

Curating / Photographs / Video / Participatory art
Bees
hairy flowers
wings
veins
Privileged London streets in snow.
These photos were taken in West London, above Hyde Park. Money that built this city was pilfered from various other countries, as we know. But it looks so innocent and serene today.
More than eighteen workshop contributors and some hundred and fifty attendees made Pangaea Sculptors Centre’s ‘How did you do that? An Artistic Skillshare’ (4th-6th October, 2013)
Workshops and initiatives:
See full documentation with photos on Pangaea Sculptors Centre’s Flickr page: Here
(PSC _ Directors: Marsha Bradfield & Lucy Tomlins)
‘Oral History Archive’ (DV Video) (Final Cut Duration: 6min30), HTAP, 2009 From January to May 2009, HTAP produced ten video interviews with residents from the London Borough of Hackney. Produced as an Oral History Archive. The interviews show individuals, couples, friends and families reflecting on conflict and displacement and what it means to call Hackney ‘home’.
The oral history archive was produced and edited by Marsha Bradfield, Marnie Baumer, Evan Brindle, Miriam Kings, Slade Lamey and Lucy Tomlins. The final cut was edited by Miriam Kings and Marsha Bradfield. It includes interviews with Marnie Baumer; Vivi and Rod Boucher; Joyce Carroll and Elsie Hows; Miron Farmus, Gaspar Karczewski, Tamara Lesneiwska and Joanna Lesniewska; Rui and Ines Freitas, Dino Graniello and Donaldo Figueroa, Jean Philippe Gerard, Yasar Ismailoglu, Kaday Rose Kamara and Lise Munro (otherwise known as ‘Killpussy’).
‘Oral History Archive’ (DV Video) (Final Cut Duration: 6min30), HTAP, 2009 From January to May 2009, HTAP produced ten video interviews with residents from the London Borough of Hackney. Produced as an Oral History Archive. The interviews show individuals, couples, friends and families reflecting on conflict and displacement and what it means to call Hackney ‘home’.
The oral history archive was produced and edited by Marsha Bradfield, Marnie Baumer, Evan Brindle, Miriam Kings, Slade Lamey and Lucy Tomlins. The final cut was edited by Miriam Kings and Marsha Bradfield. It includes interviews with Marnie Baumer; Vivi and Rod Boucher; Joyce Carroll and Elsie Hows; Miron Farmus, Gaspar Karczewski, Tamara Lesneiwska and Joanna Lesniewska; Rui and Ines Freitas, Dino Graniello and Donaldo Figueroa, Jean Philippe Gerard, Yasar Ismailoglu, Kaday Rose Kamara and Lise Munro (otherwise known as ‘Killpussy’). ‘Echo Play’ Audio walk, Duration 3mins30 exhibited at Central St Martins Degree show, July 2007 and adapted for the Liverpool Biennial Independents, August 2008 ‘Echo Play’ audio walk examined contemporary celebrity phenomena in a science fiction narration. The narration through headphones attached to an MP3 player guides the walker from a busy road to a quiet haven in the city. The story describes in detail a manic world above their heads, where neon blue creatures work as invisible vehicles of information, communicating through tiny sound waves. The walker is directed from the crowds of Charing Cross Road to a tiny pocket of beauty, The Phoenix Gardens. Adapted for the Liverpool Biennial Independents.
‘House, Flat, Roof’ Video, 6mins 13 (UK: Letchworth, Kingsway Estate, Cambridge, London) 2006
Miriam Kings, (UK: Letchworth, Kingsway Estate, Cambridge, London)
‘Dual Methods’, 2007
Duration: 4mins 45secs (UK: City of London, London)
. Miriam Kings, (UK: City of London, London)
Highlights
‘Onsite’ (Co-curator) June 2005
New works by fifteen artists that explored the history, form and function of the crypt itself. 2nd year BA students from Central Saint Martin’s and Slade School of Art. Curated by James Newton, Anton Nikolotov, Miriam Kings and Craig Kao.
Oct 2004
‘Really, this can’t wait’ (Co-curator)
Artists working predominantly in Installation, presented themes of mundane, memory, obsession and anxiety. Curated by the artists Davina Drummond, Ines Dearman, Corrine Bannister and Clair Suckall. Produced by Miriam Kings
Feb 2004
Memories and memorials from Chile: 30 years since the military coup .
