Thursday 22 – Sunday 25 June 2023

Open School East, 39 Hawley Square, Margate CT9 1NY

Exhibition & public event programme below!

We are very excited to share dates for the Open School East Associate Exhibition 2023 with you! 

Over a long weekend in June we invite you to see the show & participate in a wider programme of events which include film screenings, workshops, performances and tours of the exhibition led by the Associates & Guest Curator, Maggie Matic.

You can find key dates for the exhibition & wider programme of events below – please add key exhibition dates to your diary & RSVP for the preview on Thursday 22 June using the button below:

This year’s Associate cohort began the year responding to ideas of social and ecological hybridity, as set out in the first term curriculum entitled When The World Looks Back At You: about storytelling, ecology and the weird led by artist Saelia Aparicio. 

Throughout their time on the Open School East programme, the Associates’ have employed the garden as a metaphor, denoting spaces of cultivation, communion, nurturance and healing.

For their final exhibition, they have developed work that unpicks the interactions and distinctions between bodies, spaces and materials; contemporary and historic forms of story-telling, myth-making and cultural symbolism and the social and transnational politics of power, precarity, solidarity and kinship.

With guidance from their mentors; Simeon Barclay, Sally O’Reilly, Melika Ngombe Kolongo, Benedict Drew, Cecilia Wee and Clair Le Couteur, they have begun developing new research and work that will be presented as part of their Associate Exhibition at Open School East in June 2023.

Preview:

Thursday 22 June, 5 – 8pm

Open School East, 39 Hawley Square, CT9 1NY

Open: 

Friday 23 – Sunday 25 June, 12 – 5pm

Open School East, 39 Hawley Square, CT9 1NY

Public Events:

The Community Whistling Choir

Saturday 24 June, 4.30 – 5.30PM

Cliftonville Cultural Space – Albion Road, Cliftonville, Margate, CT9 2HP

The Community Whistling Choir is an ongoing project devised and led by OSE Associate Aliaskar Abarkas, that cultivates delight and solidarity through collective whistling. 

Join Aliaskar and members of the choir for a live performance of a new collaborative score that explores togetherness and solidarity. This iteration of The Community Whistling Choir is held as part of Refugee Week 2023 Art’s Festival, in partnership with Cliftonville Cultural Space.

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TLC: Short film screening & live performances

Saturday 24 June, 7 – 11PM

Margate Arts Club – 276 Northdown Rd, Cliftonville, Margate CT9 2PT

TLC is an evening of moving image works and sound performances exploring ‘the intimacy of bodies and their dwelling places’, discovered through our connection with the self, technology, environment, and each other. Stimuli from the past and present. Movement emerges. Sometimes we call it a ritual and perform it alone or with another, or many others.

TLC is curated by OSE Associate Sarah Khan.

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Vulvas that Bite and Other Creatures: Artist talk & workshop with Flora Bradwell

Sunday 25 June, 1 – 4pm 

Turner Contemporary – Foyle Rooms, Rendezvous, Margate CT9 1HG

Join OSE Associate Milou Stella and artist and curator Flora Bradwell for an artist talk & free flowing round-table discussion that takes the grotesque body and its surrounding mythologies as a starting point to explore and question the history and image of the toothed vagina.

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Associate & Curator-led Exhibition Tours (TBA!)

Friday 23 – Sunday 25 June

Announcing this year’s OSE Guest Curator: Dr Maggie Matić!

Each year Open School East invites a Guest Curator to work closely with the current cohort of Associates during their third term and in the build up to their end of year exhibition. Through 1:1 mentoring sessions, group crits & curatorial development sessions, the Guest Curator helps to shape individual Associate projects and the exhibition as a whole.

Dr Maggie Matić (they/them) is a curator, writer and researcher with a specialism in contemporary feminist and queer visual culture. Maggie is currently Curator (Studios & Residencies) at Studio Voltaire and is a trustee of The Feminist Library. They have previously worked at Tate, FACT (Foundation for Art & Creative Technology), The University of Liverpool and The Royal Standard.

At Studio Voltaire, Maggie oversees all aspects of the studio and residency programmes, including the LOEWE FOUNDATION / Studio Voltaire Award, the Syllabus programme, Open House and the rolling artist residency and professional development programme.

We look forward to working with Maggie to deliver another exciting Associate Exhibition!