The project is a part of the ‘Contact Program’, an experimental G-MK program line that involves working with students. The project got in touch the London Metropolitan University students and professors with those from the Department of Animation and New Media at the Zagreb Academy of Fine Arts and Galerija Miroslav Kraljevic.
Seven LMU students: Annelies Bloemendaal | Melissa Bugarella | Matthew Johnstone | Mia Meyer | Oliver Evelyn Rahr | Danial Shaw Town | Keiko Yamazaki, stayed for a week in Zagreb, where they created new projects related to the city, as a new place of meeting, communication and research. Before their arrival in Zagreb they communicated by e-mail with the Zagreb Academy of Fine Arts students who took on the role of virtual guides for a city the London students hadn’t visited before. The presentation at the G-MK is just a station in the whole process and an impetus for new projects and possible long-term collaboration between young artists.
Student coordination: Ben Cain, Aleksandar B.Ilić, Nicole Hewitt
Annelies Bloemendaal
Annelies makes book works (involving photos, drawing, text) that document small public sculptures which are placed in parks and other public places wherever she goes. The sculptures are a little like mock-monuments, as a testimony to small – seemingly insignificant – achievements such as walking up a hill, arriving somewhere, travelling…
Something happened- 2 drawings at the Austrian Republic Square in Zagreb
Melissa Bugarella
Melissa makes ‘voyeuristic’ videos of seaside towns with a slightly apocalyptic / melancholic atmosphere, sometimes accompanied by Morricone style sounds.
Now starting works that concentrate more on sound – using the sound of a clock ticking in a tense environment that has overtones of a waiting room / 1800’s parlour.
Matthew Johnstone & Daniel Shaw Town
Work collaboratively. They make public intervention performances such as – scrubbing the street with cleaning brushes; destroying receipts and bills as a public service; impersonations (changing their own faces so that they appear in some way similar to a viewer/participant) of members of the public. The latter two are humorous attempts to ridicule the hysteria that surrounds myths connected to the danger of ones identity being co-opted by criminals.
Matt and Dan’s studio space is a vaguely fluxus-style collection of plans for work, posters, writings, drawing, sketches, thoughts, slogans.
„Performance Art is all about communication“
„If they don’t understand just speak louder“
Mia Meyer
Mia makes videos (obviously staged) that deal with relationships between two people and involve careful character study. Very little dialogue. Relationships are described through the camera observing the character’s movement in space, their movement in relation to each other, the details of their actions. Work involves feelings of isolation, detachment.
Oliver Evelyn Rahr
Recent work with animal-like machines / robots which move frenetically around the room on wire legs. The machines are very ‘home-made’ in appearance. Recently displayed many of these machines in a very large sports hall.
Oliver is interested in kinetics, randomness.
Pseudo-scientific experiment / investigation.
Keiko Yamazaki
Keiko photographies – large format contact strips of sequences of images, one merging into the next show progression of time. Recent project is to document all the cherry blossom in London! In an exercise of previsualisation and preconceptualisation, Keiko Yamazaki uses a simple camera that allows her to partially wind on the film to build a mystical and surreal panorama.
