MILESTONES JAZZ CLUB - JUNE - AVALON TRIO

AVALON TRIO TAKE JAZZ IN A NEW DIRECTION AT MILESTONES JAZZ CLUB

This month’s concert at Milestones Jazz Club on Sunday 5 June features some of the UK’s most respected jazz musicians taking the music in new directions - The Avalon Trio.


The improvising trio of Tony Woods (alto saxophone/wood flute/alto clarinet), Pete Churchill (piano) and Robert Millett (percussion) takes its inspiration from the short song forms of English composers Delius, Vaughan Williams, Walton, Finzi and John Ireland.


The band will be performing mercurial music from their debut album, ‘Forlana’, which draws on the rich histories of jazz, folk and twentieth century classical music without losing any of the original subtlety, depth or beauty.


Through research and analysis, the Avalon Trio has found harmonic and artistic connections between the music of these great composers and contemporary jazz.


Just as American songbook ‘standards’ have been used as vehicles for improvisation by jazz musicians since the 1930s, so these great melodies of orchestral and chamber pieces are transformed in a modern jazz setting.


The trio is a collaboration of internationally renowned musicians and composers that includes saxophonist Tony Woods and percussionist Robert Millett.


Pianist Pete Churchill has long been recognised as not only a great musician but also one of the UK’s leading jazz educators, teaching at the Royal Academy of Music, Guildhall School of Music and Trinity College of Music.


The band’s collective CV includes touring and recording in the UK, Europe and the US and working with diverse artists like Cleo Laine and John Dankworth, Bobby McFerrin, English National Touring Opera, Abdullah Ibrahim, Norma Winstone and the London Philharmonic Orchestra.


These musicians have performed extensively in the UK’s most prestigious venues, weather it be Ronnie Scott’s or the Royal Festival Hall, Barbican and Royal Albert Hall.


The band’s full line-up features Tony Woods (alto saxophone/wood flute/alto clarinet), Pete Churchill (piano) and Robert Millett (percussion).


This concert is the only East Anglian date of a nationwide tour supported by Jazz Services.

***All Milestones gigs are held on the first Sunday of every month and take place at Hotel Hatfield, Esplanade, Lowestoft with the doors opening at 8pm.


Admission - £7 / £6 (concession).


"Definitely jazz for the 21st century", Jazz Journal


"Woods is phenomenal - spontaneous but exacting amazing control over his instrument, and as virtuosic as you like without being a show-off", BBC Music Magazine

NO COMMERCIAL POTENTIAL EXHIBITION - KR POMEROY

NO COMMERCIAL POTENTIAL

Mostly new work by:

 

K R POMEROY

STEW GALLERY

FISHERGATE

NORWICH NR3 1SL

15-19 JUNE 2011

10 am - 5pm.

 

This exhibition explores the notion of painting, its deconstruction and the interface with sculpture.

IMAGES, OBJECTS & TEXTS IN BOXES

Our Studio is open Saturday, Sunday and Monday (bank holiday), May 28th , 29th and 30th; and the following weekend Saturday and Sunday, June 4th and 5th - 10am to 5pm.

Work by Martin Laurance and Rupert Mallin

Our Studio is close to the centre of Norwich

Studio 15b

Fitt Signs & Graphics
60 – 62 Pitt Street
Norwich NR3 1DF

TEDDY FLUFF IN A BOX!

This is why Teddy must be tucked up in bed EVERY night!

SHARK IN YARMOUTH - IN A BOX!

Fact or Fiction?

FACT - that is a wave crashing in Yarmouth
FACT - this guy got washed up in Yarmouth
FACT - there are sharks in Yarmouth

Hooh! Click on image for more proof.

CACTI DANCE - IN A BOX!

Another weird British ritual? Click on image to find out.

It's amazing what and how much one can get into a little box!

SAS FANCY DRESS: IN A BOX

What a party! Click on the image to read the text (or am I being ironic there, in some odd postmodern sense?)

THIS IS ART! BOX

Drew is passionate about his art. You have to shout about it...

OVER 400 BOXES - OPEN STUDIOS

Over 400 boxes of objects, images and texts by Rupert Mallin on display at Studio 15B, FittSigns + Graphics, near Anglia Square, part of Norfolk Open Studios. These 'Out Of The Machine Boxes' are as small as 3 inches by 2 inches by 1 inch and the largest are boxes 9 inches in all directions.



The Preview is Friday, May 20th, 6pm to 9pm. Info rupertmallin@gmail.com



OPEN STUDIO



Saturday and Sunday, May 21 and 22 - 10am to 5pm

Saturday, Sunday and Monday, May 28, 29 and 30 - 10am to 5pm

Saturday and Sunday, June 4 and 5 - 10am to 5pm.



