Rebecca Davies is an artist working within a participatory practice through illustration, performance and event. This blog mostly documents work made in Stoke On Trent as part of research and development for The Oasis Social Club which completed a tour of the UK in 2016 (for other work please see rebeccadaviesartist.co.uk and peoplesbureau.co.uk).The Oasis Social Club is part entertainment venue, part discussion space, mixing the long British tradition of Working Men’s Clubs whilst providing an important arena for debate on issues such as housing justice and diminishing social space. The Oasis Social Club is supported using public funding by the National Lottery through Arts Council England. Rebecca co-directs The People's Bureau, a skills exchange in the Elephant and Castle Shopping Centre, collaborating with organisations such as the Latin American Workers Association, LCC, Siobhan Davies Dance and now an associate of Tate Exchange.
In 2012-14 her project Beau Belles Ice Cream Van toured across the UK, where she worked with The V&A Museum of Childhood, Create London, the Barbican, the Museum of Club Culture, Hull and The Hen Lane Social Club, Coventry. Beau Belles was funded by Arts Council England and supported by Artsadmin.
Rebecca has run the community sessions at Whitechapel Gallery, leading The Art Already Made project > whitechapelcommunity.tumblr.com
In 2010 Rebecca graduated with an MA in Communication Art and Design from Royal College of Art. Her illustrations of the Elephant and Castle recieved the Sheila Robinson Prize for Drawing and she was short listed for the Helen Hamlyn Design Award.
www.oasissocialclub.com www.rebeccadaviesartist.co.uk
Rebecca Davies
SATURDAY 21 & SUNDAY 22 JULY
The Oasis Social Club : Brownfield Block Party at SPODE (Elenora St, Stoke-on-Trent).
The Oasis Social Club is a project by Rebecca Davies (see rebeccadaviesartist.co.uk).
The Brownfield Block Party is the final stage to a period of research &
development Rebecca undertook shortly after moving to Stoke-on-Trent.
The programme features some of the research & collaborations that came about from the Monthly Matics she delivered in partnership with
AirSpace Gallery.
This programme is supported using funding from Arts Council England
8:08 am • 11 July 2018 • 2 notes
Workers’ Live Drawing (October, 2017)
A lively, soul lifting evening where you will learn a whole array of drawing techniques, hosted by artist Rebecca Davies and accompanied by DJ Calum Murphy.
Part performance and part live-drawing event, the night will be compered by Rebecca, accompanied by a special soul and dance set from DJ Calum Murphy.
You’ll be catapulted into a new inner city club for the night starting at the grand opening of The Golden Torch. No drawing experience necessary!
This event was supported by Appetite as part of Roundabout 2017.
Photographs by Tim Diggles.
12:38 pm • 9 January 2018 • 3 notes
Matic Nights #7 : Clay Social (October, 2017)
This was an evening to gather, reflect and celebrate, post the day’s Opening Up, Moving In, Moving On hosted by Joanne Ayre and Kat Evans with the British Ceramics Biennial.
Clay Social was an evening celebrating the beating heart of Spode - the BCB Studio, and the work of the Clay Comrades, a community of local makers, formed in the studio.
I read an excerpt from Richard Sennett’s Together, a book that looks in to the politics of co-operation, he uses the workshop as a metaphor for society - how we work with each other, but how we work with the tools and our craft’s material in the workshop. A carpenter doesn’t work against a knot in the wood, for instance, instead a carpenter works with knot, around it, listening to it in order to shape and create. This practice is effective, he argues, in working with resistance in society.
For all its marvellous qualities, clay is still a fickle and unpredictable matter. The BCB Studio/Workshop is a great space to witness the millions of ways great big lumps from earth can be made, shaped and fired into beautiful objects. But also - how sociable these processes can be, and how communal clay is, not just here at the old Spode Factory (where the Clay Comrades are based) - but across this city. It is it’s gut - and people talk about it so deeply and soulfully, it’s infectious.
