GHost II

We're Back!

Join us for the Return of GHost!
curated by Sarah Sparkes and Ricarda Vidal

A night of artist films, performances and moving image interventions to celebrate the darkest days of the season and to welcome in the ghosts that inhabit them. With moving image installations around the foyer and belfry and a screening of artist films on a movie-sized screen in the nave.
Plus, as a finale a screening ofMario Bava's 1963 classic, 'I tre volti della paura: La goccia d'acqua’
And, of course, Mulled wine and minced pies!

With (in no particular order): Glenn Church, JoWonder, Geraldine Swayne, Daisy Delaney, Sinead Wheeler, Magnus Irving, Sarah Doyle, Tessa Garland, Lisa Fielding Smith, Gail Burton, Rebecca Feiner, Sam Treadaway, Katja Tukiainen, Sarah Breen Lovett, Calum F Kerr, Anne Charlotte Morgenstein, Andrew Graves-Johnston, Mason Stone, Richard Mansfield, Fernando Cestari, Mikey Georgeson, Reverend Marc Vaulbert de Chantilly, Geoff and the Daughters of Moroni, Miyuki Kasahara, Jo David, Julian Wakeling, Derek Jordan, and David Buckley on the ORGAN

Visit our website for more info: www.host-a-ghost.blogspot.com or join our Facebook group: http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=212861422572&ref=mf#/group.php?gid=117301037117

With thanks to St John’s Church on Bethnal Green, the Institute of Germanic & Romance Studies (University of London), Betting on Shorts, Paul Dillon, Jonathon McKay, Cosimo Trisolini and Intellect Books


Andrew Graves-Johnston


‘The Ghosts of Pete Townsends Guitars’. Glass, 2009
Pete Townsend used to smash his guitar at the end of The Who gigs.- Do objects absorb the spirit of the emotion of what surrounds them in their lifetime? If a guitar that has been played with enthusiasm, passion and feeling, will the guitar absorb those feelings? These pieces made in Pate de Vere try to capture and reflect the emotions absorbed during the life of the instrument.
Shows -2009 Glass Echoes, The Crypt Gallery, London U.K., 2009 Summer Exhibition, SW1 Gallery, London U.K., UnArted. The Black Gardenia, Soho, London, U.K.


Anne Charlotte Morgenstein


A life size face with a worried expression is incorporated to a wall, a presence, an absence and traces left by activities within a structure. The face becomes part of the structure in which it is integrated and personifies it as if something was felt in such strong way that it needed to get out and be expressed.
Anne- Charlotte is a regular performer at the House of Fairy Tales, recent shows include ‘Bricks’ at Area 1

Calum F. Kerr
‘No John Doe's in St John’, Audio Performance/Installation, 2009, Image Title: Dr John + Dr John
Disembodied voices can be heard in the headphones up in the belfry, each relates to 'famous' figures named John who are now deceased. There are twelve in all. Their presence was recorded within this church and now repeats. Some of these Johns were obscure in their lifetime, some were undoubtedly popular. Here they find unison with the multitude of anonymous dead. Bio: Is Calum F. Kerr? a) a performance artist b) a rodeo clown c) a man in the dark


Daisy Delaney

'Fumes Descending a Staircase' : No 1” 2009
Someone with smoke in their eyes, is in a smog-filled room, trying to find a revving engine, which isn’t there...
Daisy Delaney has recently exhibited in Trickle Down Theory, Helsinki, Finland ; Dissolving Cube at the Portman Gallery, and has been commissioned to produce the Art Car for Liverpool Biennial 2010.


Fernando Cestari

‘Untitled’ 2009 – size varies with installation
This work is about image dis­tor­tion. It is about how the media such as Reli­gion and Pol­i­tics present images and how the view­ers per­ceive it. Images are some­times manip­u­lated in order to allure the viewer cre­at­ing an illu­sion, a spell in order to enchant them. Belief is the word.
Biography: 2009 Cen­tral St Martin’s Col­lege of Art and Design Degree Show — “Untitled”(Hope), 2008 Riv­ing­ton Gallery group show — Secret Lives — Purgatory, 2008 Isling­ton Arts Cen­tre group show — Uncom­mon Ground — The New Church


