Tag: Touchstones Rochdale

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Announcing: Hybrid Futures Symposium

Hybrid futures logo

Friday 10 May 2024 10.00am – 4.45pm
The Old Fire Station, University of Salford & Salford Museum and Art Gallery

What are the environmental issues currently facing museum collections, art galleries and artists? 

Is it possible to make your work more sustainable in the visual arts sector? 

How can arts organisations and their local communities work together to influence change?

Is there the potential to test ideas and new ways of working in order to create a robust and effective model to change the way that galleries should operate in the future?

Join the Hybrid Futures partners, artists, commissioners, funders, community members and consultants for conversation and activity as we share our learning and explore together concrete actions our sector can take to create enduring and effective models of sustainable practice for galleries and museums.

Get updates on the Hybrid Futures Symposium programme and book here: www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/hybrid-futures-making-showing-collecting-art-in-a-time-of-climate-crisis-tickets-837365973167

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Climate Impact Study of First Hybrid Futures Exhibition Assessed

Hybrid Futures Climate Case Study: Leviathan: From the Forest to the Sea exhibition at Touchstones, Rochdale 3 June- 12 August 2023

Leviathan: From the Forest to the Sea opened at Touchstones Rochdale featuring the 8th film in Shezad Dawood’s Leviathan Cycle, plus a series of physical artworks – was the first of the Hybrid Futures branded exhibitions to open. 

As part of the Hybrid Futures project, staff at Touchstones and the team at Shezad’s studio collected as much data as they could about the energy, transport and material use associated with the exhibition. This information was then analysed by Danny Chivers, the Environmental Advisor to the project, to see what could be learned about the climate impact of the show. 

Read the headline results in this pdf.

Read more about Hybrid Futures and sustainabilty here.

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Artists and Sustainability – Shezad Dawood

A still image from Leviathan Episode 8 showing a young indigenous person in traditional dress and face paint looks into the camera. A caption included on the image reads: 'It reached the sacred alter, It reached the sacred alter".

Every month, Castlefield Gallery publishes a Sustainability Spotlight which focuses on one of the artists they are working with.  It looks at their work and how it might relate to climate change.

Hybrid Future artist Shezad Dawood was featured recently and you can read his thoughts here:  www.castlefieldgallery.co.uk/news/spotlight-artists-and-sustainability-shezad-dawood/

“There really is a role to play for artists, galleries and art spaces to connect with and support real-world change. Not just through best practice, but by stepping out of our comfort zones and working collaboratively with individuals and collectives from other disciplines and the wider public.”  Artist Shezad Dawood

A newly acquired work by Shezad Dawood will be shown at The Grundy along with a new commission by RA Walden as part of Lightpool from 20 October 2023.

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Check out the films and critical writing commissioned for Hybrid Futures

A still from episode 8 of Leviathan, shows an South American indigenous man, pounding a tree with his fist, looking up at it.

“We hear a lot more talk about Indigenous knowledge, alternate cosmologies but this was trying to locate it and to think it through as a practical as well as philosophical collective imagining of the ways we could try things differently from a social, cultural and natural perspective.” Artist Shezad Dawood on the making of Episode 8 of his Leviathan Cycle

A series of films and critical writing that explore the Hybrid Futures exhibitions programme can be found in the exhibitions section under the relevant artist and exhibition.  There are also recordings and other assets that accompany some of our past events programme.

Watch: Parham Ghalamdar and Jessica El Mal discuss The Poetics of Water at Castlefield Gallery

Read: Desmond Bullen reviews The Poetics of Water for Northern Soul

Read: Maja Lorkowska reviews The Poetics of Water for Creative Tourist

Watch: Shezad Dawood discusses Leviathan: From the Forest to the Sea at Touchstones Rochdale

Read: Ella Otomewo reviews Leviathan: From the Forest to the Sea for Corridor 8

Watch: Leviathan: From the Forest to the Sea – More-Than-Human Collaborations Panel Discussion

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