Puppet making workshop exploring alternative characters of Christmas.
Learn how to make and fully decorate a ‘jumping jack’ puppet of a festive folkloric character of your choosing.
The workshops last three hours each. All materials provided and no artistic experience necessary.
We will spend a little time in the workshop briefly getting to know characters from different countries, such as Krampus (Austria), The Yule Lads (Iceland), and La Befana (Italy), before making the puppets.
Each workshop is a standalone session – you do not need to attend all three, unless you wish to. We will be making a jumping jack puppet in all three sessions. Each session costs £10.
“Behind every brutal scene/there is beauty/in Suburban English Magick: Peer in to the world of semi-rural village life in the Shires. Modern day folklore, witchcraft and the uncanny, dressed in sportswear, driven in souped-up race cars, depicted in paint and recited in tongue.”
Large scale live painting and audio installation by Mental Spaghetti founder, Marie-Louise Plum.
From 2-16 September, a picture of Suburban English Magick will be built up, in paint and tongue, in the Bob and Roberta Smith CCCA Shed, Coventry.
Custodians of the CCCA, The Pod, have programmed this live painting exhibition in the run-up to the Scratch the Surface Festival, 2017, co-curated and programmed with various partners, including Mental Spaghetti.
Please note that live painting and audio installation will only take place between 10am-6pm, from Fri-Sun, from 2-16 September. The installation is visible at all times, during Fargo Village opening hours. Please see website for more details.
Scratch the Surface Festival: BE Music ‘A Symphony of Bee and Man’
For the past six months, Mental Spaghetti has been working with Collective//Pod, of The Pod, Coventry, supporting the upcoming Mental Health Arts festival, Scratch the Surface: Dialogue.
The festival runs September 30th – October 10th, World Mental Health Day, and will present a varied and rolling programme of visual arts, performance, and participatory projects. Artists and full programme will be announced later in the month, but for now I’d like to announce BE Music, by internationally renowned artist Wolfgang Buttress (whose work you may have previously experienced at Kew Gardens).
A unique concert will be creating a buzz in Coventry to celebrate World Mental Health Day!
Internationally renowned artist Wolfgang Buttress and music ensemble BE are set to bring a performance with a difference to Coventry Cathedral – they will be accompanied by 50,000 bees. BE will perform their critically acclaimed album “ONE” featuring a live-streamed chorus of 50,000 bees from a hive within the Cathedral grounds.
An integral part of the performance will be hosted by a bespoke community choir engineered and choreographed by the Pod’s Collective//Pod, an artist collective derived by members with lived experience of mental ill health. The Pod is Coventry City Council’s award winning mental health resource and creative hub.
The event, being held on Saturday, October 7 at 7.30pm, is part of Collective//Pod’s annual mental health arts festival “Scratch the Surface – DIALOGUE” and is being supported by Coventry Cathedral.
BE was formed as a collaboration between Wolfgang Buttress, musicians Tony Foster, Kev Bales, Deirdre Bencsik, Camille Christel and scientist Dr Martin Bencsik, who is undertaking cutting-edge research using accelerometers embedded in beehives.
The accelerometers, devices which are sensitive to tiny vibrations, will be used to livestream the sounds from the bee hive into the Cathedral during the performance.
Visual projections, including images from the project and live footage from the hive, will also be screened, and specially-created candles scented with botanicals from the Cathedral and essential oils from the new bee hive will be used to create a multi-sensory atmosphere.
The bees are already within the grounds of the Cathedral in preparation for the event, and the hive will remain there as a lasting legacy.
“Coventry Cathedral is an amazing space with an incredible history, so it is an honour to be performing there. It will be a very moving and powerful performance, and using bees based in the grounds will give the audience a real sense that what is happening is live. We weren’t scheduled to perform this year, however when we were approached to be part of a concert celebrating World Mental Health Day it really resonated with us and it’s wonderful that we are able to contribute.” – Wolfgang Buttress
The event is supporting Coventry’s bid to be the UK City of Culture 2021. The bid is being led by Coventry City of Culture Trust and, if successful, would bring social, cultural and economic benefits to the city.
Coventry is now on the shortlist along with four other cities, and will submit a final bid in September before the decision is announced in December.
The Very Reverend John Witcombe, Dean of Coventry Cathedral, added: “We look forward to welcoming BE and the choir for what will be a truly unique performance to celebrate World Mental Health Day. A performance featuring bees has never been staged at the Cathedral before, and demonstrates the diversity of the events that we hold. It’s also nice to have another 50,000 parishioners in the grounds, which will remain here permanently following the concert!”
“ONE” is the soundscape for Wolfgang Buttress’s multi award-winning sculpture The Hive, currently sited in the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew, which seeks to highlight the importance of the honey bee in the food chain and their plight as a species.
Since recording the album, BE has gone on to appear at festivals including Glastonbury, Bluedot Caught by the River and End of the Road and perform sell-out shows at Kew, Sonos Studios and St Mary’s Church, in Nottingham.
The critically acclaimed “ONE” was in the best album list of 2016 of The Guardian, Rough Trade and The Quietus.