Gail Burton

"Crossbones" 2009, 2.16 minutes , Colour and sound
Crossbones: an unconsecrated graveyard where from medieval times prostitutes and other marginalised people have been buried. Now, some of the bodies have been exhumed and the ground lies derelict. But a shrine to the memory of these long dead people has emerged on the fence around the ground. Ephemeral memorials of ribbon and paper remember the thousands buried here, and mark more recent deaths, including the murdered Ipswich prostitutes. DUST, solo show at Hovel, London, 2009, OVER Banner March, part of 'Good News', Alexandra Palace, group show of site specific and performance art, 2009The Sky is Always Blue, The Grass is Always Green, solo show for Showflat, London, 2009



THE CROSSBONES CEMETERY


Crossbones ritual, lead by John Crow - image Katie Nichols
Crossbones - A shrine has been created at the gates to the site of a post-medieval burial ground in Redcross Way, Southwark. This ancient outcasts’ graveyard, also known as ‘the Single Woman’s churchyard’ – a reference to the ‘Winchester Geese’, prostitutes licensed by the Bishop of Winchester to work in South London was closed in 1853, described as being ‘completely overcharged with dead’. In the early 1990s it was partly dug up during work on the Jubilee Line Extension. Museum of London archaeologists removed 148 skeletons, an estimated 1% of 15,000 whose bodies are still buried there. GHost asks you to add your names to a petition requestiong a memorial garden at this site to remember and honour the outcast
http://www.crossbones.org.uk/#/friends-petition/4530753744

Geraldine Swayne

The Go-Between Again" 2009, film, 5mins
A childhood memory of another fictional child's dramatised trauma,
re-enacted verbatim, by blue-screened supernatural beings in a museum doll's house. Very saucy.
Ideally I want my work to have an uneasy, otherworldly emotional charge, as well as be humorous. I change medium quite often, between painting, film and music since my back-ground was a training in fine-art followed by years in film post-production. I also love the terror of live audience feed-back that playing improvised music provides.
Geraldine Swayne made the world's first Imax film from super-8 home movies, entitled "EastEnd", in 1999. She is represented by L-13 gallery, Farringdon, London and ia a member of "krautrock" band Faust who just completed a USA tour, and will be playing at ATP in the Spring.


Glenn Church

"Fragility" 2009, film 5.33mins
Utilizing small scale models, filmed with miniature cameras, ‘Fragility’ analysis the human condition of isolation, (both mental and geographic), emotional breakdown and separation. The notion of ‘home’ becomes a panopticon for self reflection and voyeuristic self destruction. The inhabitant has become a viewer from the outside, a ghost looking into their own surroundings.
My work combines a passion for sound and its visual counterpart. I am interested in how these two disciplines combine to create a ‘total’ and immersive psychological experience. After being born and raised in the UK, in 2006 I moved to North America living in New York, and currently in Salem, Massachusetts
Recent Exhibitions: Human Emotion Project. (Globally Exhibited Video Installation Project) 2008 - 2010 , 'Infrastructure'. Catskill Art Society, NY. February 28 - April 12, 2009
Metaphors For the Void' Catskill Art Society, NY. February - March 2008



Jo David


From Beyond, 2009, analogue video transfer, installation, Sound: collaboration with Kit Poulson
In 2009, Jo David co-curated, with Rachael House, the critically reviewed The Peckham Experiment, London; exhibited in Kiss of a Lifetime, Manchester & London; and made a collaboration for Mark McGowan’s Village Idiot, Peckham Square, London. He is founder and co-director of artist-run Space Station Sixty-Five.


JoWonder


'6 Days Goodbye Poems Of Ophelia', film/ interactive - 5min 7 sec - ongoing work
Contemporary bacterial version of the pre-Raphaelite Ophelia lies in the lake oblivious to the poetry that people are leaving for her on an answer phone.

Jo is particularly interested in the possibility that aesthetic involvement can increase interest in science and stimulate the mind to understand more about the complexity of life. The Ophelia interactive video incluides a contribution from well known auther and poet Kim Morrissey. Recently Jo created a special interactive animation for a fairy tale ball for Marina Warner. This piece is still ongoing and she welcomes more answer-phone comments to the dead Ophelia please leave messages on: 02071839366


Julian Wakeling

GHost images from Hostings I and Hostings II will be available in two publications that also contain the texts from the two events.


