verity-jane keefe

Brickwork beauty

Mon, 29 Apr 2013 09:01:26 +0100

Brickwork beauty

Pipe / Weed

Mon, 29 Apr 2013 09:00:29 +0100

Pipe / Weed

Painting

Fri, 26 Apr 2013 18:47:15 +0100

Painting

Y, Birmingham International

Sat, 09 Mar 2013 12:25:57 +0000

Y, Birmingham International

You are invited: The Quest for Bronze Tanning

Tue, 05 Mar 2013 11:30:51 +0000

You are invited to the premiere screening of “The Quest for Bronze Tanning”, a new moving image artwork created by artist Verity-Jane Keefe which explores Wood Street, E17, , scratching the surface to try and unpick the particular character of the place through it’s architecture, it’s residents and it’s history.

It will be screened in the 14th Walthamstow Scout Hall. Private view on Wednesday 20th, 6.30 - 9.00pm and matinee drop in between 2.00 - 6.00pm Saturday 23rd and Sunday 24th March 2013.

Bronze Tanning Studio, 38 Wood Street now houses a pound shop, nestled inside the bright orange shell of the former tanning salon. This mysterious permutation provides the starting point for Verity’s journey to uncover the hidden stories of the shopkeepers, the businesses and the premises that they occupy. Produced over several months, Verity has woven together beguiling vistas and candid ancedotes into a unique portrait of a place in flux, and in doing so offers a glimpse into users attitudes to place amid a wider program of regeneration and a changing role of the high street as we know it. It is inspired by shifting trading patterns across this local high street over several decades; the ways we remember, and by turns, romanticise, respect and neglect the past.

Several traders and service providers were invited to discuss this change using a script of questions that look use the bronze tanning studio as a way in to a wider discussion. Their premises momentarily transformed into a film location.

Throughout her residency Verity led several walks and produced three editions of a fanzine for Wood Street which highlighted research as it unfolded. Issue 3 will be launched and distributed at the screening alongside re-printed issues 1 and 2.

THE QUEST FOR BRONZE TANNING forms part of WOOD STREET INSIDE OUT – a programme of public projects seeking to enhance the character of Wood Street, delivered by a creative team led by East Architecture. This programme is restoring heritage buildings and providing new lighting, signage, planting, play areas, street furniture and high street frontages as well as commissioning public art projects which are connecting and animating diverse communities and spaces in the neighbourhood.

WOOD STREET INSIDE OUT is supported by the London Borough of Waltham Forest and the Mayor’s Outer London Fund, which is helping increase the vibrancy and growth of high street places across London.

14th Walthamstow Scout Hall

205a Wood Street

London

E17 3NU

RSVP to hello@verityjanekeefe.co.uk or 07817 302637

Accidental etched mountain range, John Lewis window, Sheffield

Sun, 03 Mar 2013 18:11:47 +0000

Accidental etched mountain range, John Lewis window, Sheffield

The Wood Street White Elephant

Thu, 28 Feb 2013 19:41:28 +0000

The Wood Street White Elephant

Birmingham to Sheffield, teaching

Wed, 27 Feb 2013 08:55:31 +0000

Birmingham to Sheffield, teaching

Wood Street Retail Survey (An Artist's View)

Fri, 18 Jan 2013 13:43:35 +0000

As part of my wider moving image commission in Wood Street, E17, I have made a contemporary version of a Retail Survey for Wood Street. Based upon a 1963 survey that I found in the archives, it represents data from then and places it along side the same data from today, 50 years later.

I’ve uploaded a separate PDF of the table here:

Wood Street Retail Survey (An Artist’s View)

page one:

Issue #2 of my fanzine for Wood Street is here

Fri, 18 Jan 2013 13:14:54 +0000

Issue #2 The Quest For Bronze Tanning is here. 200 Copies have been printed and hand finished at The London Centre for Book Arts and will be distributed along Wood Street at the beginning of next week. I’ll post a list of shops that are stocking it again as some have changed.

For now you can read an online PDF version via this link:

Issue #2 The Quest for Bronze Tanning

Here’s some sample spreads

———

THE QUEST FOR BRONZE TANNING

This is the second edition of three fanzines made by the artist Verity - Jane Keefe for the people of Wood Street, Walthamstow: the people that live here, work here, travel through here, go to school here or simply just like it here.

