February-March Newsletter: it's happening
The first reviews of Midlands exhibitions are live and our experiments in funding since 2020 have yielded opportunity...
I’m writing this on the first properly warm day of the year after spending yesterday exploring the coastline where I now live in North Northumberland. It’s a long way from the Fylde Coast of home and I’m enjoying unfamiliar geological features like cliffs while not enjoying the cold wet sea-fog known locally as a haar. I’m also writing this in first person rather than as a cryptic representation of the Corridor8 team as a whole; twelve arms, myriad haircuts and six accents. This is because we’ve recently made some decisions about what to do with our increasingly solid foundation after five years of experimenting with how to run the organisation.
From now on each Regional Editor will have the option of commissioning independently of Supported Content every month or so. This will enable explorations of artistic and cultural activity outside of funded organisations, in the form of features or opinion pieces that will supplement our stock-in-trade of reviews and interviews. This newsletter will also be written by a different Editor each month, bringing a different regional perspective.
This is made possible by all the organisations who have partnered with us on Supported Content commissions since 2020, taking a chance on a model borne out of necessity (and some belligerence) and understanding that critical writing is valuable in itself. Our paying Substack subscribers are also providing a much-needed ground to build on in our mission to document, support and sustain arts ecologies across the North and now Midlands of England, in spite of everything.
With that said, our last essay for paid subscribers came from our newest board member, author, editor and advocate for the ‘weird north’, Alex Niven, reflecting on how experiences of contemporary art from his childhood in Northumberland trouble our received ideas about where experimental and innovative creative work happens. Subscribe to read Radical, Generative, Affirmatively Bizarre Margins.
Round up of our reviews, features and interviews:
Street Sellers: Lubaina Himid’s Women in Print Residency, Artlab Contemporary Print Studios, Preston by Harpreet Kaur
Pippa El-Kadhi Brown: Stranger Skies, Holden Gallery, Manchester by Laura Biddle
Amy Williams: ‘Progressing with Paper’, Cumbria, by Iona Glen
Keith Grant: Elemental Nature, The Atkinson, Southport by Kirsty Jukes
Motunrayo Akinola: Knees Kiss Ground, Bonington Gallery, Nottingham Trent University, Nottingham by Jade Foster
Tina Dempsey and Tracy Hill: Grounding, Grundy Art Gallery, Blackpool by Anne Waggot Knott
Reciprocal relationships: PROFORMA’s artist residency toolkit, PROFORMA, Manchester by Natalie Bradbury
Team News:
Yorkshire Regional Editor Ben Barra is part of LAX, a new programming collective in Leeds who are launching with Musters In Siaraches by Jack Pell at FIIK Studios, 28 Cross Stamford Street, Leeds, LS7 1BA. Through the green doors behind Billions Lounge. The preview is on 14 March 6-9pm. Click here to find out more.
At Berwick Film & Media Arts Festival which runs 27-30 March Associate Editor Laura Harris is giving a reading as part of ‘Available Light’ by Morgan Quaintance and Managing Editor Lauren Velvick is delivering a writing workshop as part of the Festival’s Early Career Critics programme.
Love and solidarity from Lauren and the Corridor8 team x