Network of Embroideries

An exhibition in the windows of shops, cafes, takeaways and restaurants along Broadway Market, Hackney.

Dates: Friday 28 September – Monday 1 October 2007

Tour: Monday 1 October, meet 1.30pm, Bradburys Ironmongers, 79-81 Broadway Market.

Taking the German and Balkan folk tradition of household embroidery as a starting point, Belgrade-based artists SKART met strangers, friends and acquaintances to discuss life in London during their residency in Hackney in February 2007. Their conversations were transformed into two-line rhymes and illustrated using a fast embroidering technique, covering subjects such as work, moving home, childhood memories, war time stories and regeneration.

This four day public exhibition of the resulting ‘embroideries’ along Broadway Market includes work by students from London College of Communication, elderly residents living in Bayton Court and Adelaide Court (Hanover in Hackney Housing Association) and other individual activists, artists and writers.

‘Embroideries’ can be found along Broadway Market, in the windows of:
Art Vinyl, Bradburys, Broadway Gents Hair Stylist, Buggies and Bikes, Crossbow Wear Ltd., F. Cooke, Gossip Café, La Vie Boutique, L’Eau à la Bouche, Norlington Chemist Ltd. and The Broadway Bookshop.

SKART (meaning 'scraps' in Serbian) is an experimental art and design group, founded in 1990 by Dragan Protic and Djordje Balmazovic in Belgrade, Serbia. This project forms part of a larger Network of Embroideries that includes work by groups and individuals from Serbia, Germany and Austria.

Special thanks go to the shopkeepers of Broadway Market, Lieve Carchon, Leonie Clarke (Hanover in Hackney), Valentina Gottardi, Sandy Lloyd and to all the contributors of the Network of Embroideries, Hackney.

Skart’s residency in London was part of the art / research programme Reunion, and was supported by Visiting Arts, The Austrian Cultural Forum, London, SPACE and Hanover in Hackney.

The 2007 Almanac of Political Art

Following an open call for A4 contributions to the first Almanac of Political Art, over 80 people responded from all over the world with images, statements, drawings and projects. During a live editing day on 30 June 2007 at the Austrian Cultural Forum, London, Sophie Hope, three guest editors (Leigh French, Adam Jeanes and Simona Nastac), a production team (Valentina Gottardi, Ann Harezlak and Lucy Parker) and a live participating audience discussed the contributions and compiled as many copies of the Almanac as they could on the day. Every contributor received a copy and now the Almanac is available to download!

Click on the links below to download a PDF of each section. Each contributor has a number which appears on the bottom right of their page(s). Phil Coy took notes during the discussions on the live editing day and you can find these at the beginning of each chapter. Use the contents as a reference as you look through the pages of each chapter.

Introduction, contents and notes (1.1MB)

Chapter One (8.7MB)
What makes your art political?

Chapter Two (3.1MB)
What are the political and economic implications of 'cultural exchange' in Europe?

Chapter Three (7.1MB)
Clash of the comrades: What does 'socialism' or 'anarchy' mean to you and how are they relevant to your practice?

Editor at large: Sophie Hope

Guest Editors: Leigh French, Adam Jeanes and Simona Nastac

Production Team: Valentina Gottardi, Ann Harezlak and Lucy Parker

The Contributors:
Gareth Ackland, aladin, allsopp&weir, Gary Anderson and Lena Simic: 'twoaddthree', Bankleer, Petra Bauer, Caspar Below, Rona Bierrum, Bijari, Mark Brogan, Hannah Brown, Cabinet Société Réaliste Conseil, Giovanni Calemma, David Campany, Ele Carpenter, Mark Clare, Fran Cottell, Phil Coy, Raffaella Crispino, Carla Cruz, Branka Curc¹ic¹, Nemanja Cvijanovic´, Alberto Duman, Leah Elsey & Sonia Uddin, Mbonu Christopher Emerem, Wapke Feenstra, Alec Finlay, Freee, Raimi Gbadamosi, Valentina Gottardi, Catherine Graham, Igor Grubic, Marlene Haring, Catherine Hemelryk, Bernadette Huber, John Jordan, Doris Koch, Martin Krenn, Anna Lascari, Ana Laura Lopez de la Torre, José Maçãs de Carvalho, Angela Madesani, Alistair McClymont, Rosemarie McGoldrick, Nela Milic, Harriet Mitchell, Peter Mörtenböck & Helge Mooshammer, Vlad Nanca, Joseph Nechvatal, Christian Nold, Paul O’Neill, Devon Ostrom, Lucy Catherine Parker, Participatory Fieldwork, Mark Pawson, Dan Perjovschi, Maria Petrides, Victoria Preston, Psychological Prosthetics (Dee Hibbert-Jones & Nomi Talisman), Nada Prlja, Kieren Reed and Abigail Hunt, Oliver Ressler, Paula Roush / msdm, Paul Sakoilsky, Gabriele Schettler and Martin A. Dege, Schleuser.net, Michael Schwab, Walter Seidl, Basak Senova and Banu Cennetoglu, Set Up Tolerance (Grete Aagard and Tanja Nellemann), SKART, Michal Siml, Barry Sykes, Stefan Szczelkun, Aniko Szovenyi (HINTS Institute), Szuper Gallery, Suzana Tamamovic, Unwetter, Mona Vatamanu and Florin Tudor, Theodore Wilkins, withyou.co.uk, Vicky Wright, yoke and zoom and YNKB.

For images of the live production day go to the Plotting Shed / Blog page.

If you have any comments or feedback contact mail@reunionprojects.org.uk

Printed copies (black and white) are available on request at £15 (23 euro) plus postage. To order a copy, contact Sophie on mail@reunionprojects.org.uk