Machine? Machine! - Camden Art Centre
Type
Schools & Colleges
Format
In the Building
Date 1 Oct 2022/30 Jun 2023
Supporters

Our SEN Programme is generously supported by Children in Need, The Charlotte Bonham-Carter Charitable Trust, The D’Oyly Carte Charitable Trust and The Hedley Foundation.

Our wider Learning Programme is generously supported by the A.C & E. Foundation, The Atkin Foundation, The Cecil and Hilda Lewis Trust and The John Lyons Charity.

A year long programme of experimentation and discovery.

Machine? Machine! is part of our SEN Schools programme and uses the key principles of creative exploration, experimentation and play to engage pupils in a creative journey that aims to build participants’ confidence in self expression and broaden awareness of what art and creativity can be.

The artist team of ActionSpace artist Declan Leslie, Brent based Tom James and former CAC youth collective participant Lucie Macgregor have devised a series of workshops based around the construction and design of a prototype machine that will grow and morph throughout the year. The project formed around Declan’s interest in the absurd, Lucie’s practice of upcycling and transforming waste and Tom’s experience in creating products from discarded material.

The Autumn term has seen new participants from two nearby schools engage in activity based around building component parts for a speculative machine that grew throughout the sessions. The participants explored a range of processes from creating abstract self portraits and introducing them to the Forest Bess and Dani and Sheila ReStack exhibitions, assembling sculptures and making blueprints from them to using storytelling and sound to connect and activate their component parts.

Through the year the programme will adapt in response to the input and interests of the participants to shape the future of the activities. Machine? Machine! will culminate in an exhibition at Camden Art Centre in the Summer of 2023 which will showcase some of the themes explored and pieces created through the sessions.

This project is delivered in partnership with ActionSpace, a London based visual arts organisation that supports learning disabled artists. They seek out and unlock talent, create opportunities and enable learning disabled artists to realise their potential.

The Artists

The Artists

Declan Leslie creates very inventive fluid drawings in which he explores various themes. He likes to research a subject matter and really work through all the variations he can get from it. Declan‘s work is often populated by figures, he particularly likes scenarios that represent the more macabre aspects of human behaviour, these can include horror and grotesqueries in which he adds a twist of humour. He creates works with various drawing mediums and as part of his art practise he explores these mediums pushing them as far as he can go once, he has exhausted their possibilities he likes to begin experimenting with a new medium. Within his material experimentations he often creates his own unique techniques.Lucie Macgregor is a multidisciplinary artist based in London and works between the capital and her native home town of Huddersfield. Recently commissioned by Deptford X Festival and Volunteer South London, Lucie’s art making spans through sculpture, drawing and ceramics, facilitating conversations and creative encounters through collaborative projects. Lucie was previously a member of Camden Art Centre’s Youth Collective and was a Youth Artist in Residence here in 2021.Moving between various materials and narratives, she navigates social meeting as a way to reconnect people and place. Translating mark making, writing and drawing through sculpture, she invites others to re-map space with her as an act of reclaiming personal geographies through collective gesture. Curious to push and play with the ‘boundaries’ which separate different methodologies of making, the artist considers surface as something permeable and reforming.Tom James is an artist and writer, based in London, England, soon-to-be-former UK. He creates projects and publications that aim to change the way people think about the structures, places and ideas around them. His work spans live, durational installations, participative workshops and self-published fanzines. For the past four years, it’s mainly been devoted to helping people survive and thrive in the bitter, barren future we’re creating for our children. Tom’s projects have been featured across the British media, whilst his cult fanzine ‘GO!’ is part of the permanent collection of the V&A. Tom is also part of Spacemakers, a utopian regeneration agency, which aims to get inside the machinery of regeneration, and use it for good instead of evil.