An exhibition of Japonisme by Lee Baker 

Temporary Art Project (TAP), Old Water Works, North Road, Southend On Sea SS0 7AB

10th - 26th March 2010

Metal present Toku chan likes to look up in the newly opened artist-led studio and gallery TAP in Southend – a previously empty building that we have refurbished in partnership with CoExist collective and Essex & Suffolk Water.

Toku chan is an anime character created as the alter ego of the artist.  It is through Toku chan’s eyes that Lee Baker presents us with his exhibition of lush visuals, animation, music and toys.  The result of a fascination with Japanese art and its ability to simultaneously influence and absorb western culture, Toku chan inhabits an exclusively positive world populated with brightly coloured thoughts.  Japanese culture has been a fascination for Baker for many years, from Utamaro Hiroshige and Jakuchu, with their influence on C19th European artists, Art Nouveau, Manga, Japanese film, Textile Design, Graffiti, British Engraving and Pop Art all find their way into his work,  as well as influences from modern Artists such as Takashi Murakami and Yamaguchi Akira.

Working outside his established discipline of music composition and production (he is best known for his production work with James top 10 album ‘Hey Ma’, 2008 and ‘The Night Before’ release date April 2010) Lee has been supported by Metal, to develop his ideas visually, and present them within a gallery context for the first time.

Exciting collaborations with award winning animator, Kidda and costume designer Holly Murray have resulted in specially commissioned contributions to the exhibition.

Lee Baker
Best known for his work in music, Lee has produced the last two James albums – ‘Hey Ma’ in 2008 and ‘The Night Before’ due to be released in April this year. He has written with a diversity of solo artists including national beatbox champion Beardyman, and break beats artist Kidda. He is currently working on a solo project with Rose Dougall from the Pipettes.  He has composed music for television, with credits including the rebranding of ITV2 and the BBC’s award-winning Arena documentaries.
Prior to this he made his mark as a scenic artist working at both the National Theatre and the English National Opera. He designed the sets for several of the late Ken Campbell’s solo shows, most notably The History of Comedy part 1 – Ventriloquism, performed at the National theatre in 2000.

Kidda
An acclaimed animator whose work, ‘Teddy Bear’, is currently on tour with the British Animation Awards 2010, Kidda has been collaborating with Lee to produce a short animation which takes place in Toku chan’s synthetic world. Titled ‘Toku chan likes colour’, this short will be set to a piece of music created by Toku chan himself.

Holly Murray
For this exhibition Lee is also collaborating with Southend born sculptor and costume maker, Holly Murray, to re-create a Toku chan as a soft sculpture.
She has previously created numerous costumes for contemporary dance and recently produced a costume sculpture for the premier of King Cotton at The Lowry Theatre in Manchester, a play brought to life through the nurturing of ideas with a residency at METAL’s Edge Hill base in Liverpool.

Twenty thousand people flocked to Metal's Village Green Festival on Saturday 26th September in celebration of the launch of the newly renovated Chalkwell Hall. 

Billy Bragg led his Big Busk from Metal's newly commissioned main stage, following a performance of A13 with The Blockheads and Phill Jupitus.  Other highlights included Camera Obscura, Rebecca Joy Sharp, Seth Paris, Felix Ngindu and the Liverpool Formby Brass Band, CoExist, Southend Young Creatives, Musical Flares with Level 4, The Paper Cinema and a late night, outdoor screening of The Yellow Submarine - among many other things to do and see.  Here are just a few images to give you a flavour of what a fantastic day we had. 

Look out for news of Village Green 2010 on Saturday 25th September 2010.

GUINNESS WORLD RECORD FOR THE LONGEST LINE OF BUNTING

In the lead up to Village Green in 2009, and as part of our launch celebrations for our newly renovated house, Chalkwell Hall, Metal launched a borough-wide attempt to break the world record for the longest line of bunting across Southend on Sea.

We worked with schools, community groups, scouts, the Women's Institute and a wide range of individuals from across the region to create the 9000 flags needed to make a line of bunting the length of Southend's iconic pier (1.33 miles long / 2158m).

Over the course of six months the individual, hand-made flags poured in, made from recycled curtains, jeans and other materials - exquisitely decorated with embroidery, sequins, applique and personal messages.

On 27th October 2009 we made our official challenge to the Guinness World Record and hung the entire length in the trees at Chalkwell Park.  We were officially awarded Guinness World Record status a few days later.

Our official recorded length is 2,159.30m, breaking the old record by a massive 654.58m.

To give you an insight into what a mammoth undertaking this was, some of the strict guidelines are included in our bunting pack that was sent out to all the many willing participant.  Click here to download for more information.

In 2008 Metal were invited by the parks team at Southend Borough Council to work with them on the design and concept of their annual submission to Hampton Court Flower Show.  Well known for traditional Essex gardens - for the last 13 years they had been awarded medals for every entry, including 5 Gold’s & 6 Silver’s.

We widened the partnership to include Essex & Suffolk Water and Arts Council England to create a beautiful, contemporary space that offered ideas and solutions to an environmentally sound garden that included low-water flowers, grasses and vegetables, as well as demonstrating a water recycling and cleaning reed bed filtration system that was distributed throughout the garden via a sculptural water feature.

The climate change theme linked the garden directly to Metal at Chalkwell Hall.

Manchester based artist’s collective, UHC were commissioned to create a centrepiece table that drew together the themes of the garden, the nature of the partnership, and the Metal’s on-going programme of cooking and eating together.  The stunning, hand made, oak dining table with hand painted motif is now installed at Chalkwell Hall and regularly hosts lively conversations amongst artists and others.

