'OFF SEASON' by Timothée Huguet
29th September - 27th October 2012
speaker 1
- we know that 20 years ago, was it?…that was 20 years ago…all this…to those roads...just to those roads…that was 20 years ago… hmmmm.
speaker 2
- ...20 years ago…
speaker 1
- there were no hotels…no HOTELS!…hotels were in Göçek…just here one or two shops…then the road where you can see…hmm…not the fairground, there was a big, big well (circular movement with his arm) and a bit of water-c[car noise]…we have been coming here for 13 years…
speaker 3
- 15, 15...
speaker 1
- we are…6 to 11 weeks in England, the rest…yeah yeah, but we are going back to England because we've got business so… we'll go back to England, but we'll come back for the new year, because they celebrate new year…big soul…obviously they aren't christian, they don't celebrate christmas but they do, everybody in the world celebrates the new year and there they really go for the big parties…there are these fires and parties, singing and dancing…yeah pretty good…(he laughs)
speaker 3
- …before here, just here, that was just concrete, there were no shops or anything at all…we came from the california hotel and we walked down the hill and there was nothing there…this, was the market place where they sold the clothes and this was the market place where they sold the vegetables.
…we come and live here…just old people who are retired…now we bring our dogs, two dogs from Birmingham…
…the weather, cost of living and something…we enjoy being here…
(a conversation with 3 local English people in Ölüdeniz, southern Turkey, 2010)
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'UNTITLED (Balance her in between your eyes)' by Francesca Banchelli
30th June - 28th July 2012
A solo video screening by Italian artist Francesca Banchelli.
'UNTITLED (Balance her in between your eyes)' is shot in Teatralnaya Square, Moscow, below Karl Marx's monument. The action is a personal dance that simulates and reinterprets some yoga positions; at the same time it wants to recall some mass morning ritual exercises, executed by some school students and workers, before their shifts start in some countries like China and Japan. Compared to the emblematicness of the monument or to the massive ritual, in between of devotion and independency, the video wants to reveal the uniqueness of a personal action and the present times' unconditioned doing. Beside to the philosopher's image, in between the "closeness" and "extraneousness" towards him, there is a research for a minded collaboration and coexistence, closer to the concept of "eternity", than to "relationship".
(b. 1981, Italy) Francesca Banchelli lives and works in London. Banchelli completed the MA Fine Art at Central Saint Martins in 2010. Recent exhibitions include: S1/Salon at S1 Artspace, Sheffield UK (2012), Tornare per Partire_cartabianca, Museo Villa Croce, Genova IT (2012). Banchelli’s body of work appeals to the relationship between the conceptual and its material outcome, highlighting the moment in which a given context becomes an event.
www.francescabanchelli.com
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'Özgür Kıl' by Charlie Coffey / 5th May - 25th May 2012
Torna's first solo presentation by UK artist Charlie Coffey opens on 5th of May.
Titled simply Özgür Kıl / Emancipate after the eponymous drawing in the show, Charlie Coffey's work explores the somewhat tired yet enduring motif of the 'island' – from literary construct to unspoilt paradise as antidote to contemporary westernised living.
Conceived of as a site-specific response to the city of Istanbul, Özgür Kıl depicts a solitary island in the sublime, deep blue sea - a monochrome image drained of its colour against an off-centre text overlay. Drawing upon Istanbul's location at the edge of two vast continents and the historic romanticisation of increasingly outmoded notions of east and west, Özgür Kıl deals with the notion of the island as a contemporary, imaginary symbol of desire. With Orientalist discourses long redundant, the drawing is concerned with the commodification of touristic desire through the convergence of this potent symbol with the utopian impulse.
The slippery lure of paradise appears in cultural references as far reaching as William Golding's Lord of the Flies, Alex Garland's The Beach and Robert Louis Stevenson's Treasure Island, firmly establishing the island as one of the most prevailing, romanticised settings in which to let human dramas, at times tragic and bleak, unfold. In Lord of the Flies, Golding uses the island as a device to explore the classic hypothetical scenario of what happens to human relations outside the confines of society. The notion of the island as a seemingly hermetic site, free from the heavy influence of civilisation, is conjured in the mind of the consumer seeking an exclusive island getaway.
