CREATE11, now in its fourth year, is a summer arts festival for east London, celebrating the intrinsic creativity of the area and sponsored by Deutsche Bank. The festival presents over 200 homemade, world-class events profiling east London creativity taking place in surprising spaces: a disused motorway undercroft in Hackney Wick; London’s historic music halls; a 1980’s building in Canary Wharf; a WWII bunker in Dalston; a floating cinema on the waterways of east London; a shop turned into a farm and much more. Spanning music, design, art, food and film, the 32-day programme includes outdoor screenings, nocturnal walks, rooftop farming, underground readings, craft workshops, secret parties and hidden dining, as well as live music and cutting-edge art exhibitions and talks.
Hadrian Garrard, Director of the CREATE festival: “With one year to go to the London 2012 Games, the CREATE festival is at the forefront of celebrating Europe’s largest cultural quarter with an extraordinary range of cultural experiences for all.”
The CREATE ART AWARD: FOLLY FOR A FLYOVER
From Friday 24 June, a temporary building called Folly for a Flyover will appear in the gap between the east and westbound traffic of the A12, and transform the cavernous undercroft where the motorway bridges the Lea navigation canal. Folly for a Flyover, by Assemble, is this year‘s Bank of America Merrill Lynch CREATE Art Award, a £40,000 participatory prize for artists living in the host boroughs. The project is developed in partnership with the Barbican and muf architecture/art.
The folly will host a five-week programme of waterside cinema, performance and play delivered in conjunction with the Barbican Art Gallery’s summer exhibition, Watch Me Move. By day there be a local food café and drop-in workshops, along with cycle-powered boats, available for hire to explore the waterways along the edge of the Olympic park. At night the building’s oversized outdoor staircase will seat audiences of up to 250 for screenings of classic animation, short films and early cinema, accompanied by a live score.
The folly will be built over the period of a month by a team of volunteers from reclaimed and donated materials. Having served one purpose, it will be disassembled at the end of the summer, and its components will take on new functions in the local area.
For more details about Folly for a Flyover see separate press release.
CREATE HOUSE
This summer London’s most exciting pop-up restaurants and interactive art installations will appear for just five weeks in CREATE House, a secret building in Canary Wharf, donated by Canary Wharf Group plc.
Heralding a new era of pop-up and hidden dining, the CREATE11 commission Restaurants in Residence will showcase four of the very best restaurants from London’s underground dining scene every week during the festival. Each week from 25 June to 23 July will bring a fresh and innovative approach to seasonal British cooking. Starting with The Clove Club, the supper club from The Young Turks collective James Lowe and Isaac McHale, the space will then be taken over by A Bit More of What You Fancy, the spin-off of Dalston restaurant A Little Of What You Fancy, who will serve the very best local London produce. For the third week, Claire Roberson and Jonathan Woolway from Shacklewell Nights will leave their old Dalston clothing factory for Restaurants in Residence’s retro office set-up for five days of experimental dining. The month will end in style with Bistrotheque, who will celebrate the excess and glamour of the eighties with an amalgamation of dishes from the culinary giants of the decade.
CREATE House will also be home to two interactive installations by east London artists. The Space Between, an exhibition by graduating BA ‘Design for Interaction and Moving Image’ students from the London College of Communication, offers an intriguing approach to interactive art. In collaboration with award-winning Shoreditch-based production company Nexus Productions, and animation studio Interactive Arts, a series of live events will explore the concept of space, pushing its boundaries through a range of media and technologies.
Alongside this, PROTOCOL, an intercultural exhibition by Swiss artist Yann Gross and UK artist Bronwen Parker-Rhodes offers a ‘laboratory’ that facilitates exchange and collaboration between the two creative forces. Brainchild of the Helvetic Centre, the project consists of a series of exhibitions and talks dedicated to photography.
For more details about CREATE House and Restaurants in Residence see separate press release.
CREATE11 TALKS AND WALKS
The CREATE11 Talks and Walks include an array of activities and events exploring public art, spoken word, food and sustainable farming, health, fashion and craft.
The programme kicks off at the View Tube, a community building in Stratford that was built using recycled shipping containers, with panoramic views over the Olympic Park. On Wednesday 29 June, the View Tube hosts Brief Encounters: The Future of Public Art in East London, an event curated by the Contemporary Art Society, examining inspirational public art projects across the 2012 host boroughs. Speakers include Gavin Turk, 2012 Olympic Park Artist in Residence, artists Neville Gabie and Pope & Guthrie, Head of Art on the Underground Tamsin Dillon, Up Projects director Emma Underhill and Invisible Dust curator Alice Sharp.
