Uli Ap, Edward Burtynsky, 0rphan Drift, Peter Matthews, Claire Morgan, Elpida Hadzi-Vasileva, Lisa Pettibone, Shuster + Moseley, David Rickard, Troika
Curated by Paul Carey-Kent
28th October 2023 - 20th January 2024
PREVIOUSLY
Curator Tour
16.12.2023
3pm
Join us & Paul Carey-Kent for SEISMIC: Art Meets Science curator tour.
Paul will be giving a guided tour of the artworks in this show, as well as, explore the themes within art and science. Paul Carey-Kent is a freelance art writer and curator, and a member of the International Association of Art Critics. He is Visual Fine Arts Editor of Seisma Magazine, in which art meets science. He also writes regularly for Art Monthly and STATE and the Canadian magazine Border Crossings. He has a weekly column online for FAD Magazine and a monthly interview online for Artlyst. Paul has curated more than 40 shows, including ‘NatureMax’ at GIANT in 2021-22. He recently published ‘The Book of Ladders’ in collaboration with Mexico-based sculptor Adeline de Monseignat. His darkly humorous photo-poems addressing cancer, ‘The Death Suite’, are also due to be published.
SEISMA Magazine is a publication exploring synergies between the sciences and the arts with the aim of sparking further interdisciplinary exchange and innovation. To encourage and facilitate these exchanges, SEISMA runs an online platform, publishes a biannual print and digital edition, and supports collaborative working through SciArts commissions.Alien AI LIVE:
Film at Lincoln Centre - GIANT Gallery, featuring artist Uli Ap & Columbia Story Telling Lab.
Thursday 7th December
8pm - 9pm GMT
The Yellow Ones - Body parts collectors, feature an opportunity for the public to engage and participate within an international performance.
Washington Square & Soho (NYC)
Trafalgar Square & Soho (London)
Seaside & Pier (Bournemouth)
ALIEN AI LIVE is an immersive interactive performance and disruptive installation that “breaks” technologies and enables algorithms to subvert their functions to invent new humane technologies. This live performance by Ap will experiment with bridging physical and virtual worlds. ALIEN AI LIVE is part of Ap's "The Alienation Project" which explores no borders & no identity questions through investigations of a character known as the Alien-AI, who constantly transforms between artificial intelligence and alien forms of life.
Uli Ap is a London-based trans-disciplinary artist, who critically investigates technology and its relationship with society and science. Ap creates immersive interactive installations where virtual and physical experiences collide and alter participants’ mental states, disorienting video-audio-VR environments, destabilising performances, and AI–VR–BCI–Robotics situations. Uli Ap lives and works all over the globe.
Uli Ap performs as a part of her The Yellow One installation at GIANT Gallery, as part of our current major exhibition SEISMIC: Arts Meets Science.
Curated by @paulcareykent
Theo Ellison & Sacha Craddock In Conversation
Tuesday 3rd October, 2023 / 6.30pm - 8pm, GIANT Gallery
Join us for a very special evening as curator & artist Theo Ellison talks with the infamous, art critic, Sacha Craddock about the current group exhibition at GIANT Gallery- Supersublime.
Space is limited and booking is required, please select your ticket from the options on our bookings page.
WALK TALK DRAW
URBAN DRAW TOURS
Join local historian Hattie Miles and artist and teacher Emma Moxey for this inspirational 4 week series -walking, talking, drawing and creatively exploring Bournemouth’s secret spaces and cultural landmarks.
Starting on Tues 12th September, 2023
THE FUTURE OF THE HIGHSTREET
Thursday 17th August, 5pm - 7pm,
at GIANT With
Madeline Kessler
Jessica Toale
Carol Maund
Chaired by Stuart Semple
As GIANT celebrates our second Birthday in Bournemouth Town Centre, we have invited some special friends to join us for a discussion on the future of highstreets. Far from a pessimistic look at the future through a lens of nostalgia, this panel discussion promises to be a hopeful and optimistic exploration of possibility.
There is no doubt that online shopping, post pandemic rebirth and out-of-town retail parks have changed the fabric of our town centres forever. Now is a vital moment to imagine what the future holds for these centres.
How can our public spaces serve a community, build connections and foster a sense of pride in place? Can art and culture play a vital role in shaping new uses for unused buildings? What part does creativity play in transforming these spaces into welcoming spaces for all?