I am making a filmwork about Wood Street. In essence, it will be a portrait of place, looking very closely at the physical fabric of the area as it is now, whilst acknowledging what used to be here.

This series of fanzines highlights research from the project as it is unfolding. The Quest for Bronze Tanning is my journey to find out the hidden stories of the businesses and their premises.

Inside this edition you will find a retail trade survey that takes data from a survey conducted in January 1963 by the council and places it alongside a record of today’s traders, 50 years later. I have collected this data from trawling up and down the street. The information represents a slice of trading as is found today. Local history records and old Kelly’s Directories (a Victorian version of Yellow Pages) show that a lot of businesses have come and gone along Wood Street, some lasting less than a year, others thriving for over 60 years. Some premises host the same type of business but tenants have changed. Just like today, vacant shops could be found along the 1960’s High Street. This new inventory shows how Wood Street in its versatility has adapted to meet the needs of its users: swapping gown manufacturing for a community centre, a fishmongers (with it’s own smokehouse) converting to frying fish and chips.

The information presented here is not conclusive, it is very much a work in progress and an artist’s interpretation of Wood Street as I find it today and as told by its shopkeepers.

If you like what you see and have any comments, or simply want to find out more, visit these blogs:

http://woodstreetinsideout.blogspot.co.uk

http://verityjanekeefe.tumblr.co.uk

Stockists: Issue #1 A Fanzine for Wood Street

Mon, 19 Nov 2012 14:37:17 +0000

The first issue of my fanzine has been distributed up and down Wood Street and is available in limited quantities from the following shops who have kindly agreed to distribute it for me. There are only 200 physical copies, so you’ll have to be quick to try and grab one

Lynn’s Hair Fashions, 225A Wood Street

Wood Street Tyres, 190 Wood Street

Wood Street General Stores, 168 Wood Street

Lot 107 cafe, 107 Wood Street

Agombar’s, 104 Wood Street

Anja J ane and Coffee in Wood Street Indoor Market, Marlowe Road entrance

Missprints, Unit 1, Wood Street Indoor Market, 98 Wood Street

Second Nature Wholefoods, 78 Wood Street

Razors, 46 Wood Street

DNS News, 40 Wood Street

Woodside Cafe, 30 Wood Street

Peter Pan dry cleaners, 14 Wood Street

Wood Street Library

Issue #1 of my fanzine for Wood Street is here

Tue, 13 Nov 2012 20:43:00 +0000

Here’s the first edition of my fanzine for Wood Street. Issue #1: A Butcher, A Baker, A Candle Maker.

200 editions are being distributed from various shops up and down the street over the coming days. I’ll update with a list of locations by the end of the week. A further two editions will be published and distributed in the coming weeks.

Enjoy.

You can read it on one of those snazzy PDF websites here if you’re not one of the lucky 200 who get hold of a physical copy:

http://issuu.com/veritykeefe/docs/wood_street_1-printready?mode=window&backgroundColor#222222

——-

A BUTCHER, A BAKER,

A CANDLE MAKER

This is the first edition of three fanzines made by the artist Verity - Jane Keefe for the people of Wood Street, Walthamstow: the people that live here, work here, travel through here, go to school here or simply just like it here. Wood Street is host to roughly 200 businesses, only 4 of which are high street chains. This is a very unique ratio and the starting point of this project.

This series of fanzines highlights research from the project: details of the area that I like and that I feel give Wood Street it’s incredible character, along with archival research and soundbites from one to one interviews.

I am surveying the local shopkeepers and workers, asking about their unused and hidden skills. Some of the first responses can be found inside this fanzine. In addition I am researching Wood Street’s past: what was the fried chicken shop originally? Has there always been such a diverse spread of businesses?

