THURSDAY 10 MAY – WORKING WITH ARTISTS
Contemporary artist’s Zhang Qiang and Robert E. D’Souza took up residency with Tate Exchange. Zhang Qiang is a calligrapher and performance artist who creates large-scale works on paper, taking both a traditional and avant-garde approach to Chinese Calligraphy and Ink Painting. Robert E. D’Souza is an artist and designer and is Head of Winchester School of Art. His practice and research overlaps areas of visual arts and design practices, in international cross-cultural contexts. D’Souza’s film Dev , premiered at Tate Exchange, extends narrative threads and ideas of migration echoing his 2014 film Dave , shown at the Kochi-Muziris Biennale. Dev will be used to prompt open forums and debates around the ‘effects’ of biennales, held in the project’s ‘Biennale Office’.
A range of participatory activities took place on the Tate Exchange floor, including an important collaboration with Trinity Winchester, a Winchester-based charity that addresses the effects of homelessness and vulnerability through specialist practical and emotional support, and proactive prevention, empowering positive change. The charity helps people who are vulnerable to the effects of homelessness, addiction, physical and mental ill health, poverty, social isolation and domestic abuse. After several collaborative projects a relationship has been forged between Trinity Winchester and Winchester School of Art.
There was also a chance to participate in calligraphy with Zhang Qiang and art-making with students and staff from the Print, Painting, and Sculpture studios of Winchester School of Art.