"It’s a familiar format: a bookfair, some anti-art, a gig, and hands on workshops. But in truth Ante (from the Latin ‘before’) is more than that. It’s about the person we were until we became buried by work (or increasingly, ‘no work’), by shopping, debts,... television and the all the worries and stresses and strains of modern life. So, if like us, you keep promising yourself that you’ll make time to rediscover that lost self, to be more creative, spend more time with friends, meet more people, experience life more fully, but can never quite make it happen, Ante is for you. Ante – or more to the point May Day – is when we collectively say to hell with shopping, with work, with debt, with worrying and with tv! It’s a day when we remind ourselves that a life always promised for tomorrow is a life robbed of today." (Ante blurb, taken from their site (www.ante-art.co.uk))
I took the posters from 'Shape & Situate: Posters Of Inspirational European Women' zine on a trip to Shipley this weekend for the Ante art event, to appear in a mini version of the full exhibition (the posters on the wall were accompanied by a folder [on my zine stall] full of the rest of the posters featured in all 3 issues of the zine).
Thank you to all the contributors to the zine for making the exhibition so great with your amazing work, you're terrific - the A3 posters looked really great in the space. Thank you too to all the amazing people I met on the day, and special thanks to Nick for inviting me to be a part of it all in the first place. Posi vibes all round! It's been a very special weekend indeed, congratulations and thank you to all the organisers.
I have fallen in love with the art work of Ricky Adam, and Lindsey/Pivo of Caged Bird Club as a direct result of this event! It was a treat hanging out with them both (it's so rare you see amazing artwork exhibited and then get a chance to properly talk to the folk that created it).
Above 3 images are of Pivo's work as part of the Caged Bird Club display.
There was so much great work and people there this weekend (besides the above), showcasing so many different projects and skills. Even the work shown by people not personally in attendance (such as Seth Tobocman) struck me.
Hopefully without gushing too much, there was such an overall great uplifting atmosphere of support and creativity.
It was great to see again Cath and James from Footprint, Sarah and Nick of The Print Project, Craig from Salford Zine Library, Rachael & Alice from the Museum Of Lies, and the crew from Knit A Bear Face.
But more than that there were so many people attending the event who came up to me to talk about the Shape & Situate project and exhibition. In particular there was a noticable amount of women from a generation older than myself who wanted to excitedly talk about the women depicted in the posters, wanted to know more, and who were keen to share tales of what the women on the walls and in the zine meant to them. Speaking to these women as they came up to the zine table I had out on the Saturday felt like such an important connective part of the Shape & Situate project that I'd never fully encountered before, yet it's something that's had the greatest impact on me; to speak to women about the women in the posters, and to see what they have meant to them was really powerful, and has made me even more aware of the potential power of visual and artistic social history projects.
The blurb (at the top of this post) that 'advertised' the Ante event is something that really did come true this weekend at the event for me, and I'm so grateful to have been part of something so great and something that has really re-charged me and my brain and my desire to do 'stuff'.
More photos from the weekend can be found on the ANTE flickr pool: http://www.flickr.com/groups/1952523@N23/pool/
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