Artists in Residence: International artists realize projects at Kunst-Stoffe

Kunst-Stoffe is a cultural organisation committed to exploring issues of value and waste. We pursue this mission in three areas of activity: Kunst-Stoffe maintains an ongoing and changing exhibition of discarded materials and makes them available for creative practitioners. We carry out and present projects investigating aesthetics and strategies of reuse. We offer workshops and facilities to provide a practice ground for creative exploration of the ideas of sufficiency and subsistence.

ARTISTS 2012

Suzanne Hutton & Sam Taylor (Newcastle/Gateshead, UK)

Suzanne Hutton and Sam Taylor are UK based artists, whose practises are linked by exploring the potential of reusing, reworking and re-presenting of everyday materials and the connections this has to the resourcefulness of traditional cultural skills and crafts. Using themes of valuing the handmade and using what is around you, they hope to highlight ideas around sustainable arts practice and what it means to be ‘connected’ to your environment.They are working on a project called Transporter which looks at and compares these themes across different countries. They have a blog and flickr site to create a Knowledge Bank in order to share with others what we are learning:   

Their residency at Kunst Stoffe will be an intense period of 'making' where they will realise some ideas for sculptures and installation which they have been inspired from their research and travels so far during the Transporter project. They want to explore the idea of habitual waste in Berlin and make artwork that responds to this as well as comparing it to the waste habits from other places. An area they are keen to explore is the functionality of waste – taking materials and re-using them to create something that comments on the materials' former life and is also somehow useful!

Mark Cannariato (Brooklyn, NY, USA)

Mark Cannariato is from the southern United States (Louisiana). He has exhibited and worked throughout the US, including projects in Cuba and Jamaica. His work focuses on a makeshift and ready made aesthetic via used, discarded, and nontraditional materials. The work is interested in reinterpreting and sampling histories while creating a new language, allowing viewers to translate in their own way. Mark currently lives and works in Brooklyn, NY.

Chloê Langford is a young artist, writer and curator based in Adelaide, South Australia. Over the past four years she has been investigating participatory art practices through organising the annual Format Festival and developing her own practice.

Chloê is interested in the sensory and social dynamics of the gallery space and will be using her time at Kunst-Stoffe to develop a series of 3 - 4 sculptures with sound elements that encourage a performative interaction from the viewer. Each sculpture will be designed to lure the viewer into the spotlight, forcing them to become a spectacle while experiencing the sculpture. You can find her blog here.