MEET THE PANNEL
Madeline Kessler is an architect, curator and urbanist dedicated to designing joyful people-centred places that contribute positively to our planet. Her practice, Madeleine Kessler Architecture, explores architecture as a conversation about the city at every scale. Over the past 15 years she has led a number of award-winning experimental projects including the co-curation of the British Pavilion at the 17th Venice Architecture Biennale.
Trained as an architect and engineer, Madeleine is a member of the National Infrastructure Commission’s Design Group and Ebbsfleet Design Forum. She is a visiting professor at Karlsruhe Institute of Technology and also teaches at the Architectural Association and London School of Architecture. She has won a number of awards including the Architects Journal’s 40 under 40 and RIBA Rising Star Award.
Jessica Toale is Labour’s Parliamentary Candidate for Bournemouth West. She is a strong advocate for the arts & the role of culture in shaping our communities and cities. As a councillor in London’s West End with cabinet responsibility for culture, heritage and the arts she launched a £1.8m culture fund to help broaden community access to cultural activities. She has an MSc in Urbanisation and Development from the London School of Economics where she focused on how communities use space to express their identities.
Carol Maund is a creative producer, curator and community connector, she runs the independent arts organisation BEAF Arts Co located in Boscombe, one of the most deprived areas in the south west. BEAFs work is focused on providing real opportunities for artists, communities and audiences to engage with contemporary art practice. Based in a redundant department store, now renamed B.A.D., Boscombe Arts Depot, BEAF HQ houses a large gallery, theatre and lounge cinema, right on Boscombe’s high street. Delivering an annual arts festival and a year round programme, the vision for the organisation is to give voice to the unheard, providing space and a platform for new work to develop and be seen.
Stuart is an artist, curator and activist who regularly exhibits internationally. His works have been seen at the ICA, Barbican, Denver Art Museum, Whitworth, Tate Modern. He often collaborates with cities on public art projects including Toronto, Milan, Dublin, Hong Kong & Moscow. His 2019 documentary for BBC Radio 4 on Hostile Design was nominated for a radio academy award, the project is on permanent display at the new Young V&A in London. In 2020 he founded GIANT, the UK’s largest artist-run gallery space in an ex-Debenhams department store in his hometown of Bournemouth. He regularly speaks on art and society and has appeared at Oxford Union, The Southbank Centre, ICA, Frieze, Denver Art Museum and Dulwich Picture Gallery.
TICKETS: 7 full price - 4 concessions - 3.50 standing
Sam Jackson in conversation with Zavier Ellis.
Thursday 10th August, 5pm - 7pm.
Join us for Sam Jackson In Conversation with Zavier Ellis
Sam Jackson’s Retrospective: Fifteen Years is a mid-career exploration of Jackson’s central negotiation with the language of painting and his pursuit of an autobiographical practice. Jackson’s oeuvre represents a sustained and dedicated enquiry into deconstruction of the historical canon of European painting combined with pop cultural and personal references. Song lyrics, diary notes, half-remembered poems and tattoos are rendered in a fugue state where painting and life coalesce, ultimately creating an ongoing series of disoriented biographical and autobiographical narratives.
Zavier Ellis is the founder and director of CHARLIE SMITH LONDON. He has curated a number of exhibitions internationally, hosting in locations such as Berlin, Frankfurt, Helsinki, Klaipėda, London, Los Angeles, Naples and Rome; and continues to place work in notable collections globally. Known as an acute talent spotter, Zavier has identified and exhibited a number of important young artists directly from art college who have gone on to considerable success with galleries, museums and collectors.
Friday 9th June - Saturday 1st July, 2023
GIANT
OUTDOORS
Daniel Lismore in conversation with Stuart Semple
Sunday 30th April, 2pm - 3pm, GIANT Gallery
Join us for a very special afternoon as multidisciplinary artist and GIANT Gallery founder Stuart Semple talks to Daniel Lismore, artist and living sculpture, who’s exhibition Studio Visit is currently on show at GIANT.
Booking is required and tickets are limited, please follow the link below to book your place.