We discussed the building this event took place in - its history as part of Spode Works - but importantly, its future - as the new BCB studio site - how to be progressive in a space with such rich history..
Illustrations are of the Clay Comrades - these were enlarged and painted using Clay slip for the event. Some self care was practiced (because if we can’t care for ourselves then how can we care for the collective?) - A special clay hand mask was made for the occasion and a hairdresser invited to cut the hair of participants - clay comrades requested this, a night of pampering during the busy Biennial period.
12:03 pm • 9 January 2018 • 2 notes
Worker’s Still Life (September, 2017)
I was asked by Letting In The Light to host a workshop/event at Art Stop Stoke. Itching to play Barb Foreshaw again (the landlady character created in collaboration with residents of Portland Street during The Oasis Social Club project) and wanting to test out Worker’s Still Life here in Stoke - something I first did in Belgium as part of the European Capital of Culture. I hosted a Worker’s Still Life for Stoke. The space was turned into a temporary social club, participants drew from our ‘Tableax Vivants’ trying a number of experimental techniques. Everyone was encouraged to role play using the costumes and props that were on show - one local baby even tried it out.
Tim Diggles writes about the evening here > Tim Diggles’ Blog
11:00 am • 9 January 2018 • 1 note
Matic Nights #6 : The Brownfield Banquet (September, 2017)
Artist Anna Francis and I collaborated as part of September’s Monthly Matic. The evening featured a special commission of new work by Andrew Branscombe - A table for the Brownfield Banquet, which will come with us to future banquets. The table features some of Anna’s Brownfield Ikebana’s, created using plants and found objects from the Lichfield Street site. Anna read from John Prescott’s ‘Pathfinder’ speech, a regeneration scheme set up in 2003 to replace older housing with new. A controversial scheme, leading to the demolition of houses on Lichfield Street.
One of our guests, Tim Diggles, wrote this lovely post about the evening > Tim Diggles Blog
Information about the Brownfield Banquets in the post below.
To recap, Matic Nights are a series of Monthly Socials brought through a partnership with AirSpace Gallery. The Matics Series presents a rich mix of Film screenings, Music events, Performances and Talks, to be held on the final Friday evenings of the month.
The Monthly Matics are a chance for me to test-bed my research, visual and performance work and invite artists to share theirs. It sees me work with AirSpace Gallery to programme exciting, new, high quality work that is relevant to the city, made by artists in and outside of Stoke On Trent.
Supported with funding from Arts Council England.
Photographs by Glen Stoker.
10:15 am • 9 January 2018 • 1 note
An illustrated guide made in collaboration with artist Anna Francis for Monthly Matics #5 : Brownfield Banquet. I have been working with Anna Francis to create the Brownfield Banquets as part of the Monthly Matics. This guide was printed in a limited edition run of risographs with Risotto Studio, Glasgow.
Brownfields feature regularly in Anna’s work, and there are lots across the city. I have been struck by these green spaces since moving to Stoke, and its been lovely learning more about them through working with Anna. The intention is for each banquet to be a showcase of the brownfield they take place at >
‘Brownfield Banquet aims to challenge fears around brownfield sites, which see them as empty spaces, of potential threat and danger. We aim to reframe these spaces, and see them as resilient eco-systems, which can, with little or no intervention, become sites of potential - we have a lot to learn from these environments. They can be safe, what’s more - they can be special. Our activity on these sites calls for recognition of what they are (and what they could be) today, not just what they were, or what they might be in the future’.
It’s been a fruitful collaboration working with Anna on something that is outside of the work we usually do together (The Portland Inn Project) and I am looking forward to more happening in 2018. It’s been very informative for how we will be restaging The Oasis Social Club in the Summer.
9:53 am • 9 January 2018 • 1 note
Catching up on last year’s Monthly Matics! A promotional video I made for the last Brownfield Banquet we hosted in September on Lichfield Street.
