Repeat Repeat

How does an artist make work? What is it that an artist does each day? What are their routines?

2019 sees a dynamic programme of exhibition scheduling, commencing with the inaugural show, Repeat Repeat curated by Creative Director Henry Ward, exploring ideas of daily practice and repeated routine. The exhibition will feature internationally recognised artists alongside creative individuals who would not necessarily call themselves artists, including: photography, drawing, painting and sculpture.

Repeat Repeat will address questions relating to domesticity, parenting and occupation, investigating how the undertaking of a repetitive action, embedded as a daily practice, can enable artistic activity to take place.

Many artists establish routines for themselves, setting rules to follow in order to stimulate making. Repetition is important, continually reworking an idea, revisiting a motif and trying again. The reworking of a theme or idea again and again is at the core of many artist’s practices.

The seven artists brought together in this exhibition have each undertaken, or are still undertaking, repetitive projects that operate in conversation with other aspects of their daily lives. Using routine to find a way of making in the face of professional commitments or domestic responsibilities. By integrating activities into their lives, and maintaining them, they have found ways of developing work that transcends these often, deceptively simple tasks.

Maintaining a rich artist practice alongside full time work, studying, parenthood and domestic tasks presents challenges. However each of these seven artists have found ways to circumnavigate these. From Susan Hiller’s seminal piece, “10 Months” (the exhibition features the preliminary study for this work), tracking the ten lunar months of her pregnancy, through Andee Collard’s obsessive drawing of the same ball of string every day for four years whilst working as a full time art teacher, to Ben Borthwick’s daily photographs whilst trying to wake his daughter each morning.

In the repetition of an action we can find new meaning. When an artist chooses to redo something, over and over again, the way in which we read the work is altered. A, seemingly, meaningless or pointless action can become meaningful, perhaps even profound.

About the Artists:

Ben Borthwick is an independent curator and writer based in Plymouth, and Associate Curator at University of Bath’s Arts Centre, The Edge. Previous roles include Artistic Director of Plymouth Arts Centre,?CEO of Artes Mundi, and Assistant Curator at Tate Modern. He has published widely on experimental music and contemporary art.

Nicky Britton Field is an artist and educator. His work addresses ideas relating to the motivation for creating art, drawing out routines and rules for making. Field currently works as a teacher of art in a school in Surrey.

Andee Collard is an artist and educator. He was Head of Visual Arts Specialism at a London secondary school and is now practicing as a full time artist. His work spans a variety of media and approaches. He has, on occasions, worked collaboratively as part of the art collective AMALGUM. He is co-founder of Bolton Contemporary, a non profit organisation dedicated to providing inclusive contemporary visual art to the people of Bolton.

Joseph Cartwright is an artist and Head of Art at a London secondary school. He balances his practice with this commitment alongside?the responsibilities of being a married father to three boys.

Peter Dreher is a German artist. As professor Emeritus of painting,?he has influenced a generation of internationally acclaimed artists, including Anselm Kiefer. Dreher has painted a series using landscapes and interiors, flower pieces and skulls. His magnum opus is Tag um Tag guter Tag (Day by Day good Day), a series he started working?on in 1974. This work has recei