(Co-curator)
An academic and peace activist from Chile, Roberta Bacic was directly involved in collecting testimonies from the relatives of those who had been murdered or ‘disappeared’ during the military dictatorship of General Pinochet in 1973-1990.
Photographs from the personal collection of activist Roberta Bacic.
October 2003
Keeping Glamour
(Curator)
A multidisciplinary exhibition and fashion show organised with students from Central St Martins and members of St Mary’s Youth Club.
Participatory Art by Visualdept.co.uk.
Inevitability
May 2004
(Curator)
Installation exhibition by Slade Lamey, with accompanying artworks by Eleanor Watson and Sine Skovsen both working with the circle.
Mass Illustration – with album launch for ‘Only Joe’.
September 2005
(Curator)
Participatory illustration installation with 100+ graffiti artists and illustrators linked to the the ‘Only Joe’ and The Crypt Gallery communities invited to create a mass illustration in anticipation to, and during the final opening.
(Curator/Participating Artist)
HTAP’s Hackney Wicked exhibition used dialogue and play to investigate community formation. Co curated by Marsha Bradfield, Alison Barnes, Miriam Kings, Lucy Tomlins, and David Woosnam. Featuring six different maps and set out like a fête, visitors moved from stall to stall, informing and directing the maps with their own marks. As a research and collection centre, it enabled experimentation with a sense of place to uncover micro stories and patterns; investigating community formation through dialogue and play Over 150 visitors attended this event during the five hours the doors were open.
Pattern making for beginners proposed creative cartographies as a way of imagining new forms of social cohesion: a day-long event at the Hackney Wicked festival to exhibit and further HTAP’s ongoing research into community formation.
The SIX MAPS….
1. ‘The Postcode Map’ (aka Starburst/Mother map): As an introduction to participation, the viewer enters the exhibition to find the Post code map. ‘Estimate your home postcode in relation to Hackney Wick (exhibition location) and link the two’.
2. ‘Experience, desire and the nonsensical’ A Board game A table-top version of the Hackney map where revealing sculptural patterns are formed out of individual experiences, desire and fantasy rooted within Hackney.
Place the counters where you feel most appropriate.
Included: favourite place for a pint, favourite cafe, somewhere you wish to conserve, somewhere beautiful, somewhere you wished to destroy, (bulldozer symbol), a place where you’ve experienced crime, a ladder to the moon, and ‘where you would put Richard Branson’. The board game became a hub of the exhibition, people sharing stories about their experiences of Hackney reminiscent of a campfire situation.
3. ‘Typecast’ Share your opinions and descriptions of Hackney and help create a landscape of text. Alison Barnes
4. ‘Objects and Keepsakes’ Displayed on an old shelving unit, visitors picked up the object to see its story explained on the attached luggage label. Objects were collected from the extended HTAP community, many of whom could not be there on the day. 31 people donated an object of meaning, displayed for visitors to pick up and examine.
Communities that donated objects included the Turkish-Cypriot Community Centre, African Caribbean Reunion, and the Pub on the Park.
5. ‘Secrets’ Unburden yourself on the Hackney map of secrets
This map was covered by a confessional style cloth. The visitor would write their secret on a piece of paper, put it in an envelope and post it into a box. Then they would mark on the map with a red cross where that secret happened in the borough of Hackney.
6. ‘Rumour as Repetition: A Conceptual Study’: Listen and repeat
An oral and written survey: Posturing as pseudo science and/or live art, this performative exchange involves (1) soliciting anecdotal reflections on hearing/spreading rumours; (2) presenting an example rumour (Hackney related); (3) collecting and classifying rumours.
The work from this one-day interactive event was re-presented in the exhibition: ‘in/flux’.
Mapping Workshops July and November 2012
In July 2012 and November 2012 I facilitated two workshops in at Christs Church Spitalfields. Artist Lucy Tomlins gave permission for me to re-create her concept from the Hackney Transient Arts Project mapping exhibition which we had co-curated with other artist participants. Original piece ‘Experience, Desire and the Nonsensical’ documented here.