Katja Tukiainen


‘The Blythe as a Moon’, video animation, 2006, loop
Katja Tukiainen is a Finnish artist who works with the narration. Her mediums are painting, painting installation, drawings series and moving image. In her art the innocence and seduction are combined. "As Blythe" is a drawing animation about the allure of the gaze.
Katja Tukiainen holds the Master of Fine Arts degree from the Academy of Fine Arts Finland. Tukiainen is an acclaimed artist whose works have been exhibited in Finland and around the world. She has participated in artist-in-residence programs in Italy, New York and Japan.

Lisa Fielding Smith

“Milk” 1.5 Min. Colour Digital Video, 2009
A woman sits on a white sheet forming a makeshift backdrop for the frame of the film. She wears a black dress of which the hem forms a circle. The dress is ‘soiled’ by a spillage of what one presumes to be milk. The woman is sitting with her arms held outward at each side of her body. After a pause, she moves her hands closer together in slow motion. She seems to be ritualistically summonsing the milk to rise up out of the dress and into the sky (footage is reversed). As soon as it does, the woman’s hands revert back into position outstretched at either side of her body until the milk is gone. The dress is ‘cleansed’ and the film ends.
Graduated from Goldsmiths in 2001 with an MA in Fine Art. Exhibited widely including exhibitions at Danielle Arnaud, One in the Other and The RCA Gulbenkian Galleries.

Magnus Irving

Pergus and the Ectoplasm, film, 2001 , 3mins
Maker of things, performer, poet, film-maker, editor, wayfarer, romantic and captain of a pretend yacht.
2007 Séance with spiritual presences and ectoplasm. Margo Forbes at Port Eliot Festival, 2009 Let’s Murder the Moonshine. Painting performance to celebrate 100th anniversary of the Futurist manifesto. Goldsmiths College. London, The Deadman Talks for G Host, Hosting 1 at The Senate Rooms Oct 2009, London University.

Mikey Georgeson


‘Ghostpital’ film, 2.36 mins
This film is part of my ongoing dialogue with subtitles made all the more resonant by life long moderate hearing loss now dwindling further. For me is about suggestion and ambiguity. Turning the movie into a series of pictures creates a new story about being alone late at night watching the telly with the sound off and feeling jittery. My music for the film includes the spectral dislocated voice of Kurt Schwitters and refers to running away from Hitchcock’s dreams. Recent shows, My Magic Life – solo exhibition Sartorial Contemporary Art Recent Performances as Mister Solo at the Whitechapel Gallery Legends of Circumstance – group show White Cross Gallery June 2009

Miyuki Kasahara
’Se Ga Ki’ 2009,
Miyuki will give away boxes which have “ hungry ghosts” in. People can only see shadow of the ghosts at the exhibition. Miyuki will be ask other people to to sign a promise to look after the ghosts and take them home to feed them well, otherwise they may eat everyone. The result will be on http://segaki.blogspot.com/ Exploring identity, personal memory, and personal myths in people and herself, Miyuki's work has been widely exhibited in the British Isles and abroad. Exhibitions include: Unconfined, Melina Mercouri Cultural Center, Athens in Greece (2009) - Message to me 2012, Commissioned by Shoreditch Trust, Supported by Great Britain Sasakawa Foundation, London (2008) - Trigger, Art Gallery X, Sponsored by Nihombashi Takashimaya Co.Ltd, Tokyo (Solo exhibition 2007)

Rebecca Feiner

EXHUMATION video loop ( approx. 3mins)
The most powerful ghosts to haunt any conscious human being are the ones we carry with us in our minds. To survive, we suppress memories and choose to forget. That is until our senses are unexpectedly triggered by an object, a place, a smell or sound.In Exhumation, Rebecca Feiner explores a memory, and a ghost of violence, bought on by a simple pain of glass found in a window of a domestic setting. Dragging the ghost from the cellar of the mind, exposing it to the gaze of light, releases it’s brutality. A new dwelling place for the ghost is created that is ephemeral, intangible and dreamlike.The places we are told are the most safe, marriage, family, childhood, and home, are statistically the greatest source of violence, madness and dysfunction. It is here we find the source of all our ghosts

Reverend Marc Vaulbert de Chantilly
The Reverend Marc Vaulbert de Chantilly wanders a grassy road before the feet of the Rose of the World.