***



In Studio 15B you can also see stunning cotemporary landscapes by Martin Laurance and there are studios dotted around Anglia Square taking part in Open Studios. So why not make a day of it?

OPEN STUDIOS: INTERNET CONSPIRACY

How the Net really came into being...

400 BOXES: THE POET'S NIGHTMARE?

400 Boxes of objects, artworks and texts are now complete for the open studios event (details below). These boxes and lids are pictured during 'production' for an important reason: generally speaking, the actual texts that accompany them are "one offs" and will not be revealed before placed in their box. This is the nightmare of poets!? A text that will never be placed in a book, will never be reproduced!

So, I lose my own words as they enter the boxes in collaboration with the visuals. Some of the boxes are interactive.

Over the three weeks of Open Studios I will be taking lots more photos of these boxes, most of which were created between January and April this year. So, much will appear here shortly...

Most of the boxes are £3 and £5 from The Studio. The larger display boxes are from £25. Incredibly affordable Art and entirely unique!!

NORFOLK OPEN STUDIOS INVITATION

Harbour, Gardenstown by Martin Laurance

Open Studio 2011



Preview invitation

Martin Laurance and Rupert Malin warmly invite you and your guests to the preview of our Open Studio


Friday 20th May, 6pm to 9pm - Wine & nibbles


View paintings, drawings, prints,cards and special open studio offers and much more. Also, over 400 'Out of the Machine' Boxes of objects, visuals & texts.


Studio 15B, Fitt Signs + Graphics, 60 - 62 Pitt Street, Norwich NR3 1DF - close to Anglia Square.


Parking is available.
__________________________


Our Studio is Open on the following weekends from 10am to 5pm - Saturday and Sunday May 21 & 22 - Saturday to bank holiday Monday, May 28 to 30 - Saturday & Sunday June 4 & 5.


We are part of Norfolk OpenStudios11 and there is a Norwich 'South of the Water' Trail , which you can also find on the website - so you can make a day of it.


Enquiries:- rupertmallin@gmail.com


Martin Laurance's website here

INTERVIEW ABOUT RUPERT MALLIN'S BOXES

A SKYPE PHONE INTERVIEW. TOM HILTON, A STUDENT STUDYING BOOK ART IN LONDON, TALKS WITH RUPERT MALLIN ABOUT LITTLE BOXES.

Apologies to Rupert if my transcript is not exactly accurate - Tom X


TH - Where did the idea of art and texts in boxes originate?



RM - My ‘Out of The Machine’ Boxes developed from a collaborative project between five artists and five poets in the InPrint group, 2003. Poet Lisa D’Onofrio had the idea of turning old cigarette vending machines into poetry vending machines and so the PVM was born - the Poetry Vending Machine.


We worked as artists and poets in couples, providing art work and texts in small jewellery boxes we could vend from machines. The first machine was mechanical and only partially successful. The second machine was electronic and much more successful.


The group would drag the machine to a location - a gallery, an event and once, for a longer stay, to Borders Bookshop, Norwich, where vending went really well.


Vending art is a great idea but very impractical for three reasons: a) the buyer never knows what’s in the box they’re buying; b) there is an obvious dichotomy between selling art cheap and artist’s time; and c) the onset of recession has meant many arts groups have found it difficult to sustain ongoing collaborative activity. The PVM machine hasn’t vended since 2008.


TH - Were you artist or poet in InPrint?


RM - I was billed as a poet coming into the project in 2003 but my first degree was actually in sculpture. Luckily, I worked at first with book artist Jayne Knowles and then Tonia Jillings who trained as a sculptor, so I felt at home in these collaborations. Yet, I was also making boxes on my own - the art work and the poetry.


TH - What were the early boxes like?


RM - The boxes were tiny 10-cig size boxes with lids. Tiny but big enough for print work, paper and card folded and text. Ideal for print. Exploring three dimensions in such a small space was very difficult but I wanted to take the exploration away from the book, the page.


TH - When did the PVM boxes become ’Out of The Machine?’


RM - This was by default really. I had a stock of boxes and occasionally made boxes for Open Studios events at the Bally Shoe Factory Studios, Norwich (2007-2010). These boxes were browsed on tables. They were obviously ’Out of The Machine.’


Then I found a slightly bigger box - 2mm bigger in all directions!


I was also buying lots of materials at car boots and beginning to bring paper ephemera, my own hand made paper and objects together in the boxes. Out of this, I began writing texts specifically for the boxes, rather than drawing on ’poems’ previously written. Indeed, where poetry led the making of PVM vended boxes, visuals and found objects now determined texts.


