Each year the open west runs an education / community programme alongside the main exhibition of 40+ international contemporary artists. This year’s project has been supported and funded by Arts Council South West and Cheltenham Art Gallery & Museum.

Two artists, Jessie Brennan and Alan Goulbourne, have been selected to make work with and for the community of Hesters Way, Cheltenham. The results of these collaborative projects will be on public display from 8th to 22nd March.

Jessie Brennan invited local people to take part in a residential-wide drawing activity* that explored ideas about building trust and communication through the act of looking. The process of drawing she used resulted in deeply concentrated moments of looking between participants which opened up a space for exchange, exploring boundaries of cohesion and confrontation, connection and separation, the private and the public.
“Over 100 people took part in the project and I am thrilled with the conversations generated between participants through the blind drawing experience. In the video I attempt to show the intense and intimate exchange between two people as they draw each other’s portrait without looking at their paper”

Jessie’s video Blind Trust can be seen at the following places (please call each venue for access/opening hours):

• Cheltenham Art Gallery & Museum 01242 237431
• Hesters Way Children’s Centre 01242 222490
• Hesters Way Resource Centre 01242 521319
• Hesters Way Library 01242 514969
• Oasis Youth Centre 01242 515469
• Rowanfield Exchange 01242 514157
• Springbank Resource Centre 01242 539088
• St Aidan’s Church 01242 528567

Alan Goulbourne’s sculpture stands 7.5’ in the round made of roughly 2,000 blocks of wood, generically cut and shaped to abstractly represent a mass of individual marks moving harmoniously as a single entity. The structure is inspired by a bait ball formation, which occurs when a shoal of fish becomes threatened by predators, predominantly dolphins, who herd sardines into this spherical shape making it easier to disperse and single out prey. Alan’s work has been inspired by swarm intelligence
and the role that it plays continuously and subtly throughout out all organisms.

“I aim for the sculpture to highlight the need and dynamics of community and its importance in terms of security and strength, but at the same time I wish to bring attention to the squeezing of communities in Hesters Way by corporate predators and businesses that have and will further continue to isolate and decimate the local communities fuelling a vicious cycle of neglect”

Alan’s sculpture Bait Ball is installed near Coronation Square. A further work, Mosaic Thumbprint can be seen at Oasis Youth Centre. Each year the open west runs an education / community programme alongside the main exhibition of 40+ international contemporary artists. This year’s project has been supported and funded by Arts Council South West and Cheltenham Art Gallery & Museum.

The open west would like to thank all participating groups, with particular mention to Andy Hayes and Celia Wear at the Hesters Way Partnership and Sarah Penny at Oasis Youth Centre for their huge help in organising this project.

Sarah Goodwin
Lyn Cluer Coleman
info@theopenwest.org.uk
theopenwest.org.uk

The following groups took part in Jessie’s drawing project : Springbank Craft Club; Springbank Art
Class; Hesters Way Children’s Centre; Oasis Youth Centre and individuals at Coronation Square’s Friday
Market – thanks to all involved