electric angel /design for life

unwrapped

some images from the unwrapped exhibition and publicity. the flyers are printed using fluorescent blue – not as in-yer-face as lime green or yellow but still the brightest possible blue you can get. we’ve developed a range of colours designed to contrast with the heritage colour palette generally associated with municipal galleries – a continuation of the work that began with dayglo orange of ‘crazy, damn right i’m crazy‘.

the image used on the flyer is by Eduardo Paolozzi. his work and studio recreation at the dean gallery in edinburgh is must-see if you’re a fan of pop art or just interested in post-war art and sculpture in general.

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you can read more about the exhibition at the contemporary art society website. it is, of course, a great exhibition. go see.

swimsuit shoot

the launch of the coastival poster/brochure on the south bay beach. there had been notice it would be a swimsuit model for this photo opportunity, and rumours abounded of who might be brave enough to pose as our poster buxom beauty (who has been christened ‘gladys’ by the coastival team). but not many people had counted on a male model… a very game andrew clay, director of woodend creative workspace. pick up a brochure to see his comic counterpart.

above: evening news photographer andrew higgins (see his daily photo journal here) sorting various musicians, artists, dj’s and more.

above: andrew clay in character with coastival director, wendy clews. joining in on the snapping is tony bartholomew who is also photoblogging as coastival365. contact tony if you’d like photos of the launch or just of andrew in a bathing suit. we won’t ask why.

crescent gardens transformed

photos (by james) of a few of the pieces in last weekend’s art trail in crescent gardens behind the three villas on the crescent. we had 250+ people visit and many more discover the trail by accident. people are asking if we’re going to organise it again – perhaps we will but we’d really like to reinvigorate the discussion about having a permanent sculpture trail or some other long term creative use of the space.

thanks to all the artists who who took part – every piece was wonderful and the feedback we received was great. and special thanks to our work placement students michelle (curating), charlotte (designing the trail guide) and emma (designing the logo, posters and flyers).

‘seeing red’ by tracy himsworth. tracy wrapped tree trunks with red material creating a very striking effect. for the next 12 months tracy will be creating site-specific works across scarborough so keep an eye out for her work on the streets, gardens and alleyways of the town.

‘landmark’ by gaby naptali. gaby’s work built up of thin layers of coloured clay had already become part of the gardens overnight as hordes of woodlice took up residence. being of organic materials, the council’s parks and gardens team gave permission for the work to be left in place, gradually returning to the earth. go take a look – it may still be there. gaby will be exhibiting in our tiny gallery in october.

‘the garden of adonis’ by charlotte middleton. poet edmund spencer’s text form the source material for this work which charlotte hand-cut from board.

‘boy fishing’ by bob tuffin. one of three pieces bob put in the trail – this boy could be seen fishing in the goldfish pond behind scarborough art gallery. bob will be exhibiting in the trees outside our gallery as part of coastival and continuing through 2011.

‘ceyx transformed’ by jack cole. inspired by the roman poet, ovid’s ‘metamorphoses’, the driftwood and tin sculpture was jacks first exhibited piece. the materials looked remarkably harmonious with the stone and water of the old fountain behind.

freestyle

a superb end to our [tiny] poetry series last night with rapper james koppert. james was honest, funny, angry, political, questioning, self-depreciating, heart-breaking. the evening finished with some freestyling in which james took us from a play on words with ‘electric angel’ to a fly on the gallery wall and out to the yorkshire coastline.

john allsopp was in the audience and took some footage – you can watch it here.

it’s been hugely enjoyable to put our gallery to use as a [tiny] performance venue and the enthusiasm of the poets and audience has been fantastic. question is, what shall we put on next…

thanks to wordsmiths felix, mark, john and james and to all who came. good, good evenings.

btw, you can catch john w clarke performing by the grotto as part of the crescent gardens art trail tomorrow. he’ll be reading for about 20 minutes at 10.30 and 12.00.

crescent gardens art trail

so we had this idea… that for one day only we would invite artists to create/exhibit something in the gardens that link yorkshire coast college westwood campus, woodend creative workspace, scarborough art gallery & crescent arts and the rotunda (and almost our studio/gallery too). we suggested the idea to a few people who like to make creative things happen in the town. and it’s happening this saturday between 10am & 4pm.

