Private View: Tuesday 26th July 6:30pm – 9pm

What changes have you seen? | What makes you change? | What is change for? | What would you change? | Why do we resist change? | What makes us accept change?

International artists from the Cambridge Sustainability Artists e:collective launch their debut exhibition of new work exploring our relationship with change on a social, economic, environmental and personal level. The exhibition will challenge, enact, refresh and stimulate our perceptions and thoughts on change and will be viewed alongside current research by scientists at the Global Sustainability Institute, Anglia Ruskin University, Cambridge.

During the exhibition artists in residence Mark Vennegoor and Aurora Sciabarra will each develop new work in the gallery, inviting visitors to participate in their practice.

Experiencing Change / Changing Experience investigates a world where environment and society is in a state of flux with large, and sometimes devastating, changes predicted for the future. Change can seem inevitable or out of our hands, so how much influence do we have on change? Do we just react to the changes we experience or can we intervene?

This project is devised by lead artist Valerie Furnham in collaboration with researcher Dr. Rosie Robison [GSI], and with the support of Arts Council England, ONCA and The Global Sustainability Institute.

Events & Workshops

26th July – 5th August Aurora Sciabarra will be investigating the presence and disappearance of the bee. Making latex bees, and inviting the public in to make flowers out of beeswax and then hand-pollinating the flowers, Aurora seeks to unlock know what is like to do what bees have been doing for us for centuries.

26th July – 5th August Mark Vennegoor will launch his playful participatory art project, Fresh Del Monte Produce Inc. Smoothie Takeover through a performance of selling banana smoothies, stitching banana skins on vinyl, and buying shares from the profit of Del Monte Produce Inc. Throughout the exhibition, Mark will show his performance and investigate the history of the banana in Brighton.

 26th July – 3rd August Sabine Bolk will be creating a carpet out of a recycled masonry aggregate and discarded porcelain fragments excavated from the gardens of the Netherlands. Sorting the piles into their different components and using these to create a decorative carpet, Sabine will question how we deal with our waste material.

 26th July – 5th August Valerie Furnham will be inviting visitors to question the truths behind the statistics and what gives them presence in our daily lives? Working with data from the Global Sustainability Institute that looks at national temperature and sea level rise, how do we believe what we cannot perceive

4 August 6:30-8:30pm – Panel Discussion: Can scientific research or art really change anything?

A panel discussion & Q&A between artists from the e:collective and researchers from the Global Sustainability Institute.

With scientists predicting large environmental changes for the future and dramatic political changes recently occurring, how can artists and scientists react, what changes can they implement and how can working together help?

Friday 29th July, 2-4pm – Workshop by artist in residence Aurora: One Bee many mouths to feed

What would a world be like without bees?

Join artist Aurora at her dinner table, and discover what your plate of food would look like without bees. Draw, write and discuss what a world without bees would look like, and what it means for the food chain and our own food production.

Find out the number of flowers a bee can visit per day, a quantity of honey a hive can produce per year, the quantity of beeswax they make, as well as the fruits and vegetables available as a result of their work.

Bees have started to disappear and “the earth has screamed”, as reported by Professor Challenger, a Felix Guattari and Gilles Deleuze’s character (A Thousand Plateaus).

30th July, 11am-1pm – Family friendly workshop for ages 8+ by artist in residence Mark: Art with a taste

Join artist in residence, Mark Vennegoor, at his ‘Smoothie take over bar’. Become a partner in his business to take on the giants ‘Del Monte’. Help Mark by marketing his product – design a logo, create signs for his store – all with the use of his smoothie by-product, the humble banana skin.  

Materials supplied and all business partners will be paid with a delicious potassium boosting banana smoothie!

About the collective:

e:collective

The e-collective is a collaborative art project of international artists, writers, designers and curators who all deal in their practices with issues of environmental sustainability, social rights and political activism. Through a series of artists’ residencies, participatory art projects and publications, this fluid, nomadic and anti-hierarchical organism explores the ways contemporary practices hint at and actualise a wider definition of ecology. The e:collective is a group of artists who took part in the previous residencies of 2013, 2014 and 2015.

Gobal Sustainability Insitute

The GSI is committed to playing a key role in developing practical solutions to the sustainability challenges we all face, both locally and globally. Through research and education the GSI bring together the information needed to make decisions, with the people capable of taking action.