Research Interests - Chara Lewis
Brass Art
Chara Lewis | Kristin Mojsiewicz | Anneké Pettican
ACTIVITIES 1998 –
Brass Art
collaborate, curate, and commission. Their activities encompass photography, digital media, sculpture, video and installation.
Brass Art #1
hijacked a hotel concurrent with the ISEA:Terror symposium for Our Night at the Palace. For one night only their video manifestations of real and imagined spaces, never ending nocturnal journeyings; surreal and private trysts, fuelled by the public desire to ‘own’ a space within that particular domain. The act of ushering in an audience to conduct their own explorations within the confines of this exclusive city landmark formed an integral part of the event.
Brass Art #2
targeted the city centre regeneration of Piccadilly Plaza as a site for public intervention. STALK allowed for a re-interpretation of the city as a site for private and public discourse.Through the use of dormant retail spaces, canal locks, stations and intersections, the Piccadilly intersection became a site of unsuspected activity. By night a projection from the disused upper floor introduced an additional element to the existing presence of electronic surveillance
Brass Art #3
positioned themselves in the offices of Ove Arup Ltd – the engineering contractors responsible for the regeneration blueprint of Piccadilly Plaza and Gardens. Sited high above the main thoroughfare, the offices enjoyed a privileged perspective down onto the city rooftops. Working in a view-less space, Dream Inspires brought the Plaza skyline and proposed scale model into focus by drawing directly onto the walls of the space.Representing themselves as rooftop activists, or conversely emulating the statuesque poses of the city’s ‘founding fathers’ (and requisite ‘muses’), Brass Art established a new perspective for themselves from which to view and critically appraise their changing environment.
Brass Art #4
transformed a half-built, semi-circular bar in a partially renovated warehouse into a curved projection surface. Drawing on Zoetropes and other simple Victorian illusionistic toys, Phantasmagoria presented a panoramic video projection. Revolving mirrors enabled the image to flit across the space in perpetual motion. Set against the urban skyline, large shadowy forms were seen to interfere with roads and train tracks, dive-bomb buildings with outsize paper aeroplanes and dance on towerblocks. Targeting landmarks such as Strangeways prison, the women wandered unhampered by etiquette or restrictions; at home in their environment.
Brass Art
Chara Lewis | Kristin Mojsiewicz | Anneké Pettican
ACTIVITIES 1998 –
Brass Art #5
invited artists, writers and performers to explore the eclectic and eccentric choice of collected curios and discarded ephemera that form the Bury Museum store. By liberating selected items from this ‘künstkammer’ - literally an ‘art cabinet’ - and making new work, each artist contributed to Paradise Revisited: a new temporary archive, housed in the art gallery, which evolved over a ten week period. Concurrently, the Bury Times newspaper carried a series of weekly artist interventions for the duration of the show.
Brass Art #6
curated Ich bin for Galerie 2YK - a building which previously formed part of the border between East and West Berlin. Featuring new work by seven artists, they explored individual gestures and human traces left in the ‘between spaces’ of the historical, post-industrial city and new technologies. Creating a dialogue between Manchester and Berlin the artists made the fundamental declaration, ‘ I am ’.
Brass Art #7
returned to the Museum storerooms to investigate and occupy the interior space of an ivory pagoda. Using a bronchioscope camera they were able to access the structure peopled with tiny models of the artists, producing two video projections shown on opposing walls (Sojourn). For the exhibition No-place the artists also inhabited the store room environment in a series of large-scale photographs capturing their fleeting presence as they move through the collection (All That is Dead Quivers). In the upstairs space of the gallery Brass Art presented a large scale wall drawing of a post-industrial, fantastical composite landscape using copper silhouette cut-outs in a moving shadow play (Pandaemonium)
Brass Art #8
kitted themselves in black with a customised suitcase, containing neon signage and integral battery, to roam across the transpennine region. Inhabiting spaces from airport terminals to military ‘listening posts’, the artists staged a series of brief trespasses before moving on to the next destination en route. To witness their activities go to http://www.artranspennine.org.uk
Brass Art #9
re-configured themselves as shadowy figures engaged in an unfeasible balancing act for Pantomimesis. Combining laser technology with a jeweller’s craftsmanship to produce 50 brass silhouettes in multiple for The Manchester Portfolio.
Brass Art
Chara Lewis | Kristin Mojsiewicz | Anneké Pettican
ACTIVITIES 1998 –
Brass Art #10
selected 4 artists to show their work at Atelier Grammophon in Hannover, Germany. This event was the second phase of the Seesaw exchange project between Brass Art and the German artists, and was staged as an integral part of the annual Zinnober festival.
Brass Art #11
installed a pink neon ‘Trespass’ sign in the back of a working taxi in Brewster, New York, inviting their audience to re-examine their relationship with the local geography and the thresholds inherent within it. Brass Art were commissioned by New York artist Jane Benson. Brass Art have worked with: David Alker & Peter Liddell, Atelier Grammophon, Jane Benson, Pavel Büchler, Sarah Carne, Adelin Clarke, Sue Clements, Nick Crowe & Ian Rawlinson, Eggebert & Gould, Pat Flynn, Nick Fry, Rachel Goodyear, Natasha Howes, Sue Hubbard, Chris Jones, Sharon Kivland, Jo Lansley & Helen Bendon, Martell Linsdell, Lisalouise, Graham Parker, Pentax UK, Dr Kerstin Mey, Dr Louise Milne, Spencer Roberts, Jane Sebire, Kathrine Sowerby, and Tracey Sanders-Wood.
Brass Art
c/o 12 Thorpe Street, Old Trafford, Manchester M16 9PRTel: 0161 848 9480 Mob: 07973 441791 brass_art@hotmail.com
University of Chester,