Intercultural Arts has been busy teaming up creative Refugees and Asylum seekers with regional professional artists and art organisations in order to develop North East refugee arts in exciting and innovative ways.

Yesterday, we escorted Shahin Borhanzehi to an empty Eldon Square shop unit to introduce her to her new Buddy Project cohorts, Hannah Marsden from Situation Rhubarb and Rachel Maloney, an artist/photographer who’ll be working closely with Shahin.  We are very much looking forward to receiving the ongoing project documentation and photo diaries, and to see how the exhibitions, performances and activities are realised - Updates coming soon.

The aim is to equip refugees with the contacts and knowledge to realise their artistic ambitions making the arts in the northeast a more diverse and vibrant arena. This strand of activity compliments our mission to support artists in their creative and professional development as well as offering another valuable perspective on the work of current regional arts and cultural activity. Situation Rhubarb will work with Shahin to set up a programme of activities, events and meetings to fast track her into the heart of t he local arts scene.

Shahin Borhanzehi, is a refugee from Iran. Shahin worked extensively in cultural heritage and crafts of regions in the world, with specialism in Balouch women’s craft. Shahin will be helping Situation Rhubarb in many aspects of the exhibition, with a special focus working with their current Associate Artist, Rachel Maloney.

Situation Rhubarb invites you to explore the meaning of borders and boundaries in todays increasingly connected world. Borders Project: A Space Between comprises a group exhibition in Eldon Square, a residency project in Morden Tower, a live performance, and group discussions. Presenting new work by emerging artists from the region alongside artists from London, Manchester and Gresford, the project incorporates a range of voice s, which approach the subject from political, geographical, personal and psychological viewpoints.

The exhibition will occupy an empty unit in the shopping centre and will involve photography, installation, film and sound. Newcastle based James Sebright will present a series of photographs that respond to the border region between Scotland and England and record th e traces of human activity. Rosie Skett, who recently graduated from Newcastle University, has created a video installation that documents her street in Fenham to examine the cityscape and its intimacy, and how the architecture creates borders and boundaries between its inhabitants. Also examining our concept of personal space, Kate Stobbart has been documenting overheard mobile phone conversations over the last month to form the basis of a new piece of work that explores the public/private boundary.

The exhibition also includes work by three artists from outside the region. London based James Cant will present a s eries of photographic portraits of people who have migrated to England by sea, using the sea and tide as metaphors to consider the inherent divisions of time, space and self. Paul R Jones from Gresford, which is positioned at the boundary between England and Wales, will present a series of films that document personal and public interactions with borders. Flora Robertson, a recent graduate from Wimbledon College of Art, will use mixed-media drawing and installation to consider the relationship between geographical/political displacement and psychological fragmentation, examining the border in terms of barriers to understanding.

A series of public events will accompany the exhibition to create further opportunities for people to meet the artists and engage with the subject. louie+jesse, an artist duo based in Manchester, will spend one week in Newcastle researching and responding to the borders of the city and in particular the unique spatial and acoustic qualities of Morden Tower, which is located on the historical boundary of the city. All Across the Telegraphs comprising Martin Heslop, Julia Heslop and Lindsay Rodden, will present a new performance that tells the story of border crossings and explores the movement of people, the plurality of cultural identity, and the transmigration of religion and culture, back and forth. Throughout the e xhibition Rachel Maloney will conduct a photographic research project. She will be inviting people take part in workshops/discussions to explore their relationship to their own personal photographs. Full details of the events programme will be announced very soon.

All events are free and everyone is welcome.

Borders Project exhibition: 16 Feb - 7 March @ Eldon Square (Monument entrance, opposite The British Heart Foundation)

Residency end event:
Tuesday 21 February, louie+jesse at Morden Tower

Discussion/Workshop:
Saturday 25 February, with Rachel Maloney

Performance:
Friday 2 March, All Across the Telegraphs, You Can Take it With You

Article from The Independent

Actor Idris Elba

Black British actors should head to Hollywood as quickly as they can because they won't find leading roles in the UK, David Harewood, the acclaimed National Theatre performer, has advised.

Harewood, the first black actor to play Othello at the National Theatre, was recently awarded an MBE and has enjoyed a successful stage career.

He played Nelson Mandela in a BBC film but after supporting roles in a number of television series, including Doctor Who and Robin Hood, the Birmingham actor, 46, has only now made his big breakthrough after securing a leading part in Homeland, a Golden Globes-winning American drama about the War on Terror.

Harewood said it was a “fact” that young British actors have to follow the example of Idris Elba, Adrian Lester and himself by accepting that they will struggle to find roles that match their talents in Britain.

“There really aren’t enough strong, authoritative roles for black actors in this country,” Harewood told a Bafta screening of Homeland, the series to be screened by Channel 4, in which he plays the CIA’s head of counter-terrorism.

“A lot of my contemporaries have gone to the US. I would encourage young black British actors to get to America if they have ambition.

“They do seem to embrace a more diverse palate there. I think that’s sad but that’s the facts. I would encourage them to get there as quickly as you can.”

Harewood cited Idris Elba, the Hackney actor, who won the lead in the BBC1 detective drama Luther, after he had established himself as a charismatic drug lord in the award-winning HBO series The Wire.

