Next Wave Festival 2006
As part of the Youth Program of Festival Melbourne 2006, Next Wave invited groups of artists from around the world to set up shop in shipping containers in Shed 14 at the Docklands. Next Wave is a curated Festival that supports and presents the best work of Australia’s most talented young artists.
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Next Wave’s Containers Village brought together artist groups from across Australia and the Commonwealth in a multi-levelled maze of shipping containers from 15 - 26 March 2006. |
Forty-two 20-foot shipping containers were brought together in Shed 14, acting as mini-arts embassies from Commonwealth countries.
| Mr Westbury, Artistic Director said 'What the countries of the Commonwealth have in common is a shared sea-faring history. Shipping containers allow us to bring together an international community in a space that is both familiar and unique while allowing each group to preserve its own identity in a massive shared space' |
In the Containers Village each collective of artists was given a container in which to exhibit or create artwork responding to the Next Wave’s theme of Empire Games. The containers were configured within the shed in different arrangements, stacked high–creating a maze, and a series of trails and laneways to explore.
The Containers Village gave young artists the opportunity to meet each other and extend their networks both nationally and internationally. It's aim was to encourage artists to learn from each other, compare notes and engage in debate about contemporary art - inspiring opportunities to participate in each other’s projects and galleries.
Cabin Exchange
The Artist members of Cabin Exchange, a Glasgow-based art collective, work as facilitators of events, curating site-specific and site-sympathetic artworks, using storage containers as the platform.
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Cabin Exchange projects are generated by research and exploration carried out by selected artists. |
At the Next Wave Containers Village the members of cabin exchange had a go at using the container space to carry out a project with a similar working ethic themselves. Looking to propose an idea that coincided with the type of temporal works that have taken place previously, they wanted to create an opportunity that would engage with audiences to create a situation or event.
The thinking behind the proposal seeks to employ the opportunity to exploit the very nature of the containers placed in the context of such a village - as communal, multifunctional and creative spaces.
The idea is interested in the capital or capitalistic economy that is normally associated with the containers when functioning as vessels of private interest in the ordinary day-to-day context of the city. |
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The storage container usually contributes to a longer-term transformation of a city’s physical fabric, economy, identity and empire. They symbolise a network of the worldwide distribution of wealth - trucking, shipping, cargoing, freighting, shifting, moving - seemingly with an ease of transition, access-all-areas and an air of unaccountability. This ubiquitous metal object is a symbol of change, something we see as largely beyond our control and we accept as given.
Can we move one, even just an inch?
The method, Tug of Cabin.
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The event on Sunday 26 March was made up of the people Cabin Exchange managed to source - they attempted to pull a 20ft by 10ft by 8ft container using a large rope. |
The whole process of finding people to tug the 20ft storage container was recorded and using the container as a social space for meeting, interacting, researching, documenting and presenting this information will be an integrative part of the project.
Through experience, communication and exchange Cabin Exchange hope to foster relationships within diverse communities to release an idea that will become a reality - through working with individuals and bringing them together to form a collective mass with a commonality to play a role in something larger than themselves.
The communication and collaborative relationship is the key to the projects evolution, irrespective of the task at hand (that may sound unlikely or even impossible). This collaboration with different groups and individuals gives the work a strong sense of identity, which no one person – artist or otherwise – could achieve.
Ganghut
GANGHUT began as an idea Kevin Reid had while undertaking a three-month residency at Spike Island in 2004. During this time he began to make sculptural and film works concerning hideaways and group mentality.
From this, he worked towards an installation and event under the moniker GANGHUT.
The idea for GANGHUT is that of instigated collaboration, it takes in socialist work ethics, unification and utopian ideologies.
The first GANGHUT staged in August 2004 was created in the main space at Spike Island.
It was built over a 7-day period in a Robison Crusoe style, 24/7 gallery live-in environment, collaborating along with 8 other artists he had invited.
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Hence the GANG was formed and continues to work as a unit when overalls are donned.
‘The collaborative nature and loss of authorship allows for a greater whole than the sum of its parts-so to speak!’ – Stephen Murray, member of GANGHUT
Long live the build!
Volume
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Volume is focused on establishing the group identity and logo as a noticeable force within the local, national and international art scene – doing so through publicity, marketing, lecturing, offering art workshops, exhibiting and selling artwork.
Volume has arranged, funded, installed and promoted a number of exhibitions in Glasgow (as well as throughout Scotland) and further afield with members exhibiting in London, Hamburg and America. |
Since the collective’s first major public launch at the Glasgow Art Fair EXTENSION 2004, volume has produced, installed, publicised and funded exhibitions at: Free Gallery in Glasgow as a participant in Real Art Week 2004 (“below the root”), Limousine Bull in Aberdeen (“dirty laundry”), intermedia gallery in Glasgow (“a measure of detachment), and at the Aberdeen Royal Infirmary (“comfort”).
To accompany each of these exhibitions the collective had produced, mostly through self-funding, unique publications.
The collective has been featured in reviews in a-n Magazine, The Sunday Herald, Scotland on Sunday, and The List. |
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The near future sees volume expanding into an international collective. With links in the United States, volume plans to establish a footing in Minneapolis, Minnesota. |
Volume hopes to continue experimenting with collaboration and redefining the group identity to include a broader spectrum of artist media, as well as to continue exhibiting around the UK.
Volume’s artist members are Kate Jo, Russell, McGovern, Celine McIlmunn, Betty Meyer, John D. O’Connell, Kate V. Robertson and Barbara Wilson.
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