BLANKSPACE Launch and BlankExpression 2011

About

After four years of championing emerging artists, Blank Media Collective is now introducing BLANKSPACE, a new creative hub in Manchester. Blank Media Collective's inaugural exhibition at BLANKSPACE, BlankExpression 2011 is the perfect start to a New Year and the exciting opportunities that it brings to artists and audiences spread far and wide in these difficult financial times. BlankExpression 2011 is an ambitious and exciting showcase of works by twenty-seven emerging practitioners from London to Victoria, Barnsley to Tel Aviv and anywhere in between. Works will engage, stimulate and challenge each and every viewer. With a wide variety of works spanning over a range of disciplines, in BlankExpression 2011 there's something for everyone. BlankExpression 2011 promises to be the start of something very special happening at the iconic 43 Hulme Street building. Highlights of BlankExpression 2011 include Andy Nash's work, which seeks to investigate the histories and associations that lie beyond function and utility of everyday objects. ‘Con-fused' is an intriguing piece of work that questions the possibilities of hidden networks that exist in the walls of our buildings and in the secret places beneath our feet. Ben Sloat, an artist from Boston, Massachusetts is showing a series of brave paintings and text pieces that represents variations of early 1990's propaganda imagery of Deng Xiaoping, a politician who has come to be linked to China's astonishing economic development. By reproducing these images through the medium of paint and sculpture, Ben questions how the use of reproduction shifts perceptions of artistic and commercial value while displaying shifting perspectives. ‘Spinario' is an absorbing wall-based sculptural piece by Manchester-based artist Daniel Fogarty. The title of the work comes from the name of the sculpture, of which a photocopied image is used in the piece. The work successfully functions as an act of self-publishing that is suspended mid completion, which is due to the unresolved nature of the piece. Karl Kolley shows ‘Tape Stripes', an installation that pays homage to modernist painting, in addition to being a presentation of utilitarian materials that displays a sincere desire to do justice to the medium he uses. Work from these and the other 23 artists makes up BlankExpression 2011, the debut exhibition at BLANKSPACE. In both name and nature the title pays homage to BlankExpression, the pioneering first exhibition by Blank Media Collective, which took place at Zion Arts Centre, Manchester in July 2007.