EXERCISES FOR ALL exhibition

Bower Ashton Library, UWE Bristol

Until 31st October 2024

For UWE’s Postgraduate Symposium Proof! 2024, Sarah Bodman invited students, staff and interested parties to make artwork for an exhibition EXERCISES FOR ALL at Bower Ashton Library, UWE Bristol this September.

Contributors were invited to dip into one of Kurt’s Exercises and make a small creative response to it. We are exhibiting all the works in the library at Bower Ashton until 31st October 2024.

We have a display of 44 exercises by artists including: Fernanda Fedrizzi who become a stone, on the Guaíba shoreline at Porto Alegre in Brazil; the ‘Livros de artista, livros-objetos: entre vestígios e apagamentos’ group coordinated by Fabiola Notari in São Paulo, Brazil who responded to the exercise: Write one hundred stories and bury them in a forest, as did Teresa Ogando in Portugal. Pete McCallion (UK) went to a beach and picked up a grain of sand, (twice) at Reynisfjara, Iceland and Weston-super-Mare, Somerset. In Poland, Anna Juchnowicz thought of something she didn’t know. David Dellafiora threw a rock into the sea while he thought of kings at Geelong Waterfront in Victoria, Australia. In Sweden, Sara Elgerot ate peas and thought of princesses. Kath Bell (UK) responded to two exercises: Kiss the Wind and Imagine a stone in your hand to produce an intricate, multi-fold book It Felt a Gift. On a sunny day in August, Rachel Marsh gathered rubbish from the beach at Bucks Mills in Devon and took it to a field for the exercise: Take the time you need. Make a little mast with a little sail. Go out in a field and plant the mast in the ground. Two days later in Wiltshire UK, Linda Parr responded to Rachel and Kurt Johannessen with a colourful sail and mast planted in a nearby meadow. I have included 10 previous exercises in the display along with a new one in response to Whisper to a stone. Draw a tiny galaxy in your hand was performed by Sara Bowen in Australia and made into a flip book. Tom Sowden (UK) ate an orange while he thought of the moon. 

You can download a list of all the exercises performed and find out more at: https://www.bookarts.uwe.ac.uk/exercisesforall/