actually the idea has grown as people got excited about it and with woodend acting as a hub there’ll be an arts market, some live music (organised by create – the people behind the fab ‘art & soul picnic’ a few weeks ago) and an exhibition of historical photos of the gardens from scarborough museums trust. it’s also free entry to the gallery and tours of woodend because it’s heritage open days weekend – we’ll even have a specially written heritage trail of the gardens as part of the CHART Scarborough project. thanks are due to scarborough borough council parks and gardens department who have been enthusiastic about the idea and given permission to use the gardens.

most exciting of all though are the artworks left to be discovered amongst the trees and bushes which include trees wrapped in material, trunks smothered in clay, woods hanging from branches, textile tree frogs, life-size wire people and lots more.

it has also been opportunity for several of our work placement students to get involved and put some valuable experience on their CV’s – the initial curatorial work and organisation was done by arts degree student michelle, the logo and posters designed by emma who is now at 6th form, and the art trail guides is being designed by charlotte who is working with us this week.

tiny poetry : the edger

it’s our final ‘tiny poetry’ night in the gallery this thursday. all have been ‘sell-out’s” so far and hugely enjoyable (tickets are actually free – just call in for one). this thursday it’s an ‘unplugged’ set from rapper james koppert aka the edger. here’s the blurb:

“… a rap artist and a street poet using words and rhythms as a vehicle to express anarchic musings and unstructured passions to challenge the listener to challenge their own thoughts. a recent review described the poet as being “an angry chav crossed with a modern day Shakespeare” who rather than reads his poetry explodes his words directly (sometimes literally) into his audiences faces”

click here to hear james in action: www.myspace.com/theedgerhiphop

8.30pm. drinks on the house.

IEBE awards 2010

we’ve been shortlisted in the 2010 IEBE business awards. the institute for education business excellence (IEBE) is a professional body, dedicated to promoting the highest possible standards in education business partnership organisations (EBPOs) – we’re delighted that NYBEP chose to nominate us and to have been shortlisted. our nomination was around our engagement with education through hosting work experience placements, with the schools creative and media diploma and through creative coast. we’re hoping we can get down to the design museum in london for the awards ceremony on 1st october.

catch up

if you don’t follow us on twitter [links to the right of this article] there could be some news you’ve missed out on. so here’s a quick round up before we get back to showing you what we’ve been working on…

it’s our first ‘tiny poetry‘ night this evening. one ticket left at the time of writing.

adrian has been accepted on the ‘leadership unleashed‘ cultural leadership programme and can be spotted in london, manchester, leeds and elsewhere over the next six months being all dynamic, like. or skulking in corner depending on quality of rail travel and quantity of fizzy drinks consumed.

he’s also psyching up for a sideline doing more public speaking.

james has a new surfboard and is very pleased with it. less so with the lack of waves right now.

and he’s been doing a lot more photography.

creative coast received funding to deliver a civic pride public art scheme teaming local residents with poets, designers and artists to transform empty shops in the town (more on that one soon).

CHART Scarborough maps are out and about the place and getting some great feedback. you can pick them up from the library, art gallery, ymca theatre, woodend creative workspace and from the sjt as soon as we’ve assembled another stand, plus from all the independent galleries.

we finished designing those school uniforms we tweeted about – will blog that soon.

we had this idea for an art trail in crescent gardens, floated it around, people liked it, and it’s happening! more on that soon too. if you’re a local artist and haven’t heard about it – get in touch NOW! deadline is tomorrow.

we’re currently working with scarborough museums trust, the ferens gallery in hull, beverley literature festival, scarborough borough council, coastival and york nhs.

oh, and there’s other stuff such as…
james and jenny are getting married in november.
adrian and rebecca are expecting a baby in november.
gonna be a busy month, that one.

[photo by james - from the CHART Scarborough project]

york press business awards

we’re delighted to have been selected as finalists in the york press business awards 2010 in the ‘best employer and education link’ category.

the other two finalists are harrogate & district nhs foundation trust and firmenich uk ltd of thirsk. we’re in fairly hefty company alongside a business with 53 employees and an organisation with 2300, but if nothing else i hope our nomination shows that small businesses can engage with education too and that it’s essential for the creative industries (where just about everyone is a small business) that they do.

you can read the york press article on us here. the award ceremony when the winner will be announced is on november 18th at york racecourse.

tiny poetry

what’s the point of having space if you’re not going to use it? ok, so we only have a tiny little space but let’s use it anyway. so as seen as our current exhibition is all on the walls (literally – see here) we thought it would be fun to use the gallery floorspace for some poetry gigs while it was on. there’s the loose theme of the sea/surf/coast to tie in with the exhibition, but we’ve told the poets ‘do what you want’ and we can’t wait to hear what they do.

for full details download a flyer here.