Launch: Saturday 10th August 2024

Dates: Saturday 10th August – Saturday 21st September 2024

Gallery: Lower Gallery

The artists in Charlotte, Rob, Robin and You have established histories of socially engaged practice, co-creating and working with different members of our communities. Artists engage with viewers in many different ways today. The concept that an artwork needs a viewer – [you] – to be complete was suggested by artist Marcel Duchamp in the 1950s. The idea has been interpreted, argued over and played with in many ways since. This exhibition invites you to be a core contributor to the new Golden Thread Gallery at Queen Street.

With over 22 years in the arts sector, we have developed strong, long term and creative relationships with artists and communities across the city. At the heart of our work is equity of opportunity and access to art, communication, collaboration, democratisation and inclusion, respect and appreciation of everyone’s expertise and creativity in the development and/or delivery process of socially engaged practice. This exhibition is curated and developed by GTG and our participating artists to showcase not only their work, but also the significance of this type of collaboration.

About the Artists

Charlotte Bosanquet
In 2023 Charlotte Bosanquet was asked to be crew on a concept sail from Ireland to the Azores to collect tea and bring it back. The route was chosen as both countries are in the EU, therefore movement of goods between them was easier. Using historic travel writing, Bosanquet constructed pictures of the hull of the boat in the style of the adventure sailors. She transcribed a conversation with the captain, Skipper Jamie Young, to capture the experience of sailing across the seas. In this exhibition at Golden Thread Gallery, Bosanquet hopes to talk to visitors about the sea, the work she is doing and different aspects of the environment.

“I hope to show that sail trading can be used as a way of thinking about our current carbon footprint and what we can do to mitigate it, using the skills we have.”

Charlotte Bosanquet graduated from Glasgow School of Art in Painting and Drawing in 2004. She moved to Belfast in 2008, where she specialised in Community Engaged Practice. She has worked as a Gallery Director of Catalyst Arts and opened a residency centre that won best 100 residences in AN Magazine, in Templemore Avenue Baths. She has participated in talks and residences in Dublin, Beirut, Leece, Istanbul, and participated in Arts Fairs in New York and Stockholm. In 2018 Bosanquet moved onto a 1932 wooden fishing Trawler, named Family’s Pride, moored in Rathlin Harbour. She was harbour master in Rathlin and now works as the Community Engagement Officer on the LIFE Raft project, a rat and ferret eradication project.

“I believe that art is a collaborative process, which is informed and developed in partnerships and conversations. I believe that art falls between spaces that is left in contemporary living. It identifies spaces that are not examined and develops and questions why this is so.”

Rob Hilken
Based at Vault Artist Studios in Belfast, Rob Hilken works across various disciplines; large-scale murals; participatory performances and more meticulous studio pieces. His overall aim is to disrupt the way we experience the world around us. His work is routed in the familiar and the everyday, items or places that have become embedded and accepted in our lives so much that we barely register them. Patterns, geometry, mass-produced objects, popular culture, social customs, and even religious iconography are interrupted by Hilken with a seemingly chaotic intervention.

Hilken regularly contributes to the annual ‘Hit the North’ street art festival in Belfast. He has produced murals across Ireland where he has responded to the culture and heritage of the local area whilst keeping his distinctive use of patterns and repetition at the fore.

“By using the reflective material normally found on police cars and ambulances, I am highlighting the urgency of action.”

The signs will be on location throughout the exhibition. Follow us on social media to see where they end up!

Rob Hilken was born in England in 1977 and currently lives and works in Belfast. Rob was a founding member of Vault Artist Studios and served as a trustee on the board for six years. He graduated in Fine Art from Belfast Met with distinction (2012) and was a Co-Director of Catalyst Arts (2012-13). He has exhibited nationally and internationally, including at the Royal Ulster Academy (2011, 2012) and the Household Festival of Contemporary Art (2012, 2013). He has produced murals across Ireland. His work was featured in the Turner-prize-winning installation ‘The Druthaib’s Ball’ and was shown at the Herbert Art Gallery & Museum, Coventry (2021), the Ulster Museum (2022) and the Galway Arts Centre (2022).

Robin Price
Price’s work primarily originates from personal experience. His approach is playful, experimental and often publically engaged. Robin Price’s video and installation Flowers and Flamethrowers and map Recent Happenings in Askeaton were made working with Askeaton Tidy Towns.

“I think Tidy Towns are like artists, they are concerned with visual aesthetics, they go to the effort of making things look a certain way and installing their work. Similar to artists they then have to open themselves to external and entirely subjective critique when the ‘assessors’ come to judge their work. Then when the winners are declared they have to abide by the decisions, pick themselves up and plough on hoping perhaps to do better next time. If they are wise they enjoy the process for its own sake rather than for fleeting success. 

I met the Askeaton Tidy Towns group at their pub quiz fundraiser. Una from the committee, who features heavily in the video, said cheerfully and unironically [sic] ‘welcome to the neighbourhood’ which stuck with me. What also stuck with me was Askeaton Contemporary Arts curator Michele Horrigan’s joke that a stranger could come to town at a certain time of year, be mistaken for a Tidy Town judge and get anything they asked for!

I imagined a story where someone, perhaps myself, a stranger, was mistaken for a Tidy Towns judge and after having overplayed his hand for the town’s favours and co-operation was found out, and murdered. Tidied away in the hanging baskets and raised beds. Perhaps leaving a warning to others that might judge – tread softly on a town’s imaginative efforts. I tried coming up with a coherent narrative but Una said ‘don’t give me answers, give me intrigue’.”

Robin Price (b. 1981) is an artist-inventor, trans-disciplinary physicist, musician and cat enthusiast. He holds an MPhys in Theoretical Physics from the University of Wales, Swansea and a PhD in Composition and Creative Practice from Queen’s University, Belfast. He uses electronics, algorithms, code, glitches and hacked objects to push at the boundaries of what is technologically and ecologically possible, permissible and ethical.

Accessibility 

The Lower Gallery is accessed via the ground floor, which is step-free.

The exhibition includes XXXXX.

Large print versions of exhibition texts are available.

Please let us know if you have any questions or additional requirements, we are working hard to make the gallery as accessible as possible for everyone.

Golden Thread Gallery is supported by: