Vauxhall, 

London 

SE11 6AY

Agency Gallery: The Island of the Day Before

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The Island Of The Day Before

Matthew Cowan, 
Gallery 1 and Gallery 2

27 October– 16 Dec 2012

Preview Friday, 26th October, 6-9pm

the Agency
66 Evelyn Street 
London 
SE8 5DD

Collective Observations: Folklore and Photography from Benjamin Stone to Flickr

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Collective Observations: Folklore and Photography – from Benjamin Stone to Flickr
13 October 2012 - 13 January 2013 

Since 1897, when Sir Benjamin Stone established the National Photographic Record Association (NPRA), photographers have had a fascination with the rites and rituals of Britain. 

This exhibition explores the complimentary relationship between photography and folklore practice – featuring contributions from Faye Claridge, Matthew Cowan, Doc Rowe, the Benjamin Stone Collection, Homer Sykes, Brian Shuel, Sara Hannant, Tom Chick, David Ellison and Henry Bourne.
There are 720 recorded events, rites and customs practiced in the UK each year, and folklore is reflected in every element of our community, life and values. Folklore is a vibrant element of ‘Britishness’ and a living cultural heritage that links the past to the present, helping us to understand our communities and cultures as well as our shared humanity.

Collective Observations will consider the enduring appeal of vernacular traditions as rich subject matter for image makers, and explore how photographers have consistently turned their lenses toward the spectacle of these archaic customs – whether by documenting events (like Homer Sykes and Sara Hannant), making portraits (Henry Bourne, David Ellison) or taking a more conceptual approach (Matthew Cowan, Tom Chick).

Curated by the Museum of British Folklore in conjunction with Towner
























Towner the contemporary art museum

Devonshire Park, 
College Road, 
Eastbourne 
BN21 4JJ

The Gathering

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The Gathering

Group Show at Gallery Yukiko Kawase

September 25 - October 27, 2012

Vernissage Mardi 25/9 Tuesday 9/25 18h-20h

curated by Jack Duplock
with Jonathan Baldock, Marcus Coates, Matthew Cowan, Charles Danby, Jack Duplock,
Gazmend Ejupi, Thijs Jansen, Jamie Shovlin, Steven Tabbutt

Gallery Yukiko Kawase

4 Rue Auguste Barbier 75011 

(Métro Goncourt/Parmentier/République) 

Paris

France

Never Never

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During my autumn residency at the Aberystwyth Art Centre in 2011, I worked on a series of Welsh Folk portraits. These images sprang from the discovery of an image in the Ceredigion Museum, and lead me to research the Rebecca Riots, and its subsequent place in Welsh Folklore. These portraits can be seen at a forthcoming show in the main gallery in the Aberystwyth Art Centre.

Never Never

25 Jul - 15 Sep

Gallery 1
Aberystwyth Art Centre
Wales

The works on show include painting prints ceramics and film by artists including 
Chan-hyo Bae, Barnaby Barford, Zoe Childerley, Matthew Cowan, Claire Curneen,
Laura Ford, Auriea Harvey & Michaël Samyn, Daphne Plessner, Paula Rego 
and Elaine Wilson. 

'Let Thy Seed Possess the Gate of Those Which Hate', digital archive print © Matthew Cowan 2012

Cultural Transference

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EFA Project Space

June 15 - July 27, 2012

Opening Reception Friday, June 15, 6-8pm

Curator: Sara Reisman

Artists: Firelei Baez, Matthew Cowan, Hubert Czerepok, Nicolas Dumit Estevez, Pablo Helguera, Christopher K. Ho, Yoko Inoue, LoVid, Umesh Maddanahalli, Dread Scott and Kyle Goen, Allison Smith, Juliana Irene Smith, Shinique Smith, and Elisabeth Smolarz.

Cultural Transference presents recent artwork by sixteen international and 
New York-based artists whose practices are actively engaged with the 
transformation of culture in contemporary art and everyday life. The exhibition 
features video, sculpture, performance, installation, collage, and craft-based 
projects by artists who draw from the cultural references and contexts of 
Afghanistan, the Caribbean, China, India, Iraq, Japan, Mexico, New Zealand, 
Palestine, Poland, and the United States, among other places. 

www.efanyc.org

Courtship of the Peoples

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I have a new piece of work in Courtship of the Peoples at Simon Oldfield. It is a large group exhibition of works on paper that explore the pursuit of affection and the idea of personal correspondence. The exhibition began by inviting a group of artists who in turn proposed one other artist with whom they would like to invite to exhibit alongside.

Caroline Achaintre, Phillip Allen, Trevor Appleson, Ben Ashton, Sam Basu, Jonny Briggs, Laura Buckley, Juno Calypso, Arabella Campbell, Gordon Cheung, Celine Condorelli, Dan Coopey, Matthew Cowan, Tim Ellis, Blue Firth, Discoteca Flaming Star, Dryden Goodwin, Anthony Green, Kay Harwood, Roger Hiorns, Princess Julia, Sara Knowland, Sam Knowles, Ryan Leigh, Humphrey Ocean, Francesca Oldfield, Megan Powell, Ben Ravenscroft, Abigail Reynolds, Dallas Seitz, Neal Tait, David Thorpe, Mark Titchner, Francis Upritchard, Donald Urquhart, Martin Westwood, Alison Wilding and Jesse Wine

Exhibition Dates:
22 June - 28 July 2012

Private View:
21 June 2012, 18.30-20.30

www.simonoldfield.com

Est-Nord-Est

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This May and June I have been working as part of the spring Artist Residency programme in the studios at Est-Nord-Est, an artist run centre on the shores of the Saint Lawrence River in Quebec, Canada. Est-Nord-Est is in Saint-Jean-Port-Joli a small town with a long history of wood sculpture, and in the past many artists have lived and worked here.

Since I arrived in at the beginning of May, I have been keeping a close eye on the accelerated changing of the seasonal guard, with spring arriving and rapidly giving away to mid-summer. Grass and wildflowers seem to grow at the rate of a foot a week, which for the locals means that owning a ride on lawn mower is almost essential. Every weekend you can see bored looking lawn-mower riders circling their properties cutting back the grass. At first I wondered why there were such large grassy open spaces surrounding people's houses, but I soon found out that these spaces are buffer zones for halting the bug onslaught each evening.

There are three projects I have been working on mainly at Est Nord Est. The first has been a series of decorated walking canes. These are canes produced in non-human sizes (too large, or too small).

© Matthew Cowan, 2012

I have also been working on producing a short performance video. The video is a kind of solo May Pole performance, but really I wanted make a barber's pole, whilst thinking about the act of cutting and mowing. Damon the Mower is a character from the poems of Andrew Marvell, and he makes an appearance in the video, ably acted by Mr Kip Jones.

'The Barber's Pole' performance still. © Matthew Cowan, 2012 

Something that I had never actually considered until I arrived in Quebec, was the harvesting of Maple Syrup. It is not really possible to get much more Canadian than Maple Syrup, but what I have found most intriguing is the huge networks of bright blue plastic tubes that tap the syrup from the trees and distribute it back to Sugar Cabins, where the syrup is made. This incredible blue web is a very striking sight in the lush green of a maple forest, and I have been making use of these tubes for a new installation in the forest itself, connecting up a costume made of these blue plastic tubes, directly to the trees.

© Matthew Cowan, 2012

I would like to thank all of the people who have been a great help to me at Est Nord Est.... Genevieve, Ariane, Suzanne, Kip, Julie, Lisa, Joo-Hee and especially Denis.