Stanley Picker Gallery are pleased to support OX – Kingston University Fine Art Studio Managers and Collaboration Workshop leaders Annabel Pettigrew and Rob MacPherson – in their curation and delivery of Pylon, a one night only, live event.
As part of Ox’s ongoing Elemental Co-ordination series of works, Pylon will consist of sculpture, sound, and moving image artworks, which will be alchemically transformed for the event between invited participants in their final year Kingston University Fine Art BA, and OX. OX specialise in collaborative practice and learning and this project will be the intensified format of the highly successful ‘Collaboration Workshop’ Ox have previously run with lower year students.
Conducting ongoing research into the interpretation of elemental forces, ritual practice, and the alchemical processes of collaborative art making, OX have operated a collaboration project in which students have been asked to make artworks in response to the element of Earth. These they have given, for sacrifice, to the Elemental Collaboration Pylon.
Working alongside students, Ox will assume the role of ‘Elemental Coordinators’, and will use the ‘Emerald Formula’ (a seven-step alchemical process derived from the precepts of the Emerald Tablet) to assimilate and present the work created during the workshop in a unique Pylon sculpture, which will house a working radio transmitter and a video camera feed. OX will use Ritual Practice through the evocation of the elemental forces to curate and perform on the night, and welcome all attendees to bring material for transmission that evening. All transmitted work – audio and visual will be recored and documented, and used again at a later date when compiled as part of the Ox Elemental Coordinators body of work.
As an ongoing project, Pylon will become part of a series of work created through the act of ritual experiments, of which OX have based their newest body of work. With the aim to create a metaphorical communication network of sculptural Pylons to connect practice-relevant areas of energy between urban and rural spaces throughout the country, through the ritual evocation of elemental forces, manifested in collaborative art making.
Ox’s collaborative practice is unique to pedagogic development on the Fine Art BA course at Kingston. The evening event at Stanley Picker Gallery offers OX, BA students, and Stanley Picker Gallery a thrilling collaborative opportunity, which is be critically relevant to current contemporary art making, pedagogic research, and gallery events.