Hello there and welcome to a summer of artistic delights taking place across the valley of the River Tees. Whether your interests are in conversing about contemporary visual art, watching inscrutable short films, dancing to quirky Swedish jazz, escaping with us on a mystery field trip or participating in off-beat exhibitions, we have something for you up our sleeves.

We look forward to seeing you soon.

Lauren Healey & Nicky Peacock

If you want to attend the next Reading Room conversation, 'Object', please RSVP by Friday 18th July  to lauren@maparts.co.uk

You may have noticed some changes to our website.  Information on exhibtions, opportunities and general news is now on the front page.  Just keep scrolling down!  If you have information you'd like on the site please send to info@maparts.co.uk

LEARNING TO LOVE YOU MORE EXHIBITION

The Learning To Love You More exhibition will be opening its doors on the 25th July 2008.  The exhibtion is at The Co-operative Buildings,  251-255 Linthorpe Road, Middlesbrough. 

This unique exhibition will show work that has been set by the Learning To Love You More website www.learningtoloveyoumore.com.  The work submitted has come not only from the Tees Valley, as the exhibition has had international interest and submissions.

Form more info rmation please contact Nicky:miaowformap@googlemail.com

VOLUNTEER AT MAP

MAP are looking for Volunteers to help with the following events

The Reading Rooms

We are looking for members who can help on the evening and a few hours before the events.  Duties will include,  take the registration, disseminate and collect evaluations, be a point of contact and help set up the event.

Learning To Love You More exhibition

We are looking for anyone who can give a few hours a week until the end of July.  Duties will include, helping to set up the exhibition and working alongside the Curator to make the exhibition and launch night successful.

If you are interested in volunteering or know someone who is please email jr_bowes@middlesbrough.gov.uk

It would be great if you could indicate the dates you can work, your contact details and which project you'd like to work on.

PYTHON GALLERY EXHIBITION OPENING

ACA - ALLENHEADS CONTEMPORARY ARTS

'draw a line, follow it'

Image: Alex Charrington, Untitled Compass Drawing, 2007
(Collection of Winston T. Herman)

Friday 4th July 5 – 8pm

Refreshments will be served
 
Alex Charrington, Rachael Clewlow,Nick Kennedy, Tuesday Nesbitt, Ginny Reed, Richard Rigg, Anne Vibeke Mou

Allenheads Contemporary Arts presents ‘draw a line, follow it’, an exhibition exploring the significance of process to this group of North East based artists.

Each of the artists has established a system for the making of work which places specific constraints and limitations on their practice. Ranging from the rigid employment of painstakingly repetitive actions to the relinquishing of decisions to chance, those systems provide a focus for production and provoke questions about personal control over creative process.

The drawings, paintings and sculpture on show reveal the playful, inquisitive and disciplined nature of these artist’s practices and bear witness to an obsessive attention to detail.

Exhibition Open:

Friday 4th – Sunday 27th July. Weekends 10am – 5pm. Monday to Friday by arrangement

For information please contact Nick Kennedy, ACA, Allenheads Contemporary Arts, Old School House, Allenheads, Northumberland, NE47 9HR

(01434) 685040

acaheads@aol.com

www.acart.org.uk

SMOKESTACK BOOKS PRESENTS

Radical US poets UK tour July 2008

‘Are you ready for change?’ asks Clinton. ‘Change is coming,’ says McCain. ‘Change we can believe in,’ says Obama. ‘Change the record,’ demand the poets in these two major new collections of radical poetry from the other USA. Forget the rhetoric – this is the real poetry of real change.

This Summer Smokestack is bringing the radical US poets Martín Espada and Jon Andersen to the UK to promote their new Smokestack collections. Crucifixion in the Plaza de Armas brings together, for the first time, all Martín Espada’s poems about the resistance struggle in his native Puerto Rico. Jon Andersen’s Seeds of Fire is a stunning new anthology of angry, radical poets including Adrienne Rich, Fred Voss, Amiri Baraka, Jayne Cortez, Pete Seeger and Grace Paley.

Espada and Andersen are reading at Manchester Central Library, the Southwell Poetry Festival, the Ledbury Poetry Festival, the Marx Memorial Library in London and two venues in the North East:

Wednesday 9 July, 7pm MIMA, Middlesbrough

with Maureen Almond, Ellen Phethean and Nkosana Mpofu

For more information contact Andy Croft at Smokestack Books

info@smokestack-books.co.uk

01642 813997

The Republic of Poetry by Martín Espada is published by WW Norton  

www.wwnorton.co.uk

For further information about the book please contact Tabitha Pelly:

BRAZILIANT!

THE READING ROOM: CONVERSATIONS OF AN ARTISTIC NATURE

Middlesbrough Central Library

Object
Wednesday 23rd July 2008, 7-9pm

Glenn Adamson, Susan Collis and Kelly McCallum will discuss the use of appropriated objects in the visual arts.

RSVP by Friday 18th July

Space
Wednesday 20th August 2008, 7-9pm

Catherine Bertola, Keith Harrison and Emma Shaw will look at how space affects the presentation and making of works, especially in relation to installation and site-specific pieces.

RSVP by Friday 15th August

Head of Graduate Studies in the Research Department at the Victoria and Albert Museum, Glenn Adamson’s research interests include 20th century craft, design and decorative arts theory. He has published widely, his most recent book being Thinking through Craft. Susan Collis inlays commonplace objects with precious stones such as diamonds and mother-of-pearl to suggest traces and marks of past events. She has recently exhibited in Out of the Ordinary: Spectacular Craft at the Victoria and Albert Museum. Kelly McCallum employs Victorian taxidermy with insects and precious metals to create works influenced by story-telling and natural history. She has recently exhibited at Project Space Leeds and Saltburn Artists’ Projects.

Catherine Bertola’s practice involves creating installations and objects made in direct response to the architecture and history of a given space, using pattern, materials and imagery familiar to the site.

Keith Harrison is a highly acclaimed ceramics artist who investigates the relationship between clay and electricity during live firing events – these have taken place in venues including art galleries, a science laboratory and the London Underground. Artist and writer/research Emma Shaw is particularly interested in the social role of the domestic object and the relationships we have with ordinary, everyday things. Recent articles include ‘Ceramics & Installation’ for Ceramic Review Jan/Feb 2008.

All events are £5 per person, free for MAP members and a-n AIR subscribers. Places are limited, so please RSVP for each event, informing us if you have any access requirements. 

Mini-buses will be chartered to transport people to and from Stockton, Darlington, Hartlepool, Redcar and Saltburn for £5 return. Buses will depart at around 6pm from a central location in each town and will leave Middlesbrough at 9.30pm. Reservations are essential - email lauren@maparts.co.uk for details.