On Tuesday 5 July, the View Tube Arts Programme and Invisible Dust present Smog, Art and the East End, a panel discussion between artist Faisal Abdu’Allah, environmental health expert Frank Kelly, and Assistant Director of Public Health in Newham Tim Baker, about the impact of smog on the development of the East End and the effect it still has on health and the environment today. Like Monet and Turner who have portrayed air pollution, contemporary artist Abdu’Allah is now developing his own take on it in Double Pendulum (see below) and how it impacts athletes in the lead up to the Olympics.
On Saturday 2 July, there is a unique chance to explore east London at night with award-winning poet, playwright and performer Inua Ellams’s Midnight Run, a 12-hour stroll starting at 6pm and taking in various venues, outdoor spaces and other CREATE events. One of the stops will be a disused bunker in Dalston, where writer Sukhdev Sandhu will be reading excerpts from Night Haunts, the 2006 nocturnal online journal in which him and sound artist Scanner chronicled the disappearance of the London nightlife. Deprived of light, the audience will be in for a disorientating, spooky experience.
On Thursday 7 July architecture journalist, critic and teacher Kieran Long will chair a panel discussion about the regeneration of east London, in Barking Learning Centre, Barking.
On Tuesday 19 July Film & Video Umbrella present a special event led by writer Iain Sinclair and artist Simon Faithfull. Film and Video Umbrella commissions, curates, produces and presents film, video and other moving-image works by artists that are staged in collaboration with galleries and other cultural partners across the UK.
Regeneration is at the heart of architecture practice Something & Son’s FARM:shop, an abandoned Dalston shop turned into a farm which will host events, tours and panel discussions about urban agriculture within art and architecture, on Wednesday 20 July.
And on Sunday 24 July, the Talks and Walks programme ends on top of Dalston Roof Park with Crafternoon Tea Club’s Fash Mash Festivalette party: a drop-in, pop-up fashion and DIY festival where unwanted garments will be recycled, transformed and customised.
For more details about the CREATE11 Talks and Walks see separate press release.
CREATE11 ART PROGRAMME
This year CREATE11 partners with east London organisation Invisible Dust, which involves leading world artists and scientists collaborating to explore air pollution, health and climate change. Invisible Dust aims to produce significant and far-reaching artists commissions in the public realm in the UK and internationally, as well as supporting the creation of new scientific ideas and engaging audiences with large-scale events, education and community activities.
Invisible Dust’s latest project is Double Pendulum, artist Faisal Abdu’Allah’s new video work exploring breathing, movement and air quality right next to the Olympic Stadium. Abdu’Allah’s project, which is supported by the Wellcome Trust, will open on Wednesday 29 June with an outdoor screening outside the View Tube following the Talks and Walks Brief Encounters event (see above), and it will then show at the View Tube until Sunday 17 July.
On Saturday 2nd and Sunday 3rd July, also at the View Tube, artist Gavin Turk and designer Ben Wilson will present 4H Bike, a reinterpretation of the bicycle for a modern era. 4H, a pedal-powered vehicle for four people, is part of Bicycle Wheel, a series of art events celebrating and encouraging cycling in east London, developed as part of the View Tube Art Programme. Taking inspiration from Marcel Duchamp’s Bicycle Wheel, 1913, the first ready-made, which challenged the assumptions of what constitutes as art, Bicycle Wheel is conceived by Invisible Dust curator Alice Sharp to raise environmental debates and encourage cycling through art.
And from Thursday 7 to Sunday 10 July, CREATE11 collaborates with an array of east London museums and galleries for the East London Art Weekend, which celebrates the thriving creativity of the area. Participating institutions include the Barbican Art Gallery, Chisenhale Gallery, Gallery Iniva, Museum of Childhood, Museum of London, The Nunnery, Parasol Unit, Raven Row, Whitechapel Gallery, White Cube, and The Women's Library. The weekend launches with a night of exhibitions, events, music and performances, followed by cultural trails, days out and events for all the family. Visitors will take in the incredible sights and hidden art spaces of the area with the highest density of artists in all of Europe, as well as around 200 galleries and museums. Streets, footpaths and waterways on the doorstep of the Olympic Park will come alive with art both indoors and out, celebrating the innovation that has made east London a famous artistic destination.
CREATE11 MUSIC SERIES
This summer CREATE11 partners with historic east London music venues for an exceptional programme ranging from rap and grime at the Hackney Empire to a violin recital at the Wilton’s Music Hall.
On Thursday 7 July, Hackney Empire will host the third Re:Definition showcase, a live event headlined by east London rap star Kano and featuring legendary and emerging grime musicians including Ghetts, Donaeo, Mike Hough and RoxXxan. Re:Definition, a CREATE and Barbican co-commission, is presented by the Stratford-based organisation Urban Development, and is part of Blaze, the Barbican’s summer music programme.
