PASTE

About

Furthering debates surrounding the virtual and real in contemporary art practice, the project will exist across two channels - an online platform of digital works, and physical posters pasted onto poster drums throughout Leeds City Centre.

Over the course of two weeks Leeds residents, commuters and visitors to the city will be able to take a detour from their everyday routine and discover contemporary art on their way to work, on the high street, out shopping or on a lunch break.

In addition to physical posters pasted onto poster drums across Leeds City Centre there will be an accompanying website of digital works. Taking ‘copy and paste’ as a starting point, SEIZE has invited the artists to create images, videos, gifs or playlists that address ideas surrounding the virtual and real in contemporary art practice, and their crossover in everyday life.

Paste will therefore exist simultaneously as both URL and IRL, alluding to a perceived slippage between digital and physical production channels. Responding to a media arena saturated with competing advertising and brands, Paste explores the dissolving boundaries between artist-made, user-generated and commercial content in the wake of networked systems of information.

Established in 2012, artist-led organisation SEIZE began programming art in unconventional and temporary spaces as a means to address the lack of permanent art spaces available to emerging artists.

Staying true to their ambition to offer an equal platform for both emerging, local and more established artists, Paste will feature an international mix of artists working at different stages in their careers, including Adham Faramawy, Joey Holder, local artists Mathew Parkin and Alfie Strong and international names such as Lorna Mills and Jennifer Chan.

SEIZE Co-Director, Tom McGinn has commented, “at a time when Leeds is celebrating cutting-edge artistic talent coming to the city we feel it’s an important moment to extend this celebration beyond the gallery, out into the city, and bring work from a wider circle of artists directly to the public.”

Paste will take place in Leeds from 5.10.15- 18.10.15, and coincides with the opening of the British Art Show 8, an exhibition that also proposes to explore the convergence of the real and the virtual, and the status of the physical object in contemporary culture.

The artists exhibiting in Paste are:

Jennifer Chan / Adham Faramawy / Jack Fisher / Joey Holder / Ashley Holmes / Emilie Houldsworth / Sebastian Jefford / Will Kendrick / Alice Khalilova / Derek Mainella / Lorna Mills / Mathew Parkin / Alfie Strong / Oliver Sutherland / Bradley Waller

Free maps of all the poster locations will be available in selected venues across the city and available to download from SEIZE’s website from October.

A launch event will also be held at Enjoy Project Space, Mabgate on October 5th to mark the opening of the project. The event will open at 6.30pm, all are welcome.

SEIZE Projects benefits from the generous support of Leeds City Council’s Leeds Inspired funding scheme that has enabled them to realise the PASTE project. Other partners include &Model Gallery, Leeds.