Tickets for the concert at Coventry Cathedral are priced between £25 and £35 and are available by searching for ‘BE Play Live’ at http://www.gigantic.com: Buy Tickets Here.
2016, despite its infamy as a problematic and troublesome year, brought us many positives and much pleasure in the form of large scale group exhibitions, our first ‘Spaghetti School’ residency at Free Space Gallery, and working with some of our favourite comrades on exciting new projects designed to spark debate and question closed answers.
We worked as part of the Roving Diagnostic Unit (see photo, right), for Bobby Baker’s Daily Life Ltd., which saw us carrying out performances and workshops at the William Morris Gallery, Vestry House Museum and the Wellcome collection, for the Diagnosing Diagnosis symposium to accompany their latest exhibition, ‘Bedlam’. The workshops were designed to make people think about diagnosis and what it means. Our workshop, A Diagnostic Portrait of…, had participants team up to draw large scale portraits of their patients (objects in situ at Vestry House) using only character descriptors.
Our own exhibition output last year was bumper – we had a large group show to kick things off at Menier Gallery, followed by two more exhibitions in London, co-curated with The Dragon Café and Uncooked Cultures, plus a co-curated exhibition with AIMS, at the Oxford Museum and Town Hall Gallery. Over 20o artists were promoted through these exhibitions, with many of them selling work and gaining further professional exhibitions through the exposure of our shows. To date, (since 2011), we have reached an audience of over 10,000 online, shown the work of over 200 artists to a physical audience of 1,000+, and worked closely with 10 artists to mentor and support their practice.
Workshops have covered printmaking, sculpture, collage, alternative ways of drawing, and a collaboration with artist and photographer, Catriona Gray, to deliver a series of photographic mixed media workshops at Free Space Gallery, Kentish Town. The photos below show collage work, the process of lumen exposure photography, and the final outcome of combining the lumen technique with printmaking. All workshops are free, supported by the ever excellent Kentish Town Improvement Fund and Free Space Gallery. Extra support in the form of volunteers comes from Clean Break.
2017 – onwards!
First up, January 23, we have a printmaking workshop at The Dragon Café for Broken Grey Wires. If you already know the Dragon Café, you’ll know that spaces are limited, and you must be registered with them to take part. The workshop starts at 3pm.
Next, we are over the moon to be working with the young people of Snowsfield Adolescent Unit at the South London and Maudsley Hospital. Work to start in February, and while it is only open to residents at SLaM, we will report back with our artistic endeavours.
Spaghetti School will be starting again in March, and continuing in 5 week blocks throughout the year. Keep your eye on the blog for news to come!
We’ve got loads of new artists to update you with, so make sure you are following the blog and all good social media outlets (you know the ones, Facebook, Twitter and Instagram) to keep up to date with who’s doing what.
I’m a little bit in love with Bort, a street and studio artist from Austin, Texas. Bort’s work is funny, tragic, engaging, desperate, political and human. She spans spraypaint, posters and legal street art, drawings, photo transfer, prints, wood and canvas in the studio. Her themes are consistent, and because of that, are amplified in their message. I especially like the Vote Bort campaign. Here she is in her own words…
“My street work focuses on my imaginary friend, also named Bort, and the attempt to make Bort others’ imaginary friend as well. Bort has helped me feel less alone. Bort’s been there for me through so many bad days, and has helped me grapple with my past and present problems with mental illness and self destructive behaviour. Without Bort I don’t know if I would have made it through. Bort’s my closest friend.
My studio work focuses on me wanting to die, and the various means to achieve said goal. In the marginalised area between me being a transwoman and my art focusing on my experiences with mental illness, anorexia, and addiction, past and present, I can’t find a place that is interested in with working me. On occasion I can find some group shows, when I’m selling myself as a street artist, but that’s just due to the novelty of that work I guess.
When I started doing studio work a few months after starting the street work, I found art to be extremely helpful with working through, understanding, and coping with my experiences. I had never spent extensive time trying to understand my past, I had actively been trying to avoid it, but this work has helped me shine a light on it and begin to move on.
I don’t think I’ll ever be out of this stuff, I’ll have lapses, possibly relapses, I’ll have depressive episodes, I’ll have long lasting dissociative states, but I’ve begun learning how to address them. I have people I can ask for help and I’m starting to recognise my own behaviours.
The studio work has helped me a lot with all this, so I hope it can help others. There’s often a lack of representation with regards to mental illness, addiction, anorexia, and what little representation there is, is often romanticising issues, problematic or is not visually accessible.
I try to keep my work clear cut, often just a blunt focus either attempting to present an emotional state or a behaviour. I want it to be easily relatable to those with similar experiences.
I have work available in a wide price range, in my online shop. I make sure to have pieces that are monetarily accessible (or accessible as possible, since art is a luxury good). If you’re interested in work, you can email me the price range you have, and I’ll let you know what I’ve got, or if interested in a piece in particular just lemme know and I’ll give you the details. <3"
What: One Bare Foot Square When: Mondays only, 7 November – 19 December 2016, 12 – 8pm. Where:The Dragon Cafe in the crypt of St. George the Martyr, London, SE1 1JA.