As a ‘Living Sculpture’, Daniel Lismore has been a prominent fixture on the London Fashion and Art circuits and an activist for human rights and the environment for 20 years, having exhibited his work at major art world events including Art Basel and the Venice Biennale, as well as heavyweight institutions such as the Tate Modern and Tate Britain.
Stuart Semple is a multidisciplinary British artist working across painting, sculpture, happenings, technology and activism. He is well known for his sociologically engaged works that often discuss youth politics, accessibility and democracy.
(this event was originally advertised for Weds 29th March but was rescheduled due to unforeseen circumstances at the time)
TATTY DEVINE Workshops
Saturday 11th March 2023 / 2.00-3.30pm & 4.00-5.30pm
Mini Suffragette Bunting Necklace Workshop
Price: £35
Join Tatty Devine Co-Founder and Managing Director, Rosie Wolfenden MBE for a very special Mini Suffragette Bunting Necklace workshop, inspired by International Women's Day. Learn the techniques and skills needed to make a celebratory necklace in Suffragette colours: choose from an array of brightly coloured, mirrored and glitter acrylic flags, then learn how to hand link five flags of your choice onto a gold or silver-toned chain. After the workshop, it's yours to keep or gift to an inspirational woman in your life. Tickets are limited so book now!
This is a beginner's jewellery making workshop suitable for those who have no experience using pliers. Please wear flat, closed-toe shoes. If you're under 16, you need to bring a responsible adult with you who has also booked a place. Tickets and booking fees are non-refundable and we are unable to transfer tickets to an alternative date. In the unlikely occasion that we need to cancel a workshop, you'll be offered an alternative date or a full refund. We'll always give you as much notice as we can, but can't be responsible for any pre-booked travel and accommodation.
BODY POETIC OPENING RECEPTION 17th February 2023 6:00 - 8pm
with live performance by Rosie Gibbens (7.30pm)
RSVP to gallery@giant.space
Daniel Lismore OPENING RECEPTION 12th January 2023 6:30 - 9pm
Taking over the GIANT Project Space, Lismore has created STUDIO VISIT, a site-specific installation based on the studio environment that is instrumental to his practice, aiming to give visitors a unique insight into the creative process and the development of his work.
Lismore creates elaborate, extravagant, three-dimensional tableaux of figurative sculptures crafted like tapestries; each artwork is created from fragments of items previously worn by the artist, meshing history and futurism whilst reflecting the world in which he exists. His evolution as a living sculpture was fuelled by a childhood growing up in his father’s antique auction house, where historic regalia priceless exquisitely hand-made treasures, artworks, weaponry and suits-of-armour were assembled alongside collectible Star War figures and Star Trek memorabilia.
As a ‘Living Sculpture’, Daniel Lismore has been a prominent fixture on the London Fashion and Art circuits and an activist for human rights and the environment for 20 years, having exhibited his work at major art world locations including Art Basel the Venice Biennale, the Tate Modern and Tate Britain. His touring exhibition ‘Be Yourself, Everyone Else is Already Taken’ opened in February 2022 for Coventry UK City of Culture, at the Herbert Art Gallery and Museum.
Michael Simpson Paintings OPENING RECEPTION 10th November 2022 6 - 9pm
GIANT presents Michael Simpson Paintings, an exhibition of a significant body of work including new and previously unseen Squint paintings. The exhibition presents several new works by the artist, created this year and previously unseen. In many of these, we see the use of a broadened palette, along with more austere architectural forms, where climbing aids are reduced to their most basic geometry.
Paintings is in part a homecoming for the artist, who was born in Dorset and who studied first at Bournemouth College of Art (1958-60) before moving to the Royal College of Art in London (1960-63). Further still, Simpson’s own mother had worked at Bobby’s itself, the building in which GIANT Gallery is now sited.
Michael Simpson (b.1940 Dorset, UK) is an artist whose practice is characterised by a purposely restricted palette and distinctive, artistic vocabulary in which recurring motifs such as benches, squints and confessionals are explored in ongoing series of works. While on one level Simpson’s apparent subject is the infamy of religious history and the politics of belief, these subjective references provide only a subtext for his principal subject: the mechanics of painting.
