Helen V. Pritchard

PROJECT CLUB

Project Club is a co-invention of artists Helen Pritchard and Maddy Pethick. During the residency and exhibition at Spacex, Project Club developed and installed a ‘concept lab’ which utilized the gallery space itself as an instructional landscape for the participants. A space arranged to trigger situations for developing both individual projects and collective activities, a space which is instructional.

During the exhibition over 1000 participants contributed to the space. The lab activities were based on ideas of looking, talking, listening, noticing, thinking, arranging, displaying, playing in, measuring, exploring, describing and interrogating space.  Activities ranged from crafty lo-fi stitch-ins, and sound art to the most popular events: the Friday DIY happenings when the gallery was taken over by all ages. Vsisitors joined in activities created by Project Club based on 1960s Fluxus Happenings. One Friday DIY Happening culminated in a ‘silver parade’ which took place throughout the galley with specially fashioned silver costumes, whilst others included bizarre and fun acts like ‘cabbage bowling’ and creating storms in buckets.

images Mandy Barber images 2-6 Maddy Pethick others Helen Pritchard

“It allowed me to dance in the gallery with Peter” Curator Nicola Hood

“The study of art is partly the study of communication. There is a sender, a receiver and a message. The message is similar to a dream. The message is an invitation to common experiences in the mind between the artist and the audience as new depths of meaning are discovered” Ernst Kris

Concept Lab, Artists in residence Spacex, Project Club a co-invention of Helen Pritchard and Maddy Pethick, 2009

The Project Club’s concept lab reveal these instructional space as active, vibrant and perhaps the route to joyful, playful, creativity as it enables creative exchange and dialogue between people.
Read Full Textby Helen Pritchard and Maddy Pethick

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