Pester & Rossi / Balancing Acts
Pester & Rossi are collaborating artists Ruby Pester and Nadia Rossi. As Associate Artists at Platform since early 2016, they have been leading our weekly Nu Gen Art Group, working with young people from The Pavillion and St Andrews Secondary, whilst also making costumes and inflatable sculptures for our summer carnival processions.
Pester & Rossi create immersive performances and social experiments that explore childhood nostalgia and the celebration of the home-made. Collaboration is a key aspect of their practice, working directly with communities, particularly young people. This informs and influences their making process alongside collaborations with other artists.
Balancing Acts is presented in three parts across Platforms Studio, Exhibition Wall and Easterhouse Library. Featuring new largescale banners, sculpture, film, and performance with contributions from Sally Hackett, the Nu Gen Art Group, and collaborations with Ortonandon and Fallopé & the Tubes.
The exhibition opened Saturday 1st April from and lead into a special concert from King Ayisoba + ZEA live in the platform Auditorum that evening.
Please note the Platform Studio section of the exhibition, that featured in Outskirts 2017 festival on 22nd April, is now closed. You can see a video of the awesome live performance with Ortonandon and Fallopé & the Tubes in the slider above!
The Exhibition Wall and Easterhouse Library will remain fully open until the 5th June.
MORE INFORMATION BELOW:
Part 1: Platform Studio
Balancing Acts responds to the site of Platform’s Studio, using the dance floor, mirrored wall and blackout curtains as a starting point for the exhibition. Considering it’s
daily uses as a practice and rehearsal space for groups of children and young people to learn dance and performance, playing with ideas of the dress rehearsal, backstage and practicing; the show explores and challenges the boundaries and intersections between visual arts, theatre, object and performance.
The props installed have been made with and influenced by workshops Pester and Rossi have hosted with young people at Platform alongside artworks from exhibitions, performances and festivals over the last year. Props include: Gobby, large inflatable mouth made for Platform Carnival, Crying out with Flavourbeanbags made with Pavilion Youth Group, Rose-Tinted Glasses large soft & hard sculpture andTxt Talk mobile phone costumes made with Nu Gen Art Group. All displaying a sense of humour, a nod to youth culture and perceptions of the body.
Accompanying the props is a film titled Finding Your Third Eye that was created with their band Fallope & the Tubes at the Swimming Pool located here at The Bridge.
Working with invited artists Ortonandon, Alys Owen and Catrin Jeans in collaboration with Glasgow Kelvin College Dance Group and young people at Platform, the studio will host a series a period of social co-production, exploring how artwork can be created and activated through participation and collaboration focusing on ideas and themes of childhood nostalgia, growing up, group behaviours and identity.
This series of public and private workshops will engage young people and artists in collective action that explore play, practice, improvisation and embracing mistakes which will culminate in a new live work for Outskirts Festival on Saturday 22nd April.
Part 2&3: Exhibition Wall and Easterhouse Library.
Outside the Studio the exhibition continues through to the library and exhibition wall, showing ceramics and drawings made by the Nu Gen Arts Group alongside Sally
Hackett’s Fountain of Youth and Call To Action, a collection of banners made by Pester & Rossi.
The Fountain of Youth, a series of ceramic heads, was created by Sally in collaboration with pupils from Tollcross Primary School in Edinburgh.
Pester & Rossi’s Call To Action banners combine handwritten slogans and drawings that call for collective action, play and looking for hope in the dark.