The Wood Street fanzines will be distributed by various businesses along Wood Street. If you like what you see and have any comments, or simply want to find out more, visit me at Unit 5 in the Wood Street Indoor Market, 100 Wood Street or visit these blogs:

http://woodstreetinsideout.blogspot.co.uk

http://verityjanekeefe.tumblr.co.uk

Sample spreads from fanzine:

Simple pleasures 2

Thu, 25 Oct 2012 17:18:19 +0100

Simple pleasures 2

Simple pleasures

Thu, 25 Oct 2012 17:17:49 +0100

Simple pleasures

Doors

Tue, 23 Oct 2012 22:33:58 +0100

Doors

Patchwork hoarding and pavement, camberwell

Tue, 23 Oct 2012 22:26:31 +0100

Patchwork hoarding and pavement, camberwell

Petrol Rainbow #76

Tue, 23 Oct 2012 10:34:27 +0100

Petrol Rainbow #76

A Possible Lifestyle: Launching tomorrow

Thu, 27 Sep 2012 23:16:59 +0100

One last reminder that my commission “A Possible Lifestyle” is launching tomorrow in Melksham, Wiltshire.

If anyone has any specific access requirements or queries regarding location and how to get there, please let me know and I’ll endeavour to help.

Hopefully see some of you this weekend.

You are invited to the premiere of “A Possible Lifestyle”, a new moving image work which explores the town of Melksham via it’s walking routes and a script of fact and fiction narrated by a local resident. It will be screened in an empty house within the new development to the east of the town on Friday 28th, Saturday 29th and Sunday 30th September 2012.

Verity has spent a period of intense research in Melksham, scratching the surface to try and unpick the town’s character through it’s architecture, it’s residents and it’s history. She has worked with Phil Smith, an artist and playwright who had previously been commissioned to carry out research into the town to inform this project’s brief. Using five well used walking routes, a script has been developed that turns each route into an act in a play, navigating the landscape through a mixture of fact, folklore, local mythology, local encounters and archival research. Residents of the town feature as narrator to compliment the main protagonist, the landscape both social and physical.

Verity organised a series of artist led walks through the town in the spring with residents of the town. For the open house weekend, she will again lead walks on both Saturday and Sunday, leaving from the Art House Cafe at 11am. These walks present the opportunity for informal conversation surrounding the project and participants relationship to public space and the town.

The film will be screened to both an invited and incidental audience passing by.

Refreshments will be served and an accompanying publication will be distributed. The publication is a test edition of an artist made town guide, seeking to frame civic pride within local knowledge and the artist’s research and experiences of being in the town.

This moving image project is part of a wider public art programme that has been developed by Ginkgo Projects on behalf of the East Melksham Consortium.

The art programme aims to locate the new development site within the context of the town as a whole, focusing on the walking routes and physical links between old and new. This project will inform the creation of a series of permanent, physical artworks along the walking routes through the town.

Notes to editors:

Verity-Jane Keefe is available for interviews and advance photographs.

The commissioning client for A Possible Lifestyle is Ginkgo Projects on behalf of the East Melksham Consortium via Tetlow King. (www.ginkgoprojects.co.uk)

Verity-Jane Keefe is a visual artist, working predominantly within the public realm, using moving image, text and installation based work to explore the complex relationships between people and place, and the idea of the landscape as museum. She is interested in the role of the artist within urban regeneration and how experiential practice can touch upon and raise ambitions of exisiting and invisible communities.

Press release information:

Plot 93 - 45 Thyme Road - Melksham - Wiltshire - SN12 7FX

Opening night

Friday 28th September 2012 6.30 - 9.00pm & Saturday 29th and Sunday 30th drop in between 12 - 5.00pm

Artist led walks at 11am on Saturday and Sunday from the Art House Cafe at Melksham Market Place, SN12 6ES.

Please RSVP to indicate you will be joining and on which day.

The address is a new development so therefore will not work on google maps. Thyme Road can be found off Snowberry lane which has been extended into a new link road around the eastern edge of the development.

For more information contact:

Verity-Jane Keefe

hello@verityjanekeefe.co.uk

Wood Street Inside Out: Round 2 Commissions

Mon, 17 Sep 2012 00:04:00 +0100

I have been selected to deliver round 2 of the Wood Street Inside Out Moving Image commission. I’ve spent a few initial days there researching, and doing lots of walking. Here’s a selection of initial images from these walks:

Out of over 100 businesses on the street, only four of those are high street chains (Percy Ingles, Coral, Travis Perkins and Co-Operative foods and funeralcare)

There happens to be “A Butcher, a Baker, a Candle-Stick Maker” so will use this phrase as my working title.

A Possible Lifestyle: invitation + press release

Fri, 24 Aug 2012 14:53:00 +0100