DIY: Exhibition and Residency
Date: Saturday 18th September – Saturday 16th October
Location: Book Cycle warehouse on Water Lane, EX2 8BZ

Surface Arts worked in partnership with Book Cycle and EVA Studios to develop this exhibition in an industrial warehouse, under the theme of ‘DIY’. This formed a way to engage with alternative spaces to develop artistic practice outside of the ‘White Cube’ .

Surface Arts invited artists to Exeter to take part in a residency in order to respond to this dilapidated building. The artists’ interactions with the warehouse, both its materials and the space were used to create ‘site- specific’ pieces. The numerous art works, involving multiple disciplines take over the entirety of the warehouse and are intrinsic to the site.

DIY served as an inquiry into artist-led movements within this time of financial instability and generated an alternative monetary system through ‘in kind ‘ sponsorship to meet the needs of the project. It presents the creative benefits and alternative ways to ‘make’ and ‘do’.

The show aimed to create a non-alienating, engaging environment where the artists and the public can exchange ideas. The productive space of the working artist as a site of valuable, visual and intellectual interaction is highlighted here.

The artists were: Adam Garrett, Chiara Gill, Hanna Downing, James Burgess, Jessica Mautner, Jo Willoughby, Julie McCalden, Mark Houghton, Megan Hoggins, Michele Louise Schiocchet and Sarah Farmer. The additional collaborators are: Dave Holder, Francis Ives and Alex Saunders

There are many ways to hit things, and many things to hit (Iron girder, found timber and gas cylinders)
Collaboration with Dave Holder

There are many ways to hit things, and many things to hit was a collaboration between sound artist Sarah Farmer and electronic sound designer Dave Holder. Throughout the residency period Farmer had been collecting, analysing and arranging materials in the warehouse; learning about the materials, looking for patterns within the data and creating systems to be used as compositional tools. Holder had taken recordings of these materials and created a drone based sound work centered on a scale of notes found within the matter itself. Farmer played these objects live over the drone during a performance on the opening night. The materials used were then left to rejoin the clutter of the warehouse, returning to their roles of unimportant anonymous debris.