Watch This Space 2016

Location: Unit 111, Southside Shopping Centre, SW18 4TF

Dates: 6th – 21st May 2016

WatchThis Space returned to Southside Shopping Centre, as part of Wandsworth Arts Fringe. ActionSpace artists led a series of interactive installation workshops at based on the artists’ own practice.

Pardip Kapil and Nnena Kalu

Nnena Kalu and Pardip Kapil transformed the cube into the ‘Wrappers Disco’ a combined sculpture and disco workshop. Participants worked alongside Nnena to wrap paper, plastic and foam with coloured tapes, creating large-scale collaborative forms that grew on the outside of the disco cube. Meanwhile DJ Pardip blasted out disco beats whilst participants experimented dressing up, playing with projections and throwing shapes inside the cube. The high-energy workshop ended with a mass conga line initiated by Pardip to the classic sound of Michael Jackson, possibly the finest way to end a workshop!

Lasmin Salmon

Lasmin Salmon led an interactive textiles workshop; taking her love of fibres and fabric as inspiration the participants transformed the space into a giant woven cube. Participants threw, knotted, threaded and weaved fabric strips and wool into and onto the cube building up dense walls of textured fabric. Building then led to exploring ways of physically interacting with the space, pushing hands, legs, heads through so people literally became part of the work and textiles morphed into performance.

Walter Woods and Roland Young

Walter Woods and Roland Young led an experimental photography workshop based on their own photographic explorations. Participants worked alongside Walter and Roland to create abstract photographs and portraits using mirrors, overhead projectors, drawings, shadows, coloured acetate and objects. The cube was then filled with projections of the fantastic images the participants created during the session.

Robin Smith

Robin Smith transformed the cube into a giant transparent painted collage. Working on huge clear acetate sheets paneled onto the cube Robin created a large-scale painting; his bold abstract design provided inspiration to the participants who worked alongside Robin to develop their own designs on the surrounding panels of the cube. They combined fluorescent tapes, pens, paint and coloured acetate sheets to gradually build a spectacular stained glass effect cube space.

Linda Bell and Mark Lawrence

Linda Bell and Mark Lawrence shared their love of working with foam with an energetic group of participants, transforming the cube into a giant foam wrapped and sculpted space. After rolling, unraveling and wrapping each other up with huge sheets of foam sheeting everyone worked together to create varied sculptural shapes. Linda led the sculptural process, sharing her skills in shaping the foam into multiple loops. Inspired the participants ripped, cut, pierced and shaped the foam to create their own 3d forms growing out from the cube itself. Mark led a mass collaging of coloured foam shapes on the front panel of the cube. Mark and the participants worked alongside each other creating trails of shapes, they gradually filled the gaps between the shapes until the whole panel had been transformed into a complex multi coloured design.

Claudia Williams and Mary Oguleye

Mary Ogunleye and Claudia Williams created live painting and drawing works directly onto the front and back panels of the cube frame. Both artists needed to work independently on their own art pieces but offered a creative platform and inspiration for the workshop participants to develop their own ideas within the space. Mary produced a bold large-scale collaged painting using her own technique of building intuitive marks and colours. Influenced by our location Claudia repeatedly wrote ‘Wandsworth Shopping Centre’ ‘Nice, Nice’ or ‘Nothing, Nothing’ and ‘Never, Never’ systematically within all her drawings. The participants worked on the 2 remaining sides and the inside of the cube, developing their own unique drawings and paintings. Through the workshop the cube was transformed into a fabulous group montage of painted marks, lines, shapes and colour.