>>Climate change is vast but we have to start somewhere. Sock Exchange enacts my yearning to connect with people on a fundamental level by catalysing their relationship with those details in life easily invisible or overlooked. Symptomatic of the shift in global trade poles is a UK sock industry adjusting to the digi-globalisation of trade. That cotton fibre emits ten times its weight in carbon emissions … rethinking how we consume can necessarily begin by removing any comfort zone of the socks we pull onto our feet.
Music
>>Record oil prices, disenfranchising land reform, food shortages… we have a habit of impoverishing our intellectual, physical and spiritual health. ‘Sock Exchange’ raises the issue of how our we can impact our own capacity to sustain ourselves, even if we start with the clothes we wear.
Movies
SOCKING
>>My video ‘Socking’ platforms the voices in the UK textile and sock industry, delving into the vestiges and struggles of an industry in decline and cost implications to our environment. From the ‘turning’ process of an established Nottingham sock manufacturer to origin of yarn and newly born goats of a Devon farm to ambitions of eco-aware production process, Sock Exchange invites you to take part in an engaging art project towards changing the way we think and understand how we consume and act out.
I am a UK based interdisciplinary artist working across performance to video and installation.My exhibitions range from La Friche La Belle De Mai, Marseille, Istanbul Biennial, Arnolfini, Whitechapel Galley and Tart, San Francisco. Residencies and collaborations include Grizedale Arts & Vitamin Creative Space, Cove Park, Munich and Libya. Awards include Guardian/Courvoiser Future 500 2010+
News Update: Sock Exchange returns for two days 9 and 10th October 2009!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Bring your socks to the gallery Friday 9 October 10:30-4:30 and Saturday 10 October 10:30-2:30
Making and Mending, Bury St Edmunds Art Gallery
This exhibition looks at contemporary artists who are reworking old-fashioned concepts of thrift and domestic economy that were exemplified by the World War II initiative “Make Do and Mend”. Not only do these artists “make”, but they also “mend” and are concerned with aspects of mending in its widest sense, often a strong sense of social engagement and responsibility. Underlying many of the works is the notion of mending as an act of healing and reparation and a sense of giving back to communities.
Artists like Kai-Oi Jay Yung and Michael Swaine come from very different disciplines and are drawn to mending through their concern with broader issues such as the rejection of consumerism, sustainability and human impact on the environment and strategies for coping with the recession.
http://www.burystedmundsartgallery.org/
Bury St Edmunds Art Gallery, The Market Cross, Cornhill, Suffolk,IP33 1BT
'FACT is the UK's leading organisation for promoting, commissioning and exhibiting film, video and new and emerging artforms.'
Climate For Change opens 13 March-31 May 2009
!!!!!I'll be running my Sock Exchange and occupying the gallery for one week only from 6th-12th April 2009!!!!!
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Climate For Change
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Location: Gallery 1, Gallery 2 and Media Lounge
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SOCK EXCHANGE
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>>My invitation from FACT to take up a residency in the gallery, 6th-12th April 2009, sees my conception of'Sock Exchange'.
>>Through video, events and one-on-one engagement, Sock Exchange invited visitors on an unsuspecting mend and marvel crusade, transforming your humble holey and odd socks into an exquisite sock d’art experience impossible to trash.
I darned and transformed your socks into art objects and showed a film piece, 'Socking'. There will also be a "Lonely Sock' love event, date to be confirmed, so come along and join in the sock antics!
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Socking’, 2.5 mins from 20 mins.
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Here’s a preview excerpt of my video exploring sock manufacturing across the UK.
Really inspiring! Learn about the carbon, loved speaking with the artist
Dorothy Ng, Singapore:
The coolest (or warmest!) exhibition I’ve seen on my art trip
David Silvers, 38
Watch this talent! Always a joy to experience your projects, we spoke about architecture in North Africa!
Jenny, 8
"This is the most fun I've had with socks, I love socks!"
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CLIMATE FOR CHANGE
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In 2009, FACT is exploring how humans can be invested in the change needed to sustain civilization and examining the multiple crises affecting the world: ecological, financial, food, housing. Is society itself becoming unsustainable?
The 21st century has finally hit and there is an energy in the air - how do you respond? Forget the eco-art and bring on local, national and international debates, actions, contexts, struggles and solutions.
I'll be exhibiting alongside residents from Eyebeam's Sustainability Research Group, Stefan Szczelkun, Melanie Gilligan- Climate for Change is an experiment in local activism and engagement.
>>How can we sustain civilization in context of the multiple crises affecting the world: ecological, financial, food, housing. Is society itself becoming unsustainable?
>>When we raise the issue of climate change, we recognise the cause and effects are intricate, complicated and we doubt whether globally we can meet emissions targets in time. Carbon footprint from overseas travel, over saturated land fills, rapidly vanishing biodiverse ecosystems… it is impossible for us to shrug off the effects of global warming any longer since the impacts are now.
>>Do we think about the smaller details though and how we can consider our place within impetus for change? Three-quarters of a pound of chemical fertilizers and pesticides have been pumped into fields to yield enough cotton for one pair of your skinny jeans.
>>When you get past your t-shirt and down to your underwear, you're practically a walking carbon sink! And, what about those socks?! It’s been quite an exploration for me to uncover our last standing sock manufacturers here in the UK, the socks your wearing right now were probably imported from Turkey or China or produced by one of a handful of UK sock businesses. Packaging, dying, manufacture…. The supply chain goes on but what about the production of the yarn itself and where it all begins?
>>Bring your CLEAN holey and odd socks to my Sock Exchange, where I will transform them into an Sock d’art or darn then for you and lovingly embellish every sock with a Jay art doodle unique to each one.
>>Delve into the sock trove and quash odd sock misery by finding a match for your odd sock, or choose to adorn them personally by hand yourself.
>>Do you belong to a local knitting group in your area?
Welcome to the gallery, come sit and knit with other fellow knitters/makers. Make this your meeting place in April! Join in the sock knitting community - perhaps you can even show non-knitters how to knit their own sock and spread the sock appreciation.
Drop off any unwanted Clean! socks on the run up to the show too from 13th March to the FACT media lounge on the ground floor. Make sure it goes into the sock pile!
If you can't make it up to FACT but still want to take part, donate your clean odd and holey socks to be reinvented:
Jay Yung, Sock Exchange, FACT, 88 Wood Street, L1 4DQ
Special thanks to F.J. Bamkin & Son Limited, Corrymoor Mohair, Made, Eribe Socks, Holy Socks and Richard Barlow and all those who sent me their socks and took the time to visit Sock Exchange
It's always really inspiring to hear from you and a great pleasure to write the first comment!
I really like the concept of the new exhibition. It's surely a great contribution to a movement for change and it is a really important issue, maybe the importanst!
