The Glasgow School of Art

MINIMAL/POOR/PRESENT: Esther Ferrer with Fritz Welch, Louise Ahl, Jessica Higgins, Sandra Johnston and Pester & Rossi

6 - 10pm Monday 23 April 2018

The Pearce Institute

Free but ticketed - book via Eventbrite

MINIMAL/POOR/PRESENT brings together a solo performance by Esther Ferrer and four new commissions by UK-based artists loosely inspired by her work. The event’s title draws from adjectives used by Ferrer to describe her work, which she believes to be at its strongest when she uses primarily her own body, keeping props and other elements to a minimum.

FULL PROGRAMME:

Pester & Rossi, Infinity Walk. Walking performance from the neighbourhoods we live in to The Pearce Institute, Govan. 4pm start, arriving at The Pearce Institute at 6pm.

MCLEOD HALL, from 6pm:

Esther Ferrer, Tracks, Spaces, Sounds. Performative action from the late 1960s.

Louise Ahl and Fritz Welch, I Never Perform As Me. An improvisation utilizing movement, objects, voice and incidental instruments.

Jessica Higgins, When One Says To Another. Performance piece for an ensemble, performed by Jamie Bolland, Gordon Douglas, Jessica Higgins and Maria Cecilia Tedemalm.

Sandra Johnston, Considerations on Infinity. Solo improvised performance.

Produced by Glasgow International. Additional support from The Glasgow School of Art and the Cultural Office of the Embassy of Spain in London.

More information here

ARTISTS' BIOGRAPHIES:

Esther Ferrer is best known for her performances, her principal form of artistic expression since 1965, both as a soloist and as a member of the pioneering experimental music and performance art group ZAJ (formed in 1964). Ferrer has performed across Europe (Yugoslavia, Poland, Germany, Italy, France, Switzerland, Belgium, Hungary, Holland, Denmark, Norway, Slovakia, Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Spain, etc.), as well as in Cuba, the United States, Mexico, Japan, Thailand, Korea and Palestine. In 1999 Ferrer was one of two Spanish artists chosen to represent Spain at the Venice Biennial. In 2009, the Spanish Ministry of Culture awarded her the National Fine Arts Prize.

Ruby Pester and Nadia Rossi have been working collaboratively across Scotland and internationally since 2008 under the collaborative artist name Pester & Rossi. As Pester & Rossi, their practice derives from visual art and leads to creating live art, sculpture, installation, public interventions and collaborations in response to people and places.

Ruby Pester and Nadia Rossi live in Glasgow and work on a range of projects including previously as part of the artist collective NOWNOW and more recently as part of the artist band Fallopé & the Tubes. Pester & Rossi are collaborative in nature, hosting public events and workshops, often working with young people to inform their practice.

Recent projects include: Lunar Campout (Jupiter Artland, Edinburgh), Inaugural Children’s Procession(Hospitalfield Arts, Arbroath), PAULINE (Custom House Lane, Edinburgh Arts Festival), Good Fortune (Open House Festival Launch, Laurieston Arches, Glasgow), Inflato - Optical Image Intensifier (Look Again Festival, RGU, Aberdeen), Balancing Acts (Outskirts Festival, Platform, Glasgow), Bodyssey Odyssey (Baltic 39, Highbridge, Newcastle), Gobby on Tour (Supernormal Festival, Oxfordshire), Bust Out (Glasgow International Festival, Lillie Art Gallery, Milngavie), Creature Comforts (Suttie Arts Space, Aberdeen, Royal Infirmary Aberdeen) and Actualizer Pro Wireless 8000 (The Red Shed, BBC Scotland). 

Louise Ahl is a Glasgow-based artist originally from Sweden, making experimental and choreographic performance work. She creates both solo and collaborative multi-art-form pieces under the guise of Ultimate Dancer.

Louise makes work around the metaphysical and mystical, using movement, voice, light, sonics and language. Her work has been shown across the UK (including, but not limited to Southbank Centre and BALTIC Centre of Contemporary Art), Ireland, Germany, France, USA and Australia and has been supported through Creative Scotland, Arts Council England and the Swedish Arts Grants Committee.

Her work has been commissioned by Dance4 (‘Intercourse’), Edinburgh Art Festival (‘Edelweiss, Edelweiss...') and Tramway (‘Holy Smoke’). Louise was a New Associated Artist at Yorkshire Dance in 2012 and a Tramway Associated Artist in 2015/16. She is the 2017/18 recipient of the Starter Artist award through the National Theatre of Scotland.

Fritz Welch is determined to stretch the escalator of possibilities into the bloodshot eye of results. He makes installations and plays in various bands, noise units and improvising ensembles. Welch often collaborates with performers and choreographers. His working methods hover around and examine various interconnected cultural concerns, that presently include artificial intelligence, 1960s radical print publications such as The Rebel Worker, the depiction of the monstrous human in comics, and the ever present quagmire of government corruption. Welch was a founding member of Asparagus Piss Raindrop. He has recently performed in the quasi-shamanic ‘Holy Smoke’ by Ultimate Dancer and continues to do Maarten Seghers’ theatre work ‘O’. His first exhibition Buying Time for Future Membership was at A/C Project Room NYC in 1996. A longtime Brooklynite of Texas origins, he is now based in Glasgow.

Jessica Higgins is an artist living in Glasgow. She works in sculpture, performance and writing. Recent exhibitions include After Hours, 16 Nicholson St. Glasgow (solo, 2017); Sic, Glasgow Project Room (with Owen Piper, 2016); Grab a Chair, Flinch, The Glue Factory, Glasgow (group, 2016), Settling Up Some Of Things, Many Studios, Glasgow (group, 2016). She has performed for Murmur, Common, Manchester (October 2017); Comfortable on a Tightrope, Sounds From the Other City, Salford (May 2017); Stoke a Few Lulling Cinders... at Celine Gallery, Glasgow (August 2016); and Spring/Summer Open Weekend, Hospitalfield House, Arbroath (March 2015). Guilding, a novella and collection of quasi-essays was published by Publication Studio London in April 2017. She is 1/9th of Good Press, a volunteer-led-unfunded-informal-organisation dedicated to the promotion and production of independent artist publications and projects; and one half of Museums Press, a publisher of art for leisure (est. 2009) and its new subsidiary, A Plume, which publishes writing by artists twice in a year, and an annual (est. 2017).

Sandra Johnston is a visual artist from Northern Ireland active internationally since 1992, working predominantly in the areas of site-responsive performance and installation. Johnston’s performances often involve exploring the aftermath of social and historical violence through actions that exist as forms of testimony and empathetic encounter. Since 2002, teaching and research has been an important part of her creative practice developed through several academic posts, including: AHRC Research Fellow at the Ulster University, investigating issues of ‘trauma of place’, (2002-2005), ‘Ré Soupault’ Guest Professor at the Bauhaus University, Germany (2007-2008), Lecturer Time-Based Art, Ulster University (2005-2012), and currently Course Leader of the BxNU MFA at Northumbria University, England. In addition, she increasingly works outside of institutions developing workshop processes based on improvisation and disruptions of rationalizing/binary thinking, as a means of evolving circumstances of individual and group attentiveness. Several artworks have developed through intensive collaborative processes, notably two long-standing partnerships with artists Alastair MacLennan and Dominic Thorpe. In addition, Johnston has been committed throughout her career to initiating and supporting the development of several artist-run collectives and networks.