Ouseburn Open Studios 2011

Today's xsite is Anna...

This years Ouseburn Open Studios has come round once again, this year taking place on Saturday 26th and Sunday 27th of November, from 10am till 5pm each day. We will be opening our doors here at Foundry Lane Studios to let you see what everyone based in our building gets up to.

xsite are running tours of 'The Incidental Ouseburn', walking tours of the valley taking in art, architecture and the everyday in 'The Valley'... There will be a tour on both the Saturday and the Sunday leaving from Foundry Lane Studios at 12.30pm. If you work out how to use that new fandangled QR code stuff before coming along there will be additional elements of fun for you on the tour... Please email us to book a place at info@xsitearchitecture.co.uk

As well as touring and projecting our latest work around the building we will be cooking up another 'Pop-up Kitchen'. There will be cakes, biscuits and sweet treats for sale as well as Onion and Gruyere Tarts, tasty Leek Potato and Parsley Soup and Spanish Chorizo Stew to warm you up...

Amy Dover, xsite's latest Creative Resident, is transforming part of the building into a secret room, a hidden world of beast, birds and creatures, with lots of new works for sale. If you don't know her work have a look on her website, it is really beautiful...

Jill Tate, an architectural photographer, will be showing new work, with large and small scale prints and cards for sale. Alex Charrington will be showing new prints and studies from his studio space, as well as new web and graphics work from Morph Creative. Bubblegum Vegas will also be having a stall selling tattoo and 50s inspired jewellery and accessories... With lots going on all around our building and all the other venues around the Ouseburn it would be great to see you over the course of the weekend.

You can find out more about everything going on here on the Ouseburn Open Studios website.

Invisible Architectures Festival

Today's xsite is Nita...

The Invisible Architectures Festival, curated by Will Schrimshaw, was held on 9-11 September. xsite designed and constructed the meeting point for the festival, a bright red stall which could be easily erected and taken down each day. xsite have worked with Will on the project since he joined us for a Creative Residency earlier in 2011.

Invisible Architectures featured a number of local and international artists, brought together by Will, and focused on the non-visual side of Newcastle’s city centre: sound, ants, textures and more... The events were free and open to the public.  I participated in the Rhythymanalysis tour on the Saturday afternoon, a fascinating introduction to the concept of the ‘sound walk’. Over 2 hours we mapped the soundscape of Old Eldon Square, studied the way people moved through spaces and popped a balloon in an underpass to see how sound echoed within the space...

Overall the festival was a huge success and we hope to see it happening again in the future- bigger and better!

http://subliminalcity.co.uk/

http://www.flickr.com/groups/1803521@N22/pool/

New Artist in Residence

Today's xsite is Anna...

We have a new Artist in Residence here at xsite. Amy Dover joined us at the beginning of the month and will be with us for 3 months. She is working on new illustrations and prints of her own and will also be getting involved in some projects with xsite. We are very glad to have her and her collection of taxidermy livening up a little corner of our studios.

Amy's work is beautifully executed pencil illustrations of man, beast and bird, often dark and macabre in nature. She is inspired by music, poetry and folklore and tackles subjects like death, humiliation and deceit. You can see more of her work on her website http://www.amydover.com/Home.html

Will Schrimshaw - Artist in Residence

Today's xsite is Anna...

Will Schrimshaw is our new artist in residence; his residency officially began during the first week of February. Twice a year xsite offers artists the opportunity to be part of Foundry Lane Studios by taking up residency in house for 3mths.

Will is an artist-researcher from Wakefield, currently based in Newcastle upon Tyne. Often working with sound, his work focuses on environmental interaction and the invisible determinants of space and place. This work is carried out by means of earth, text and code. You can find out more about his work here: http://willschrimshaw.net/

While at Foundry Lane he is going to be working on a new project called Invisible Architectures. This project is aimed at bringing together artists, architects, writers and thinkers who are interested in the invisible aspects or layers of the city, whether this be its sonic, haptic, olfactory, thermic or electromagnetic qualities.

The intention is to invite people to lead workshops and participatory events that will happen as part of a weekend festival in Newcastle and be executed on foot, preferably in public spaces throughout the city. xsite will be working with Will to help develop the project, which we expect will come to fruition in early summer 2011.