Furthermore Özgür Kıl questions contemporary global tourism in relation to the legacy of colonialism; drawing parallels between the perennial search for unspoilt destinations and imperialist conquest of 'undiscovered' lands.
Charlie Coffey (b. 1981 Edinburgh, Scotland) graduated in Fine Art from Goldsmiths College, London in 2007 and currently lives and works in London. She works across drawing, sculpture and installation, often taking a site specific approach to exhibition making. Her practice brings together an interest in the political agency of art and (in)possibility of making a viable, socially engaged, artistic response.
Forthcoming projects include a group exhibition at Tou Scene, Stavanger (Norway). Charlie is also co-editor of folio magazine.
www.charliexcoffey.co.uk
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Kadıköy Art Trail by Dial Zero / 21st Sept - 25th Sept 2011
From 21st until 25th September, a London based collective Dial Zero will use Torna as the headquarters for their latest project 'The Kadıköy Art Trail'. The space will also be one of the stops on the trail. The project focuses on making small-scale interventions around the city, using non-gallery spaces in the Kadıköy region. The locations include an antique shop, a secondhand book shop, an empty corner shop, Eminönü / Karaköy - Kadıköy boats, 3 different locations at Haydarpaşa train station, Moda seafront, an old arcade and various tree trunks.
Artists : Anne Haaland Bland, Charlie Coffey, Sian Robinson Davies, Merve Kaptan, Emmanuelle de la Lubie, Molly Palmer, Kristyan Robinson, Dan Walwin
There will also be a map publication produced as a guide to the works on show which can be collected from Torna.
Find more Dial Zero and Torna collaborations here
Dial Zero is a group of international artists who graduated from Goldsmiths College, London in 2007. Since then they have re-located to different cities and countries, forming a scattered network of individuals who continue to practise in a variety of different disciplines. In an attempt to address this disparity of ‘place’ and artistic concerns, Dial Zero aims to sustain an ongoing dialogue between its members through regular exhibitions and events, both in the UK and internationally.
www.dialzero.org
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The diagram: Blackboard Series / 2nd Sept - 16th Oct 2011
The first project to be held at Torna will be The diagram: Blackboard Series in collaboartion with Banner Repeater, London.
The blackboard series is a contributive and sequential series of diagrams, drawn onto the blackboard, in the working environment of the reception area at SPACE (studios and gallery) in London. Reflecting on the focus of the diagram over the last year at Banner Repeater, in its environment of a working station, and acting a little, perhaps, as a rear-view mirror, to move forwards.
A number of people who have engaged with the diagram over the last year at BR have been asked to contribute a diagram for the blackboard. The series is ephemeral in nature, being drawn in chalk, and there may be some consideration about how each contribution relates to the others, and how much of a palimpsest does this present.
Simultaneously, Banner Repeater will send to Torna the series of diagrams as they are drawn at SPACE, which will be translated by Torna, drawing the diagram on the blackboard for each new contribution.
Artists : Claire Nichols, Dean Kenning, Dave Burrows, John Mullarkey, Clunie Reid
Diagram 1 = 'Where to Start?' by John Mullarkey.
'Where to Start?' shows a number of names, or subjects, as place-holders, 'Badiou', 'Deleuze', 'Derrida', and 'Laruelle'. Each subject names a starting point respectively in mathematics, the animal, transcendental differance, and non-philosophy. Each names both a different decision, starting-point, starting-curve, or starting-line, as well as a new time to start a new diagram.'
Diagram 2 by Claire Nichols
Diagram 3 by Dean Kenning
Diagram 4 by Clunie Reid
Diagram 5 by David Burrows
Banner Repeater is an artist led contemporary art space and a reading room dedicated to artists' printed material, founded by Ami Clarke in 2009 , located on platform 1, Hackney Downs train station, London. The project is driven by its location, in the natural interstice the platform and incidental footfall of over 4,000 passengers a day provides. The reading room holds a collection of artist's books and other printed material, for both browsing and purchase. The permanent collection is home to Publish and be Damned's public library. The project space has an arts programme of exhibitions, events and performance, and publishes pamphlets and posters in tandem with this, which are free to take away. Ideas relating to publishing have pushed further many of the works in the arts programme.
www.bannerrepeater.org