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Duo show ‘Fragments and Traces’ about time, memory, and travel – Platform 1 Gallery, Wandsworth Arts Fringe

Fragments and Traces: l’invitation au voyage

Kelise Franclemont and Antonia Jackson  explore memory, travel, and passage of time through paintings, installation, and new media. Throughout each day, along with the exhibition of artworks, Antonia and Kelise will engage visitors in trading memories and creating new ones in an ongoing make-one/take-one souvenir postcard exchange.

Fragments and Traces: l’invitation au voyage” is in conjunction with Wandsworth Arts Fringe 2016, a festival of creativity and performance throughout the borough from 6 to 22 May 2016.

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One subsequent weekends at Platform 1 Gallery are two more shows:  “Transcending” from artist Ema Mano Epps with Verica Kovacevska and Norman Mine, and finally, “Fragment” by sculptor Anna Flemming.

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More links about “Fragments and Traces”

Event details: Fragments and Traces” presents during Wandsworth Arts Fringe 2016 from 5 to 8 May 2016  at Platform 1 Gallery on Wandsworth Common Station, Platform 1, Wandsworth Common, London SW12 8SG (entrance to the station and Platform 1 Gallery from Jaggard Way). Free admission, step-free access.

Private View: Thursday 5 May, 5:30 to 8:30 pm

Opening hours:

Friday 6 May, 12:00 pm to 6:00 pm
Saturday 7 May, 11:oo am to 5:00 pm
Sunday 8 May, 11:00 am to 5:00 pm.

Platform1Gallery_logo2   WandsworthFringe_logo

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‘The Promised Land (in amazing stereoscopic vision)’, 2016, digital video and stereoscopic goggles

Kelise Franclemont, 'The Promised Land', 2016, HD digital video on iPad with stereoscopic goggles and sound, duration 1:40 (looped). Image courtesy the artist.
Kelise Franclemont, ‘The Promised Land’, 2016, HD digital video on iPad with stereoscopic goggles and sound, duration 1:40 (looped). Image courtesy the artist.

The “Promised Land”, the land of milk and honey, the place where all good things will come to the chosen people and the true believers. In London, the “Promised Land” is not just for immigrants and dreamers, those who aspire to wealth and privilege that can be had in the capital, London is already here for the posh and the prosperous. This great golden city belongs to the movers and the shakers, the 1% who can afford to live in high-rise flats and work in their downtown shiny offices.

Not everyone is so lucky in the lottery of birth and not everybody finds the better life they seek when they get to “The Promised Land” they keep hearing about from their parents, friends, and politicians, tales that have been told since the Industrial Age…the sounds of building a high-rise contrasts starkly with the images in a different story of broken promises, dead-ends, and forgotten dreams.

Kelise Franclemont, ‘The Promised Land’, 2016, HD digital video on iPad with stereoscopic goggles and sound, duration 1:40 (looped) – EXCERPT

If the video does not auto-play, please click here.


‘The Promised Land’ was recently exhibited in ‘Fast Forward/Rewind’ – Chelsea Alumni Summer Show 2016 at Punctum Gallery, Chelsea College of Arts, from 18-22 July 2016.

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‘Postcards’ selected for ‘Identity’ group exhibition with AWAH, Manchester

 “Postcards from the Land of No People (wish you were here)”, 2015, printed postcards in a wooden rack  

A contemporary Orientalist sees herself in Palestine through a series of souvenir postcards… whether or not she belongs or is welcome there…

This piece is about how memory and identity intermingle and become truth for the author of that history. A series of found images dated from late 1890s are appropriated from the US Library of Congress “Holy Land” archives and the artist inserts herself into the image attempting to become an integral part of the narrative by almost any means possible. This can be a metaphor for personal history, the artist having once been immersed in all things Palestinian by marriage or the images could point to some vague but potent longing to belong to the exotic “Other” culture, even for just a moment as a tourist to some foreign land. There is an element of humour here, with the artist fully aware of the “square peg, round hole” issues at play here and the absurdity of a certain tone of Colonialism that tries to overwrite history, yet there is no lacking in sincerity for the love of this corner of the Earth once known as the “Land of No People”.

On the reverse of each card is written a message from the artist to “My darling” (a lover? a family member? a friend?), with the sentiment, “wish you were here!” along with a short message to share the experience with the postcard recipient.

To see this and the many other works in “Identity” (21 January to 13 March 2016), head to Manchester to Art with a Heart [AWAH], a charity arts organisation in nearby Altrincham.

Founded in 2012, AWAH is a charity that comprises of 4-5 small exhibition galleries, hosting workshops, exhibitions, charitable events, and volunteering opportunities aimed at supporting the arts and creative communities, as well as promoting Altrincham heritage and history.

If you’re in the area, have a look in!

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‘Caught in the Act’, 2015, series of digital photographic prints

This exhibition of digital photographic prints by Kelise Franclemont, candidly documents preparation for the final MA Fine Art Summer show in August 2015. Stealing a glimpse of artists in the act of making, the images invite an intimacy with the subject. Taken on an iPhone without the artist’s knowledge or permission, these documents are being shared publicly for the first time as Display #17 for Chelsea Cafe Project.

These images capture fragmentary moments of production, becoming part of the history and biography of artist and artwork. By sharing these perceived intimacies, the photographer is embedding themselves within a narrative to an externalised audience; invited here to observe the relationship between the maker and the made. – from Chelsea Cafe Project blog. Display #17 curated by Cherie Silver.

More links and information:

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‘Postcards from The Land of No People’, 2015, printed postcards in a wooden rack

A contemporary Orientalist sees herself in Palestine in a series of souvenir postcards… whether or not she belongs or is welcome there…
Because isn’t this what we all do, when we travel to an exotic place, proudly saying “please” and “thank you” in exactly the correct pronunciation of an Other tongue, imagining ourselves for a moment, in asking for the bill, to be mistaken for a native…

while the server, laughing behind his or her eyes, sees right through your identity to a colonial past that is, along with your fantasy, part author to this current moment. Nodding and smiling and complimenting your excellent Arabic, which you both know is harnessed to expectations of generosity, which you gladly bestow for recognition of being seen as you wish to be seen. All of us pretending in this business transaction, an exchange until all accounts are empty.

MA Fine Art Interim Show
Chelsea College of Arts, London
 
22 January 2015