Metal also commissioned six artists to develop or recommend recipes that used the vegetables planted in the garden. These recipes can be downloaded by clicking here.

In celebration of the building work commencing at Chalkwell Hall in Southend on Sea, Metal commissioned photographer Benedict Johnson, to work with sixteen local people to create a series of portraits of Southend people reflecting both the people and culture of Southend.

The portraits are taken in various locations (of the subject’s choice) around the Borough, including underneath Southend’s pier, standing in the estuary mud at low tide and out on the nature reserve at Two Tree Island.

The images are a statement of Metal’s wide and varied audience across the Borough, and beyond.

The portraits were re-produced on large format, 1m x 1.5m boards and were display on the hoardings surrounding Chalkwell Hall throughout the renovation.

graphic-boards-4.pdf

Pecha Kucha Night was devised by architects Astrid Klein and Mark Dytham in 2003 as a place for young designers to meet, network, and show their work in public.

The key to Pecha Kucha Night is its patented system for avoiding lengthy presentations – ‘death by powerpoint’.  Each presenter is allowed 20 slides (all image based), each shown for 20 seconds – giving 6 minutes 40 seconds of fame before the next presenter is up.

This keeps presentations concise, the interest level up, and gives more people the chance to show.

Pecha Kucha (which is Japanese for the sound of conversation) has tapped into a demand for a forum in which creative work can be easily and informally shown and Pecha Kucha Nights now take place regularly in over 200 cities around the world.

Metal started the Southend on Sea Pecha Kucha Night in April 2009 and has now hosted 3 evenings, hearing from 20 presenters all living, working or proposing creative ideas for Southend.

Pecha Kucha is now part of our ongoing programme in Southend on Sea.  For details of the next event, click here  (this will be a link through to the relevant part of the events diary.)

Pecha Kucha 1st April.pdf

Village Green is the arts festival that Metal has developed for Southend on Sea, using Chalkwell Park – the park that our building Chalkwell Hall sits in.

The first Village Green was created as a launch event in Southend for the Cultural Olympiad and took part over the Open Weekend in September 2008.  Metal were awarded the London 2012 Inspire mark – part of the Olympic Games brand family – for the Village Green event, one of only 33 events, out of 600 that achieved the mark that year.

In 2008 we worked with 263 artists and 46 local arts and community groups to create an inspiring day of fun, intrigue, talent, participation and a showcase the creative talent of Southend, alongside some international talent from around the UK and overseas.

The line up included:-

Shlomo and the Vocal Orchestra
Impropera
Little Dog
Pauline Taylor
The Three Beards
The Heavy
Ku-Da-Mix
CoExist Gallery
Kayzar Dance
El Club Cobra
The White Bus
Idea13
Sundown Multimedia

as well as a huge mix of participatory arts, a marketplace, sports and other activities for all ages.

WHERE DO YOU THINK YOU ARE? was a debate around culture, identity, sense of place that Metal hosted in partnership with Insite, the Essex Cultural Tourism programme in October 2007.

We were interested in how culture contributes to the image and economics of towns within Essex, and the county as a whole.

The public event was a culmination of a series of smaller conversations that Metal hosted over a series of dinner discussions.  Four towns across Essex took part, bringing together senior people from the arts, regeneration, tourism and community sectors to explore questions of identity and the role of ‘culture’ in creating a sense of belonging.  The dinners were hosted in Chelmsford, Southend, Harlow and Colchester.

WHERE DO YOU THINK YOU ARE?  was styled on the BBC’s Question Time with panellists, Grayson Perry (Turner Prize-winning visual artist and ceramicist), DJ Nihal Arthanyake (Musician and Radio/TV personality, BBC Radio 1 and BBC Asian Network), Keirston Wareing (film / tv actress), Jane Edwards (Executive Director, Living East) and Chair, Jude Kelly OBE (chair, Metal / artistic director, Southbank Centre).

To watch a short excerpt of the discussion, please click here.

You Are Here was devised and developed by Metal as a way of exploring with young people the atmosphere, cultural life and future potential of their home towns and cities.

Metal is interested in how artist’s of all different kinds, contribute to the thinking, the identity and the development of ideas within civil and community life, and in particular within places that are undergoing major change and development.

Working with Insite, and Essex County Council we identified three towns across Essex that are currently undergoing a masterplanning process – Harwich, Harlow and Southend on Sea – all of whom are working towards a future vision for  their town.

We asked the pupils of a secondary school in each town to work with us, alongside an artist, an architect, a designer and the masterplanning body, to help us to understand their town, and to draw out the ideas and potential for its future.

Shoeburyness High School in Southend, Burnt Mill in Harlow and The Harwich School in Harwich worked with three artists from different disciplines.  Inno Sorsy is a writer, voice specialist and storyteller, Elina Jokipii is an artist and photographer, and Keith Watts is an illustrator.  The artists worked with pupils to enable them to produce all the content – reviews, interviews, photographs and drawings.  Visits and workshops with the architects and masterplanners involved in the development of their towns fed into their understanding and ideas.  Thompson Design visited each school to develop the design approach in consultation with all participants.

A book for each town was produced as a set of three to give you a flavour of what the pupils discovered about the place they live, the people they met, and the excitement they felt for its future.

For a full pdf copy of each book, please click on the following links.

You Are Here - Southend on Sea
You Are Here - Harwich
You Are Here - Harlow