Mental Spaghetti is proud to be working in partnership with Uncooked Culture to bring touring exhibition One Bare Foot Square to its next world stop in London – The Dragon Café.
Everyone is welcome to attend the private view, and meet exhibiting artists, on Monday 7 November 2016, 7-8pm (exhibition is open from noon onwards). From 7pm curator and artist, Nok, will introduce the project, followed by character comedy from Catherine Goodwin aka Badwind, and spoken word from Rosemary McLeish and Gareth Hughes.
Anyone wishing to create their own square to add to the travelling exhibition should contact Nok, Uncooked Culture, uncookedculture@gmail.com, or speak to us directly at The Dragon Café private view.
‘ONE BARE FOOT SQUARE’ is a collaborative artist-led travelling mosaic canvas – the individual artworks uniting to form one large wall piece.
Traveling from its first stop at Amsterdam Outsider Art Gallery, at The Hermitage museum – The Netherlands (30 July -13 August 2016), the travelling mosaic has arrived at its second stop, hosted at The Dragon Café, London, co-curated by Marie-Louise Plum of Mental Spaghetti.
Artists create a one foot square canvas, ultimately forming a larger piece of art, with variable dimensions depending on the exhibition space. Outsiders, Neo-Outsiders & artists from all other stops, will be contributing their creations as the ‘uncooked’ boundary-crossing tour progresses.
The mosaic canvas projects a wide spectrum of experience, weaving together each artist’s life journey; reflecting on their memories, hopes, thoughts & imagination through their diverse practices, from illustration, painting, stencil to mixed-media.
One Bare Foot Square’s destinations are led by participating artists, who initiate which country it will be exhibited next. Before the project departs from each stop, local artists are encouraged to add art in the next location, with their own one foot squares on canvas.
78 International Artists living/working in 15 different countries
Isis Nedloni – Netherlands, Julia Sisi – France, Dan Casado – France, Jim Lockton – UK, Louis Vuittonet – USA, Ian Pyper – UK, Marie-Louise Plum – UK, Alison Silva – USA, Henk Koekenbier – Netherlands, Gustav Glander – Spain, Jim Meehan – USA, Rinaldo Klas – Suriname, Dion Hitchings – USA, Kit-Ling Tjon Pian Gi – Suriname, Evgen Copi – Slovenia, Vasko Vidmir – Slovenia, Edward Woltemate, Jr – USA, Josianne Ishikawa – Japan, Ascension Lorente-Huguet – UK, Kobina Wright – USA, Werens Puig – Spain, Kate Bauen – Switzerland, Carlo Keshishian – UK, Brian Gibson – UK, Rufai Zakari – Ghana, Stephen Judges – USA, Risja Marie Henriëtte Steeghs – Netherlands, Shaundell Horton – Suriname, Jenny Hartley – New Zealand, Lynn Todd – New Zealand, Andrew Stahl – UK, Chakkrit Chimnok – Thailand, Susan Biebuyck – USA, Timothy Campbell – USA, Sancha Sullivan – Suriname, Zoran Milavera – UK/Macedonia, Mahlia Amatina – UK, Tontxi Vazquez – UK, MaryAnn McCarra-Fitzpatrick – USA, Nick Stavrides – USA, Renée Rey – USA, Patrick Jude – USA, Mow – UK, Christy Symington- UK, Hiroko Nakajima – Japan/UK, Tom McGill – USA, Chris Czainski – UK, Paul Czainski – UK, Erin O’Rourke – UK, Kristen Woodward – USA, Liz Parkinson – Australia, Bert Schoonhoven – Netherlands, Carla van Slooten – Netherlands, Pam Santi – USA, Jeff Roland – France, Jade Chorkularb – UK, Gareth Hughes – UK, Sandra Mendelsohn – Netherlands, Sejin Park – South Korea, Yvonne Mabs Francis – UK, Miranda Sky – UK, Helen Roeten – Netherlands, John Adkins – USA, Edward Kingsbury III – USA, Eva Preston -USA, Jeroen Rolf Schoonhoven – Netherlands, Rosie McLeish – UK, Florain Haeck – Netherlands, Ezra Swaanswijk – Netherlands, Judith McNicol – UK, Cathy Ward – UK, Yairs Agam-Aa – Netherlands, Norbert de Jong – Netherlands, P.M. Jordense-Michalski – Netherlands, Ralf Kokke – Netherlands, Jason Hankins – USA, Sophie M. Adams – UK & Chutima Kerdpitak(Nok) – UK.
What: Visual art exhibition from artist Marius Els When: 1-4pm, Monday October 10th, 2016 Where: Mind, Haringey, North London
Photographer and artist Marius Els is showing selected work from previous exhibition ‘Seasons of the Mind’, plus a new body of work, ‘A Life Time’, for one day only at Station House, Haringey, in support of Mind and World Mental Health Day.
Marius combines photography, collage and mixed media to create beautiful and magical works of art. Don’t miss it!
For more information about his work, including an in-depth description of ‘A Life Time’, please visit Marius Els online.