Richard Mansfield


In the Shadows 2009 3.30mins
In the shadows is a poem about souls dwelling in an abandoned and isolated old house. The film is narrated by Richard Mansfield and was dreamt up whilst staying in Ghent where the live footage was shot. Silhouette puppets were uses to create the lonely spirits.Biog; Richard Mansfield has been making puppet films for 5 years and has had his films screened across Europe the US and recently on ITV4. He focuses on ghostly goings on and dark fairy tales. He uses Marionettes and Silhouette Shadow puppets to bring his stories to life

Sam Treadaway


‘Rest for the Wicked or EXXit for a Ghost’
This piece draws a comparison between the insomniac and ghosts, traditionally believed to be caught between two realms, unable to find release in death. An exit box is used to contain a mixture of eight herbs used within the treatment of insomnia - hypericum, passion-flower, hops, chamomile, melissa, lavender, skull cap and valerian root. The dried herbs, soaked in essential oils of the same type, create a combined scent, subtly diffused by the heat of the light bulb. Connections between sleep and death are well documented. An analogy is formed between these states of temporal transition and a basic architectural interaction - the use of doors - as represented by the exit-box.

Group shows have included Wood at the Stroud House Gallery and Forget Me (curated by Gristle Mountain) Commissions have included works for the playwright Polly Stenham and the actress Sophia Myles.


Sarah Breen Lovett

tunnel01 – film
Lovett is an abstract film and installation artist. Her abstract films employ the the effects of light, form and texture for experimental experiential films. Her installation work stems from the enquiry of the medium of digital film and light as an architectural material. A material which can be used to create architectural space, through both expanded cinema and interactive installation formats.
EXHIBITIONS BY INVITATION + COMPETITIONS : 2009 ROME: Abstracta Cinema Festival, Film :2009 LONDON: VISUAL DEFLECTIONS Festival, Film :2009 dublin: NOW WHAT interactive INSTALLATION: 2009 AUSTRALIA: Royal Institute of Architects Design Medal Finalist, Design :


Sarah Doyle

‘Opheliyah’ animation 2007

An animation showing all of the shots redrawn in felt tip of the R&B singer Aaliyah underwater in the last video she made before her death in 2001The main part of the video shows Aaliyah on a boat and on a beach, however there are a few underwater shots of her in the video, which had always struck me as very beautiful and haunting, these are individually hand drawn and animated.Recent shows: Chisenhale Live Art Residency, Chisenhale Gallery, London, UK 2009, Nunhead Windows Project, Nunhead Arts Week 2009, London, UK, Kiss Of A Lifetime, Rogue Artists' Project Space, Manchester, UK


Sinead Wheeler

'Looking around and expecting to see Steven', 2009
35mm slide installation

Using the tropes of ghost photography and structural film, the slide installation 'Looking around...' mourns a departed friend. Taken to extreme, nostalgia becomes a pathology - an intractable loop - and the ghost in the machine will not be stilled.
Group shows, 2009: 'Exhibit One', The Old Police Station, New Cross; 'It's Over, That's It, Goodbye', The Duke of Clarence; 'The Pleasure is all Mine', AutoItalia South East.

Tessa Garland



‘No 1 Wilwyne Crescent’ Video, 4:3, 5.55 mins.
No 1 Wilwyne Crescent takes the viewer on a short walk around a suburban model house where a surreal and other worldly force lurks within the confines of the greenhouse. Early science fiction films such as ‘The Day of the Triffids’ and ‘Revenge of the Bodysnatchers’ that play with notions of the everyday and collective fear have influenced the work.
Tessa Garland is the co curator and organiser for the international moving image event ‘Visions in the Nunnery’, The Nunnery Gallery, London Tessa Garland has shown her work in solo and group exhibitions in the UK and Internationally for many years. She has recently produced a series of short artist films which have been well received, most recently at the MACVAL Contemporary Art Museum, Paris and at The Whitechapel Gallery, London.

The Daughters of Geoff – Sarah Sparkes and Ricarda Vidal present, David Buckley on the organ and Derek Jordan singing unaccompanied
image - detail of 'don't you want to see me' construction with infinity, Sarah Sparkes 2009