4/5/2011
To celebrate the re-launch of The Poetry Café within the newly refurbished Café Juniper we are currently showing part of a much larger project highlighting the gap between art and the texts that often accompany art.
The original in their own words project asked nine artists, each working in a different medium, to describe a piece of work; the subsequent description was then exhibited in lieu of the (art)work. A photograph of the artwork itself was then sent to nine poets who were each asked to produce a response to the photograph. The poets were given no additional information as to the identity of the artists etc. Any additional text (including this) affects the reading of those original texts.
The framed poems currently on show in The Juniper Gallery are hand printed originals from the first in their own words exhibition. Shown alongside each poem, for the first time, is a copy of the photograph of the artwork sent to the poet and the text supplied by the artist.
Bank Street Arts’ current poet in residence, Angelina Ayers, began her residency focused on ideas about ekphrasis. This exhibition revisits that theme by asking the viewer (via this textual instruction) to ask questions about ekphrasis itself, including: ‘What the hell is ekphrasis anyway?’.
Artists: dave ball, alec finlay, rachel garfield, mark s gubb, david kirshner, simon morris, ilona niemi, tony rickaby, julian walker
Poets: martyn crucefix, alec finlay, mark goodwin, sarah hannah, chris jones, mario petrucci, fiona sampson, matthew sweeney, pam thompson
