Watching Limbo

First exhibition launching the new artist collective and exhibition space at Caraboo Projects, Bedminster.

Watching Limbo features a group of artists from around the UK bringing new and recent work to Bristol, including film, painting, installation, sound and virtual reality.

The exhibition “unpicks animation as both craft and concept, whilst taking a playful approach to exploring its emotional, durational and physical possibilities”.

“This exhibition probes connections between print and screen, digital and virtual environments, whilst elements of the bodily, the tangible and the visceral resonate amongst the works on show.”

Caraboo Projects is a non-profit contemporary visual arts space co-founded in 2018 by a group of artists, educators, and other specialists in the creative sector. The collective is dedicated to building an accessible art space in Bedminster that promotes experimentation and education across disciplines. The art space and studio complex is housed in an old printing factory just off East Street, Bedminster.

“Through an exciting programme of free exhibitions, talks, screenings and workshops, we aim to support artists’ professional development and create meaningful engagement and learning opportunities for all audiences.”

Caraboo Projects are part of the Gathering Voices’ Creative Outreach & Leadership Programme, which is revitalising disused retail, commercial and industrial buildings, creating a cultural quarter in ‘The Works’ BS3 in order to provide affordable spaces for developing creatives, including digital and fine arts, performing arts and music.

Artists:

Jessy Jetpacks works across numerous media, including video, digital works, virtual reality, music, performance, and sculpture. Themes and interests range from the global political to the fundamental and private human condition. She draws humour and intrigue from popular/internet culture and the modern relationships formed within it.

Kris Lock works with painting, sculpture and video, exploring the different mechanisms and components that underpin socio-political geographies. Often speculating on future or alternative relationships to places at the intersections of currency, technology and materialism.

Josephine Sweeney is an artist working in sculpture and sometimes video, sound and performance. Her work is often motivated by thinking on how mythic themes and industrial processes exist together. She is particularly interested in how architectural monuments operate.

Watching Limbo features their collaborative film The Vase in the Container which conceives of a world where the colossal Kolyvan Vase has escaped the static confines of the Hermitage for a transitory existence inside a shipping container.

Olwyn Carroll (Magnet, film still, pictured) works with handcrafted puppets and stop-motion animation to produce installations that blur boundaries between the digital and the physical artwork. She also collaborates with other artists such as musician Greta Edith. She brings numerous art forms together in a bold, immersive environment with wry observations on sex, gender and wealth.

Paddy Gould and Roxy Topia are a collaborative duo working in drawing, sculpture and painting. Meeting in 2008, they have been taking advantage of their compatibility ever since. They create multi-layered works using combinations of elements which explore display and the painted surface. From trips to  America, to sexuality, to Chuckle Biscuits; the themes in the work are often autobiographical, evolving from dialogues and shared experiences.

Vicky Smith works as experimental animator and filmmaker. She is a member of BEEF film and sound collective. Her work explores relations between the body, materials and technology with vulnerability and fallibility as recurrent themes. She recently co-edited a publication on experimental and expanded animation with Nicky Hamlyn. For this exhibition Vicky will be showing Small Things Moving in Unison (2018) with an immersive soundtrack from Shirley Pegna.

Sept 22-Oct 21, Caraboo Projects, Unit 2, Stafford St, Bedminster, BS3 4DA, Thur-Sun (plus Tue 25 & Wed 26) 12-6pm. Opening night Fri, Sept 21 6-9pm.

For more info, visit carabooprojects.com/watching-limbo