9:37 am • 9 January 2018 • 2 notes
Monthly Matic #5 - Brownfield Banquet. We were offsite during July’s Matic night. This exciting event in collaboration with Anna Francis, saw us creating a guide to the site’s plants, a starter and dessert using rowan berries and blackberries from the site during our banquet which took place at Spode Factory and even offering music on our trip to the site - using an 80 year old wind up record player. Such a pleasure and education for me to work with Anna around the city’s brownfield sites - terrains she has been working with here in Stoke for many years now. Aspects of this special evening featured elements of projects Anna has worked on before - her Brownfield Ikebanas, for instance, were resurrected for this occasion, creating Ikebanas for the Victoria Ground site in Stoke Upon Trent (near to the Spode Factory). There are a limited number of posters I have designed featuring Anna’s piece ‘Occupying the Brownfield : A Proposition’ - she read the work in chapters across the evening.
We combine forces on what will hopefully become a larger project, one that sheds light on these beautiful wild spaces, because as we say, ‘They can be safe, what’s more - they can be special’.
12:13 pm • 6 August 2017
Monhtly Matics #5 > Brownfield Banquet, I am excited to collaborate with artist Anna Francis on what we hope will be the first of more events just like it. Our aim is to challenge fears around brownfield sites, which see them as empty spaces, of potential threat and danger. We aim to reframe these spaces, and see them as resilient eco-systems, which can, with little or no intervention, become sites of potential - we have a lot to learn from these environments. They can be safe, what’s more - they can be special. Our activity on these sites calls for recognition of what they are (and what they could be) today, not just what they were, or what they might be in the future. More info HERE.
11:20 am • 6 August 2017
Monthly Matics #4 - Yarden Block Party
We kicked off the next chapter of Monthly Matics the last Friday of June. AirSpace Gallery’s luscious Yarden was decked out to host a Block Party - with fantastic DJing by Calum Murphy, mixology from artist Alice Thatcher, serving up the infamous Potteries Punch (’a Josiah Wedgwood creation for the workers one tropical hot day back in 1780′ topped with a glacé cherry and oatcake). A packed night with BBQ and dancing - and a great way to start the next Monthly Matics series >> See more about the programme HERE
11:12 am • 6 August 2017
June Monthly Matics > YARDEN BLOCK PARTY at AirSpace Gallery with DJ Calum Murphy
11:01 am • 6 August 2017
MATIC Nights - #3 - THE LANDLADY
24 February, 2017
A Series of Monthly Socials at AirSpace Gallery. Curated by Rebecca Davies - The Matics Series presents a rich mix of Film screenings, Music events, Performances and Talks, to be held on the final Friday evenings of the month, in the gallery’s Resource Room.
An extra special evening of film and beige snacks, hosted by Mavis Davis
CINE:MATIC: GASTRO:MATIC : INFO:MATIC
Mavis’ first time in Stoke-on-Trent, to host an evening with a screening of
The Landlady
(2016, HD Video, 13:30), opening up for questions and discussion after, while she serves up a two course dinner for us all to feast on.
Menu
Starter : Beige selection with Thousand Island dressing dip
Main : Lobby (veggie and meat) and bread.
11:55 am • 11 April 2017
MATIC Nights - #2 - YOU ARE A POWERHOUSE!
27 January, 2017
A Series of Monthly Socials in collaboration with AirSpace Gallery
The Matics Series present a rich mix of Film screenings, Music events, Performances and Talks, to be held on the final Friday evenings of the month, in the gallery’s Resource Room.
CINEMATIC : For January’s Matic we have invited Manchester based artist and film makers Chris Paul Daniels and Sam Meech for a double bill of his films with Q&A.
INFOMATIC : Artist Anna Francis will discuss the #365daysofculture project and it’s progress since the campaign began at the start of January 2017.
Finally a THEMATIC ONE SQUARE MILE (OF STOKE) Biscuit.
11:49 am • 11 April 2017