AIRSHIP ORCHESTRA OPENING RECEPTION Thursday 8th September 19:00--21:00 - The Triangle
AIRSHIP ORCHESTRA
ENESS
8 September – 9 October 2022
GIANT OFFSITE
THE TRIANGLE, BOURNEMOUTH
FOREVER CHANGED OPENING RECEPTION Friday 15th July 18:00--20:00
FOREVER CHANGED
FABIO LATTANZI ANTINORI | RON ARAD | SARAH HARDACRE | MARK JENKINS | HAYDEN KAYS | MISHA MILOVANOVICH | KENNY SCHACHTER | MARK TITCHNER | GAVIN TURK | TIM NOBLE & SUE WEBSTER
Being and Britishness: In Conversation with Sam Jackson and Sandi Robertson 25th June 15:00
Set against the backdrop of the exhibition: Martin Parr, Life's a Beach, and acknowledging art's wider contexts, Jackson and Robertson tease apart notions of gender, race, nationality, and cultural experience as they intersect with our sense and sensibility of British Identity.
Central to their discourse will be an exploration of how Britishness is perceived by the British people, and others, and whether these qualities (or problems) are separate from, or different to, universal human concerns.
Encompassing themes of class, religion, politics, and sex, the dialogue unfolds to allow us all to consider who we are and who we think we are.
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Sandi Robertson is a teacher, artist and writer working with dialogue as a means of deep enquiry into art and culture.
An alumni of the Arts University Bournemouth, and a post-graduate from the University of Exeter, Robertson is a professional communicator with an exceptional understanding of visual language and culture.
Through critique and story-telling, Robertson facilitates beyond the simple acquisition of knowledge, using performative and poetic sensibility to foster and support learning.
Robertson has over twenty years of teaching experience. She is Director and Lead Facilitator at Sees, Speaks, Writes, and instigator of the long-term project Speaking of Seeing on YouTube. Robertson continues to evolve her practice as a living experience of art, working regularly with Stuart Semple Studio.
She lives and works in the south of England.
https://sandirobertson.com
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British artist, Sam Jackson, works in paint, digital media, and print. He graduated from the Royal Academy Schools in 2007 and has since established an international reputation, exhibiting in Berlin, Rome, Frankfurt, Naples, London, New York, L.A, Helsinki and Tokyo, including David Zwirner New York and the Saatchi Gallery London.
Jackson produces work that references our cultural language, creating conflicting yet hauntingly sensitive portraits that teeter between the intimate and the universal. These works depict often anonymous subjects, each embellished with a manic lexicon of signs, symbols, text, and graffiti that resonates with cultural references. Drawing influence from lyrics and literature, art, media, and fashion, Jackson employs this scrawled, subversive layering to erratically tattoo the painting’s surface, thereby instigating an opposition to the loosely rendered, classical visage that underlies his work. This is ‘baroque pop’ in paint, a lavishly discordant aesthetic imbued with punk attitude and Art Brut innocence. Defiant, yet delicate; classic, yet disruptive; rebellious, yet anachronous: Jackson’s work playfully explores our notions of identity on both a personal and cultural level.
In 2021, Jackson presented almost fifty portraits of people with whom he had collaborated, including curators, gallerists, writers, tutors, photographers, filmmakers, fashion designers, event organisers, artists, and collectors. His sitters included Edward Lucie-Smith, Glen Luchford, Paul Gorman, Giles Deacon, Sacha Craddock, Kay Saatchi, Derek Ridgers, Paul Bayley, Christine Coulson, Darryl de Prez and Guinevere van Seenus.
Sam Jackson is represented in the UK by Charlie Smith London and in Germany by Galerie Heike Strelow.
His forthcoming exhibitions include a solo retrospect at Charlie Smith London and Gramercy Park Studios, September 2022, and a solo show with Galerie Isabelle Grounod, Paris, in March 2023.
@samjacksonpainter
http://charliesmithlondon.com/artists/sam-jackson/
GIANT SUMMER WORKSHOPS: Thursday 2nd June & Saturday 4th June 11:30 - 12:30
GIANT hosted the first in the summer season of workshops and events.
This session began with a guided short family friendly tour of the gallery’s current exhibition: Martin Parr, Life’s a Beach.
Following this, participants explored a range of art techniques to create a puppet flying seagull.