Throughout the summer, CREATE11 partners with Blaze to offer a range of music events including a weekend celebration of Mediterranean music, a focus on New Orleans, and world-class brass groups, from gypsy brass to Indian marching bands to homegrown UK groups. As well as east London music venues such as the Barbican, Hackney Empire, Gillett Square, Wilton’s Music Hall and Rich Mix, Blaze also features free concerts in Gillett Square, Canary Wharf, and along the Regent’s canals as part of Shoreditch Festival.
The CREATE11 music series closes on Monday 25 July with a special event at Wilton’s Music Hall, the oldest surviving music hall in the world and an East London landmark: 25-year-old Russian violinist Alina Ibragimova will lead a promenade performance against a newly-commissioned stop-motion animated film by The Quay Brothers. This promenade performance and installation, which responds to the venue as well as the music, will take audiences through the historic buildings of Wilton’s Music Hall, to works by Luciano Berio (Sequenza VIII), J.S. Bach (Ciaconna from Partita No. 2 in D minor), Heinrich Ignaz Biber (Pascaglia) and Béla Bartók (Sonata for Solo Violin). This event is a Manchester International Festival, Barbican and CREATE co-commission.
For more details about Re:Definition or Blaze please see separate press releases.
CREATE11 THEATRE AND DANCE PROGRAMME
Cutting-edge theatre and dance are at the heart of the CREATE11 programme, as the festival partners with renowned east London institutions.
From Saturday 25 June to Sunday 17 July, the Arcola Theatre and Punchdrunk present The Uncommercial Traveller, a headphone journey around east London inspired by Charles Dickens’s account of his wanderings around London. The walk will end in a secret location in an abandoned shop space, which has been transformed by Punchdrunk’s design team.
CREATE11 also partners with the Barbican to present the World Premiere of Duckie’s new show Lullaby, from Friday 24 June to Sunday 24 July. For this sublime sleepover Duckie transforms the Pit into a tranquil communal bedroom for an audience of dreamers. Lullaby is a gentle, slumber show designed to send audiences to sleep, as sister songstresses H. Plewis, Harriet Plewis and domestic dreamers Matthew Robins and Tim Spooner create a nod-off narrative of soothing storytelling and choral cradle song. This moonlit soporific serenade is followed by seven hours of slow-wave sleep rounded-off by breakfast.
Dance is also central to the CREATE11 programme: from Thursday 21 to Saturday 23 July, street dance phenomenon Boy Blue Entertainment presents its new show Touch, an intimate evening of beats and moves, at Theatre Royal Stratford East. Artistic directors Kenrick “H2O” Sandy and Michael “Mikey J” Asante were also behind the 2007 Olivier Award-winning production of Pied Piper. Touch is produced by the Barbican in association with Theatre Royal Stratford East.
EXPLORING THE EAST LONDON CANALS
The iconic east London canals will provide the backdrop for UP Projects’ 2011 Portavilion – the Floating Cinema is an extraordinary structure designed by Hackney-based architects Studio Weave, which will navigate the waterways of the Olympic host boroughs throughout the summer. It is produced in partnership with the Olympic Delivery Authority. The free programme, curated by internationally renowned artists Nina Pope and Karen Guthrie (known collectively as Somewhere), will include intimate on-board screenings as well as films projected onto architecture around the waterways, plus events, talks, activities and creative canal tours. The Floating Cinema launches on Friday 1 July at the Springfield Marina in Hackney, and moves on to various moorings on the canals until Sunday 18 September.
From Saturday 16 July, the Floating Cinema will be moored outside the Waterhouse restaurant on Regent’s Canal, to inaugurate this year’s Shoreditch Festival, taking place from 16 to 24 July along the east London canals.
ENDS
Notes for Editors:
For further information contact CREATE press office: Sarah Harvey sarah@sarahharvey.info / Hélène Muron at helene@sarahharvey.info
Phone: 020 7232 2812.
For full CREATE programme and to book tickets please see www.createlondon.org.
• All tickets are free unless otherwise stated
• A selection of images from the festival are available
• Interviews are available upon request
• The CREATE11 festival main sponsor is Deutsche Bank.
• CREATE is supported by Arts Council England; London, and the six host boroughs for the 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games (Barking and Dagenham, Greenwich, Hackney, Newham, Tower Hamlets and Waltham Forest) and the East London Business Alliance and the Canary Wharf Group.
About CREATE11
CREATE is the annual summer festival that celebrates Europe’s largest cultural quarter: the Olympic Host Boroughs where over 12,000 artists live and work. Now in its fourth year, CREATE takes place between 24 June and 25 July in east and south-east London.
About Deutsche Bank
Deutsche Bank is a leading global investment bank with a substantial private clients franchise. Its businesses are mutually reinforcing. A leader in Germany and Europe, the bank is continuously growing in North America, Asia and key emerging markets. With more than 100,000 employees in 73 countries, Deutsche Bank offers unparalleled financial services throughout the world. The bank competes to be the leading global provider of financial solutions, creating lasting value for its clients, shareholders, people and the communities in which it operates.
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