Dialogues, Escapes and Escapades
Cerebellum founder and Curator, CHARLOTTE CHW, invites open calls for a new interdisciplinary exhibition
Art has the potential to be the ultimate escapade, and imagination can always offer an alternative reality. Artists can, however, become trapped in the box of their own practice, or alternatively, obsessed with the near impossibility of trying to be original, in a world where everything has probably been done before. This is where responding to someone and something else becomes a liberation: a dialogue rather than a monologue.
Cerebellum: Excappare is an interdisciplinary exhibition about artistic exchange and escape. It is about the freedom of adopting a different route from usual, through exploring the ideas of another. The concept stems from Cerebellum’s 2020 Snail Mail art project during the first deep lockdown, where a group of selected artists sent out small, enigmatic, mailable provocations to anonymous artists’ addresses. Each provided their paired artist with a response.
‘Excappare’ is the Latin root of the words escape and escapade and means literally ‘to get out of one’s cape’. I am fascinated by the way you can hear the sound in ‘Excappare’ and relate it to ‘escape’, but it suggests something far more flamboyant. I am attracted to etymology as a simultaneous abstraction of, and return to, meaning.
The twelve artists involved were selected through a mixture of invitation and open call. They were asked to send an existing artwork of their own, as a provocation. I then paired up artists who worked in different media and sent out the provocations to each artist for them to create a response. I deliberately paired artists to be challenged by provocations of work very different from theirs, without necessarily setting them up for difficulty. My advice on their response was that there was no pressure to be too literal, and that the way they connected to something in the work could be quite tangential.
One artist, for example, told me that their response to what they had been sent was going to take flight from the ”gentle shadows” in the other artist’s work. Another artist taking part, who also took part in the Snail Mail exhibition project, says: “For me, it’s like finding a message in a bottle: an intriguing communication from an initially anonymous stranger, to decode and respond to. I love that challenge, making a reply, constructing and continuing the conversation – communicating.”
To avoid influencing responses, the artists taking part will not be revealed until the exhibition opens. But it’s a deliberately stimulating mix of artists working in different media, with different approaches. There are some artists who are established and some who are earlier in their careers. I think the opportunity to bond and mix with artists from different places and practices, through process, is valuable. With Snail Mail, Cerebellum is celebrating nine years of events, projects and exhibitions, bringing artists together with a primary focus on interdisciplinary exchange. I’m excited to include writing primarily as an exhibited art form in this show.
Open Calls for performances and live art for the opening, and ideas or interventions for a workshop day on Sunday 8 October, are still available. Search for ‘Cerebellum’ on artsjobs.org.uk/events or find us on instagram @Cerebellum_arts.
Cerebellum: Excappare opens at St Andrews Mews, Hastings on Saturday 7 October from 7pm.
We hope you have enjoyed reading this article. The future of our volunteer led, non-profit publication would be far more secure with the aid of a small donation. You can also support local journalism by becoming a friend of HIP. It only takes a minute and we would be very grateful.
Leave a Reply