“I was talking to Idris about his frustration and he said ‘I’m going to America’,” Harewood said. “It took him a long time to crack it with The Wire but he wouldn’t have been given a role of that weight and authority in the UK. That’s a fact.”
Harewood added: “There’s a lack of ambition in in terms of telling a global story here. We are quite parochial. The best of US television is risk-taking.”

Adrian Lester, the Hustle star, is also departing the UK to try to break into Hollywood, saying: “As a black actor…you only see yourself travelling as far as people like you have travelled.”

Harewood, who returned to the NT to play Theseus in Moira Buffini’s Welcome To Thebes, said: “I’d like to replicate the variety of those roles on screen. I’ve played Martin Luther King and Nelson Mandela but those great roles are few and far between for us.”

Harewood won his role in Homeland, named by President Obama as his favourite series, after sending the producers a video audition. “I’ve been auditioning for US drama series for years. I forgot all about it for two months until I got a call from my manager saying I was close to getting it,” he said.

He is now contracted for seven years on the hit Showtime show which stars fellow Brit Damian Lewis as a US Marine Sergeant who may have been turned by al-Qa'ida after being captured in Iraq.

Doors are now opening to Harewood for Hollywood films after impressing with his performance as intelligence chief David Estes in the series, which also features Claire Danes and is produced by the team behind the counter-terrorism series 24.

British black actors who found success in the US include Lennie James and Chiwetel Ejiofor, the Laurence Olivier award-winner who starred in the $200 million Roland Emmerich blockbuster disaster movie, 2012.

The young black British experience was the subject of a Channel 4’s Top Boy, set amid Hackney’s gang wars, which starred Ashley Walters. Despite becoming a Hollywood name, Ejiofor took the lead role as a troubled police detective in the BBC2 series, The Shadow Line.

Clemens von Wedemeyer 'Against Death' (2000), courtesy the artist and Galerie Jocelyn Wolff, Paris

Part II  Preview:  Against Death
Wednesday 8 January  6 — 8 pm

CIRCA Projects are proud to present the first solo exhibition in the UK, outside of London,
by the German artist Clemens von Wedemeyer.  The celebrated work of von Wedemeyer is characterised by its exploration of the rituals of cinema and documentary, and by its use of looping narratives and dizzying repetition. For this solo exhibition, a different film from von Wedemeyer will open every two weeks. Against Death (2009) and From the opposite side (2007), represent the artist's use of cinematic strategies and motifs in his attempt to draw together the relationship between the two languages of cinema and art. Emerging out of the artworks themselves, the concept for this exhibition format draws on the constantly revolving scenarios we see in von Wedemeyer’s films as they loop temporally, physically and narratively within a space, pushing the boundaries of the screen.  A new publication – with film stills and text by Axel Lapp – will accompany the exhibition.

Against Death
9 February  — 24 February
Preview: 8 February  6 — 8 pm

For the final part of the exhbition 'Clemens von Wedemeyer', following the presentation of From the opposite side, CIRCA Projects present the artists only work made in the UK.  In Against Death (2009) a man has seemingly become immortal after joining a tribal ritual. The film is part of von Wedemeyer’s project The Fourth Wall (2009), an exploration of the myth of the Tasaday people – an allegedly undiscovered tribe in the Philippine rainforest which came to international attention in the 1970s. At CIRCA Screen, Against Death is presented together with the film Interview (2009) which depicts the talking head of Geoffrey Frand, described as lecturer, ethnographer and actor; it is not at all obvious which guise we are seeing.  This is the first time Against Death has been presented in the UK since it's original commission and exhibtiion at Barbican, London, in 2009.

Publication Launch
Wednesday 8 February  6 — 8 pm
To mark the occasion of the exhibition 'Clemens von Wedemeyer', CIRCA Projects have produced a new limited edition publication, available in an edition of 100, with new text by writer, curator, publisher and Art Review's Contributing Editor for Berlin, Axel Lapp.

Clemens von Wedemeyer was born in 1974 in Göttingen, Germany. He lives and works in Berlin.  Between 1996 and 2005 he studied at the Fachhochschule Bielefeld and the HGB Academy of Visual Arts Leipzig. In 2005 he received the Kunstpreis der Böttcherstrasse in Bremen. In 2006 he was the winner of the German competition at Internationale Kurzfilmtage Oberhausen as well as the Karl-Schmidt-Rottluff-Stipendium. Wedemeyer has exhibited at the Moscow Biennial in 2005 and at the Berlin Biennial in 2006. In 2007 he participated in the Skulptur Projekte Münster. Solo exhibitions include Kölnischer Kunstverein; MoMA PS1; Barbican Art Centre, London; and in 2011, the Frankfurter Kunstverein; Project Arts Cente, Dublin; Kunsthal Charlottenborg, Copenhagen; and the Jüdischen Museum, Berlin.

Clemens von Wedemeyer
at CIRCA Screen
ThePlace, Atheneaum Street
Sunderland SR1 1QX

Opening Hours:
Tuesday — Friday: 12 pm — 5 pm

circaprojects.org