Also, at this time, I decided that each box must be an original piece of art rather than a machined print edition. While elements (hand made paper background) would be duplicated, the objects, art work and texts would be original to each box.


Having sold the original PVM boxes for £3, how to create non-duplicated works for £3 to £5? “As cheap as a packet of fags” echoes back from my vending days still because, like a book, I am ever pursuing the notion of an art accessible to all. Very difficult. However, something else hit me: what if my exploration is in recycling and what if this art concretely brings the past into what I’m doing?


TH - This is when you met Pete?


RM - Yes. Pete is a car booter who deals in the debris of house clearances. He takes the remains of house clearances, picks out items to sell on, then throws the debris into boxes and charges £1 for all the items one can cram into a carrier bag. So, often, I get 100 items for a pound!


House clearance is interesting because ’clearance’ is for three reasons: death, divorce or financial desperation - the 3 Ds! So, I can access the history and drama of ordinary lives through this debris.


As my boxes are small, I am always trawling for the smallest debris at the bottom of Pete’s boxes - from old buttons to paper ephemera. I have found a diary that ends abruptly in death and I’ve found part of First World War flying goggles. As important are all the toys, artificial flowers, cards, letters and nick-knacks - the entrails of ordinary people’s lives.


It’s almost combing - like beach combing - and takes me back to my road combing of 2003-6, when I brought found objects together with found texts (a sort of mapping) to remake a street, a place. My present work is, for me, more dramatic and certainly more three-dimensional.


In creating the PVM boxes, the poems led the art work. The ‘Out of The Machine’ boxes are led by the found objects and art work, and the text is then written for the box - for each box. Thereby, it’s the opposite process than any poet or writer desires: each text is unique to its box. ‘Out of The Machine’ boxes are single works of art and text. There will be no editions, like books or multiples. So, the whole process is providing rules:

• Objects lead and texts follow
• Each text is unique
• The size of each box dictates the structure of ‘art work’ and text
• Recycling is key to this project

I like to think it’s the opposite of Francis Bacon’s notion of “chance” in painting, where that accidental brush stroke is a chosen “chance” which rejects all other ‘chances.’ I mean, I love the ’chance’ of painting but my rejects are either brought into another box, used in later collage work for a box or turned into recycled elements for the box.


In one sense, the boxes are highly manipulated entities. I choose backgrounds for the lids and box bottoms, the objects (often manipulated) and other interventions, out of which the texts arise. Yet, my manipulation is quite small and the texts arrive as if spoken by characters or a narrator or as if a personal letter.


It’s kind of theatre.


TH - Sometimes, it seems to me, your boxes are jokes, seaside postcards with captions or local newspaper headlines…


RM - Absolutely! I owe a lot to postcards (which I collect), mail art and all the nick-knacks dotted around people’s houses which so often carry ‘captions’ - “League Division Three, Runner Up Medal.” And the little bit of history many of the items have seems to predate the Facebook and Twitter Age. Facebook and Twitter promise that everyone is unique but no one speaks uniquely. I’m trying to find a means to state: no one is unique but everyone speaks uniquely.


I think it’s also a way of dealing in cliché without being too clichéd. That’s my hope.


TH - Aren’t you repackaging and reselling mundane mass culture back to the masses?


RM - Hardly the masses! However, if I ’sell’ none of my growing production, I’m giving life to the debris of people’s lives - even if just to say: we can’t land fill or sky fill this fantastic resource of people’s lives!


TH - Sky fill?


RM - Disgustingly, the sky fill of incinerating waste is even worse than burying it in land fill sites. I’m a devotee of the Zero Waste Alliance . ALL manufactured goods can and must be recycled.


We can use paper fibre 7 times as recycled paper before the fibres won’t mat. Then we can use paper powder with clay to make light ceramics. Plastics, all plastics, can be recycled over and over. We can’t recycle Nuclear Waste but we can use all the “rubbish” of consumerism to make the world anew.


TH - Your boxes are fun - light hearted - not political.


RM - I hope my boxes, which I plan to produce for the rest of my life, nudge people into living with the past for the future. Looking back on my terrible schooling I think the only compulsory subject should be history. The human brain is all about using memory for the present. The sound bites of government are specifically designed to deny reflection and memory - in the same moment these terrible people say “let history judge us.” Huh!


TH - Will you keep producing tiny boxes?


RM - Not just fag packet boxes. I’m already producing much larger display boxes. Nothing will ever be bigger than my bag!


The bigger boxes allow me the opportunity to create static theatre, while advertising the smaller boxes. Pockets, boxes, bags - my terrain. Drama in the pocket.

TH - Thanks. The boxes make me laugh - and cringe.


RM - Me too. Thank you Tom.