Name: Opening Event - Small Commissioning Program
Start: 2017-03-30T18:00:00+01:00
End: 2017-03-30T21:00:00+01:00
Location: Hotel Elephant

Opening Event - Small Commissioning Program 

Hotel Elephant was established in 2009 as a not for profit company to provide space for Arts, Culture and Enterprise in Southwark. Hotel Elephant was founded by local artist and long term resident, Reuben Powell. Since 2009, Hotel Elephant has provided 57,000 sqft of studio, exhibition and education space across 6 meanwhile use buildings in the Elephant & Castle. In addition to Spare Street, Hotel Elephant currently provides studio space for 70 artists and makers in two meanwhile use spaces in Southwark.Spare Street is a new street dedicated to Creative Enterprise in the Elephant & Castle, London. In July 2016, Spare Street opened to the public for the first time, seeing Hotel Elephant more than double its workspace provision in Southwark. The first permanent Creative Enterprise hub in the Elephant & Castle, Spare Street is made up of five newly refurbished, glazed fronted railway arches. At Spare Street Hotel Elephant provides a total of 8,750 sqft of workspace including a public space & cafe across all five arches. At Spare Street we have a total of 24 workspaces dedicated to recent graduates, from artists, designer-makers and start-up creative businesses. With space for over 80 Creative Entrepreneurs, Spare Street is South London's newest entrepreneurial community. Spare Street has been named by Hotel Elephant after Austin Osman Spare, an Edwardian portrait artist who lived and exhibited locally until his death in 1956.

Hotel Elephant

Please join us to celebrate the success of Hotel Elephant's first Small Commissioning Program on Thursday 30th March.
Six New Artworks Commissioned from Emerging Graduate Artists
Opening Event: Thursday 30th March, 6pm - 9pm
Exhibition Open: 30th March - 18th April
Open: Monday - Sunday 10am - 6pm
Events: 6th, 13th & 20th April, 7pm onwards
Free entry
Hotel Elephant is pleased to announce the winners of our first Small Commissioning Program. This program has commissioned six new pieces of work to be made by recent graduate artists; Anthi Kougia, Mafalda Jacinto, Jules Varnedoe, Karolina Magnusson, Leon Platt, Tanya Fryer, Tim Alexander and Valerie Savchits. These new works will be exhibited at Hotel Elephant’s Spare Street gallery and public space between 30th March and 20th April 2017.
Hotel Elephant’s Small Commissioning Program has been funded through Southwark Council’s Arts Grants scheme and forms part of Hotel Elephant’s wider Creative Enterprise Program. The Small Commissioning Program was open to artists who have graduated in last three years and the successful applicants will receive £500 towards creating the new work, along with an exhibition at Hotel Elephant.
Emily Woodhouse, Director and Curator at Hotel Elephant said “We are delighted with the response to our first small commissioning program for recent graduates. We received over 40 applications spanning a vast selection of practices, all were of a very high standard! This really underline for us that not only is there a wealth of talent graduating from Universities each year, but that opportunities such as this play a vital role in helping to establish artist careers”
The exhibition will showcase a vast array of works featuring textile, video, sculpture, neon, abstract painting, performative and participatory events:
Anthi Kougia and Mafalda Miranda Jacinto will produce a performative event: TRAGEDY on the evening of the 6th April. Playing with the idea of being storage containers by setting an unexpected and absurd environment - not really knowing if it is theatre or if it is magic. They would say: always both!
Jules Varnedoe has a research – based practice and will be creating a video installation and accompanying event on the 13th April. Using computer - game creation software, he draws connections between cross generational objects found in the worlds longest archaeological site (the Thames riverbed) and fossilised organisms along the Jurassic coast, Dorset.
Karolina Magnusson and Leon Platt’s process is socially engaged, bordering on democratic. On the 20th April, Karolina and Leon will produce a site-specific screening event, Where does the art lie? which considers the historical and conceptual significance of the Café/Salon environment. Their aim is that participants in the work will be listed as collaborators and receive a version of the final work to own.
Tanya Fryer is a topographical painter and textile artist. She will be translating her yearlong study of the Thames, as seen from Southbank onto fabric, using screen print and hand embroidery.
City dweller and artist Tim Alexander tries to make sense of the complex relationship we have with our built urban environment. His piece: Beyond the White Noise, is a site-specific piece taking the Draper estate as his source of inquiry.  The Draper estate was the first to be built in the Elephant & Castle area as part of the post war regeneration programme of the late 1950’s – the same area which, in 2017 is undergoing another huge regeneration program.
Born to a Russian-speaking family near the Baltic Sea in Latvia, Valerie Savchits uses a wide array of materials and techniques - from oil paintings and graffiti to neon installations and spray painted sculptures. Her work explores ideas of identity and reversed aesthetics as well as issues and struggles of a post-soviet generation.
The exhibition and accompanying events are free to attend, but booking may be required for some events. Please visit our website for more details.

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Opening Event - Small Commissioning Program

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