An international exchange exhibition featuring selected artists from Studio 44 (Stockholm, SWEDEN) and neo:artists (Greater Manchester, UK). The first exhibition in Stockholm in October 2017 will showcase artworks and works in progress, alongside sketchbooks and digital documentation as the project continues to develop into a final group show in Manchester in September 2018.

These two groups of artists from artist run spaces, based in Stockholm and Greater Manchester, have over the past 14 months been engaged in various forms of dialogue, collaboration and parallel directions in research. They have been considering how as artists and European citizens, we interact with our physical environment and the effect this has on the larger world, physically and metaphysically, especially after this past tumultuous year in politics.

‘Corduroy’, a project in two parts, will reveal how artists from both countries attempt to grapple with these ideas employing a diverse range of processes, techniques and materials, considering our past, present and future through historic art practices such as oil painting, drawing, printmaking and embroidery to modern day video, digital photography, spoken word poetry and found art objects.

Brian Neish (neo:artists, Greater Manchester) and Helena Norell (Studio 44, Stockholm) collaborated for this show due to their joint interest in painting, abstraction and feelings associated with the passing of Time. They decided to keep the working process simple and to adopt a few rules to bind them together, and to ensure the subsequent pieces had elements in common.

Helen was inspired by the punch cards from Almgrens silk factory in Stockholm where they ring over the looms. Each punch card represents a row in the fabric. Following on from this, Brian suggested working on pieces that would be at the same size ratio as the original punch cards (1:5) and that these pieces would incorporate circles in some way to reflect the essence of the cards.

We agreed to adopt the same size ratio of the punch cards with circles and the same title for our pieces. In all other regards, we gave ourselves the freedom to interpret the challenge in our own ways and make Art that reflected our personal and expressive needs. Here you can see the result: both what they seem to have in common and perhaps even more interesting, how different they are too …

‘CORDUROY PART 1 – ARE WE IN PROGRESS?’ WILL BE OPEN TO THE PUBLIC AT BOTH STUDIO 44 AND ABF STOCKHOLM, OCTOBER 2017.

Participating artists are Alyson J Barton, Sandra Bouguerch, Mariana Ekner, Louise Garman, Emma Goransson, Christina Gothesson, Bethan Hamilton, Maggie Hargreaves, Suzanne Harulow, Susanne Hogdahl Holm, Geraldine Hudson, Thaleia Kavvada, Brian Neish, Sebastian Nordbeck, Helena Norell, Angela O’Mara, Steph Shipley, Jason Simpson, Nina Wedberg Thulin and Denis Whiteside.