Welcome, Welcome & Farewell!

Welcome! First off we’d like to say thankyou to Culture Vulture for their recent support on our activities and thanks again for inviting us to do a bi-weekly post here. Off we go…

A warm Welcome to Jess & Jen. www.conwayandyoung.com

Jen Conway & Jess Young moved to Leeds from Bristol last September to start teaching Graphic Art & Design at The Metropolitan University. We were lucky enough to meet them a few weeks before they moved to Leeds, when we were coincidentally in Bristol exhibiting some artwork at rhysandhannahpresent. We really like what they do, they’ve become a staple source of inspiration for us over the last few months, not only visually but in the sense that they are designing for social benefit, which to our collective mind should always be a consideration, if not the main purpose of design. Now that they’ve finally settled into Leeds, it looks like they’re getting prepared for some creative action. They’re part of a group show in The Met Gallery ‘Recent Appointments’, featuring work from the recently appointed Art & Design staff at The Met Uni. Their work ’92 Spaces’  is a documentation of all empty shop units in Leeds City Centre, 92 of them. As part of the show, they invited people to join them on a walk around the 92 empty shops, whilst discussing potential, hypothetical and action plans for their future use, raising awareness of not only the physical spaces but of the idea of pulling together, collaborating, supporting one another, discussing these potential ideas and making them more achievable, together. Their approach to collaborative projects, having an open collaborative approach but facilitating and encouraging activity by others as well as themselves, seems like a positive and sustainable method of collective practice. We really respect and cherish these ideals, and greatly welcome having people like Jess & Jen in Leeds, people with a similar perspective to ourselves, and we’d like everyone who wishes to, to support them and give them a warm welcome to Leeds.

We’ve had a fairly busy time recently, taking on various projects simultaneously, it’s a sad farewell to a couple. ‘Morphic Resonance’ a project we’ve been participating in at PSL (Project Space Leeds) comes to its conclusion this weekend (Saturday 27th June) as well as ‘United’ something we have also been part of, intitiated by ESA (East Street Arts). However there are new things on the horizon, we’re launching a book, ‘Lot Nine’ a visual document, detailing our activity over the 12 week project period in ‘Morphic Resonance’ in conjunction with the closing event, everyone is invited and the book will be there exhibited and for sale, Saturday 27th June 12pm – 6pm.

Farewell for now…

NV X