Launch Exhibition: The Notice Board

Kate Genever
Title: K / I am trying to Communicate with you
To launch The Notice Board I wanted to fly a flag that summed up the ambitions and themes of this new project. A setting of the scene if you like. The blue and yellow maritime signal flag: K/ I wish to communicate with you flag, seems perfect. How interesting and sensible that ships talk to one another in an international language of patterned code – like art, both hold important messages. The flag, like The Notice Board project, has an ambition to communicate with you – to invite you to think about people, practices and places beyond here. This K/ I wish to communicate with you flag is an original. Taken from a decommissioned boat that is being dismantled in India. I bought the flag on Ebay.

The Notice Board is a new contemporary visual art project I’ve initiated to showcase the work of international artists in two public venues in Uffington, Lincolnshire.
It will feature month-long exhibitions on the theme The Lands of the Free?
The sites are an 66cm x 66cm sized Notice Board and 5m high Flag Pole hosted in my front garden. Both sites hold prominent positions in the centre of Uffington village on the A1175 – the main through route for all traffic. Both sites are visible to drivers, residents, pub visitors and ramblers walking the Torpel Way. Uffington also hosts an annual Scarecrow Festival which brings in upwards of 2000 people.
My ambition is to connect audiences to the work of artists whilst offering unusual sites for artists to showcase work. 
Rationale: The Notice Board takes 2 ambitions / statements as it starting point. In 1978 Václav Havel stated that the oppressed always contain ‘within themselves the power to remedy their own powerlessness’. He was referring to individuals living under communism. He went on to coach them to go about their daily activities as if communism did not exist. Then in another context anthropologist Tim Ingold’s proposed ‘Improvisation, celebrates the freedom of human imagination to transcend the determinations of both nature and society’.
The Notice Board is a small act of struggle within this larger project that uses the only thing I have: Art and Ideas. It seeks to reclaim a space in a time of stress and anxiety and provide a structure of support.
Each exhibition will be accompanied with a statement featuring information about the artist, the artwork and their country/heritage.
The Notice Board understands International to mean: People born outside the UK and who live overseas People born outside the UK but who live here – they may have citizenship, leave to remain or refugee status. People born in the UK but who live and work elsewhere. People born in the UK who show work internationally.  
Practicalities/Application: If you are interested in being selected here is some practical information. If you want to apply please send an image of the artwork you would supply, a website link and a 100 word max statement of your reasoning. Please say how you meet the international criteria.