ART SCHOOL DISCO: Jimmy Cauty's L-13 Light Industrial Orchestra | Stuart Semple (VJ) | Freeman (DJ) | Hungry Man (DJ) | Fullborr (DJ) | Kenny Mitchell, NYC (DJ) - MARCH 4TH 6:30 - 11:00
Jimmy Cauty (K Foundation / KLF / The Orb) presented a brand new audio visual performance and be joined by guest DJs.
As The K-Foundation, Cauty and Bill Drummond staged a series of seminal actions including the 1994 K Foundation Art Award for Worst Artist of the Year and the K Foundation Burn A Million Quid.
SARAH MAPLE IN CONVERSATION WITH STUART SEMPLE Saturday 5th February 14:00- 15:00
Legendary British artist Sarah Maple will be in Bournemouth holding a talk with Stuart Semple about her latest Solo Exhibition at GIANT "The Opposite of a Feminist".
We are honoured to also be screening 'Sarah Maple’s Sexy Nazi Shark Show', a sitcom created for Sky Arts, in its entirety which will be on to view before and after the event.
NATUREMAX Tour with Paul Carey-Kent - Saturday 18 December at 11.30 and at 14.00.
This Saturday you will have the unique opportunity to have a tour of NATUREMAX with the curator, writer and philosopher Paul Carey-Kent. Something of a much loved legend in the artword, Paul has an impressive career reviewing exhibitions, visiting up to 80 in a month, writing critical texts for leading publications including Art Monthly, Frieze, Elephant, Seisma and STATE plus curating his own shows bringing together and championing artists from the start of their career to those leading the field.
You can read his weekly column for FAD here.
ART SCHOOL DISCO LIVE: Alan McGee | Subliminal Girls | Dead Patrons | FREEMAN Saturday December 11th 7-11pm
Held in the bowls of the former Debenhams behind GIANT, Art School Disco will be a monthly event to see live acts, performances and music in a unique, intimate setting.
The launch event saw legendary music manager Alan McGee play the music that shaped a generation.
Seminal act Subliminal Girls were the forefront of during the boom of the Camden Indie scene of 2000s with classics like “Burn Koko” and their iconic top 20 hit, the cover of Duran Duran's "Hungry Like The Wolf". Relive the glory days for one night only to celebrate their signing to Gigantic Records and the launch of their latest EP "Vanity Project".
NATURELAND SEMINAR & DISCUSSION with Sandi Robertson 27th November 5-6pm
What drives artists to create work about the natural world? How does art convey the magnitude of Nature? Through art, do we find meaning in our environment beyond what we already know?
This talk explored the relationship between Art, Nature and audience, in response to the urgency of environmental crisis and how the natural world can inspire change.
THE CREATIVE ART REBELS WORKSHOP 27th November 2021 4-5pm
Explore the awesome world of printmaking, using natural objects to print textures with a range of recycled papers, card and backgrounds. Learn to make easy print tiles to experiment pattern repeats over prints on drawn elements of an image. Create beautiful pieces of art work to take home.
This was the fourth in a series creative workshops for kids aged 7-11.
TERMITE NOISE CLUB, 9th OCTOBER, 8-11pm
Plastique Fantastique presented Termite Noise Club to call forth the termite queen, to ask questions, to hear other noises, and to converse with other agents, both visible and invisible. There will be noise and performances by Plastique Fantastique, Frankie Roberts, & Benedict Drew.
Plastique Fantastique invite Termite Jobseeker+ to join the club, eat noise, make the nest, hatch the eggs.
We have work to do, we will follow, we will build, it is the way, the best way, the only way.
WE ARE THE LIGHT, 7th AUGUST, 7-11pm
We Are The Light (at the end of the tunnel) is the first of a series of events that will attempt to capture the symbolic potency of this time of global transition and what that will mean for the arts.
As we move from the difficulties of Covid-19 to a new ambiguous reality, the promise of a better world, of social and personal metamorphosis, pushes each of us on. WATL is designed as a beacon of inspiration for those who are seeking to define themselves in this new landscape.
WATL features ‘Shut Down The Club’, a new electronic opera addressing the ravaging of clubland during lockdown, composed by respected producers Warboy & Stewart with a cast of who’s who from current club royalty. The event also hosts a rare live performance by upcoming Norwegian act Steinsdotter and special guest DJs from some of the biggest names in London’s underground party scene.
