Stephan Hurrel: "ART GEO - Drive to Reconnect the Cultural and the Natural”

Stephen Hurrel ist ein bildender Künstler aus Glasgow. Derzeit arbeitet er im Rahmen einer Gruppenausstellung im Rhein Schlosspark Stammheim an einer ortsbezogenen Installation namens “ART GEO - Drive to Reconnect the Cultural and the Natural”.

Stephen Hurrel spricht im Seminar über seine jüngsten Arbeiten, wie die seismische Soundinstallation “Beneath and Beyond (Tramway/Glasgow International 2008)”, seine öffentliche Installation “SCAPE  (Tasmania, Australia 2008)” sowie eine Reihe älterer Arbeiten. ------ Stephen Hurrel is an artist based in Glasgow, Scotland. He is currently in Cologne to create a site-specific installation as part of the group exhibition in Rhein Schlosspark Stammheim, titled ART GEO - Drive to Reconnect the Cultural and the Natural.

Stephen Hurrel will talk about his most recent work, including his seismic sound installation Beneath and Beyond (Tramway/Glasgow International 2008), his public installation SCAPE in Tasmania, Australia (2008) as well as a range of past works, both temporary and permanent.

Hurrel works across various media, ranging from sculpture to interactive digital media. His artworks are often a direct response to, and comment on, specific sites and contexts. In many of his works he is interested in accessing ‘unseen’ and ‘unheard’ aspects of our physical, visual and aural environments.

His current studio-based practice includes looking at possible inter-relationships between systems of ecology and technology. The wider context includes research into ideas of ‘the sublime’ within the history of art and landscape.

In his public works he has engaged with ideas of permanence, temporality and
sustainability by producing several permanent time-based artworks. ----

Selected Biography:
Studied sculpture at Glasgow School of Art to 1988 and since then has exhibited and produced public installations in the UK and abroad including; Art Geo (Cologne, 2009), Turbulent Terrain (Victoria Galleries Tour, Australia, 2009), Tramway (Beneath and Beyond, 2008 and off-site commission 1999), DCA (Here+Now, Scottish Art 1990-2001), Gi (2005 & 2008), CCA (2001 & off-site commission 2005), GOMA, Streetlevel, Intermedia, GSS Gallery, Melbourne Art Festival, Canberra Contemporary Art Space and Australian National Gallery, Canberra, and galleries in Tasmania, Berlin, Hamburg, Munich, London, Hull and New Zealand.
Awarded Arts Foundation Fellowship, London 2008-2009, SAC Creative Scotland Award (2005), SAC Australian Residency, 12 months, 1997-98, SAC Visual Arts Bursary (1993) Public artworks in Leeds, Blackpool, Glasgow, Ayr, Tasmania and currently Sligo in Ireland





ART GEO
Drive to Reconnect the Cultural and the Natural

RHEIN SCHLOSSPARK STAMMHEIM

CONCEPT/PHILOSOPHY   Objective is to support responsibility toward natural world, addressing ecological alarm call through arts. This is an invitation to submit a concept for temporary work, preferably site-specific to be installed in  Schlosspark Stamheim for approx. six months in 2009. The installations in exhibition, which opens on 31 May 2009, should in some way makes reference to the natural world and the context of the Schlosspark, Cologne, itself, adjacent to the Rhine river and on its east bank, out with city centre.    Using language of our times, artists’ works can contribute to interpreting nature and its processes, informing on environmental issues in a world now ‘increasingly bound into schedules of human  industrialism’. Participants could consider using recycled media, make reference to natural environment within concept, or simply refer to Park or Rhein River itself. The curator, Cologne Council Kulturamt and local community will support imaginative and experimental projects from artists.    All outputs might aim to inform/support public in adopting a responsible attitude towards their natural world, assisting in interpreting nature and its natural processes and above all, facilitate re-evaluation of  humans’ relationship with nature.