Plymouth Art Weekender Showcases City’s Cachet as a Creative Community
Plymouth is kicking off its reimagined Art Weekender festival this weekend (October 18) with a destination art opportunity to celebrate artists’ work from the city, around the UK and beyond.
Plymouth Art Weekender (PAW) will highlight Britain’s Ocean City’s wide cultural scene through a range of diverse installations, exhibitions, and events in a host of key outdoor spaces across the city, as well as venues, galleries, and museums.
PAW, organised by Visual Arts Plymouth, first emerged in 2015 but has not been staged since the COVID-19 pandemic. Its return cements the city’s reputation, nationally and internationally, as a centre for contemporary art and innovation. This year’s theme, ‘Do It Yourself’, help each other out, captures the collaborative spirit that flourishes among artists in the city and beyond. Throughout the weekend, a vibrant mix of visual art, hands-on workshops, and exciting events will bring creativity to every corner of Plymouth.
Some of the highlights will include:
- Jeremy Deller’s Acid Brass & Afterparty *
- Bloomberg New Contemporaries 2024 at KARST, The Levinsky Gallery and MIRROR.
- Anything You Can Think Of / Everything You Can Imagine. A new artwork by LOW PROFILE created in partnership with Plymouth Scrapstore and Big Ups. we-are-low-profile.com
- RAMP (Real Art Make Print) Artist Showcase at Ocean Studios, Royal William Yard
- DIY Digital at Grow
- Immersive Art Gallery – Plymouth Art Weekender Special at the Market Hall
- Free screening of Jeremy Deller’s Everybody in the Place with a talk from Artist and Curator Rhys Morgan as part of The Box Plymouth / National Gallery The Triumph of Art commission.
- DIY DIGITAL at Grow Plymouth.
- Unexpected Crossings with Cylena Simonds, Simone Marconi and Siena Venturino-Malcherczyk
The Art Weekender also includes Artober, a free festival of art at Royal William Yard, which will see contributions from a constantly evolving exhibit of locally and nationally renowned artists, some in residence during the event, others with pop-up shows. Shows include the South West Coast Path Photographer of the Year exhibition with images of England’s longest national path, running across 630 miles.
Hannah Harris, CEO of Plymouth Culture says: “Plymouth Art Weekender offers artists a unique platform to showcase work, test ideas and reach audiences. There is really nothing else like it that celebrates art and creativity of every kind in such a democratic way. It is incredibly important that it is artist-led and it couldn’t happen without the energy from the creative community, which we see in abundance in Plymouth. PAW is a manifestation of several ambitions within the Culture Plan for Plymouth including the use of outdoor and unusual spaces for art and cultural encounters, everywhere for everyone.”
Rhys Morgan, Plymouth-based artist and PAW Co-director, says the festival has supported countless artists to realise exhibitions and events, providing them with a platform to showcase their work to audiences across the city, as well as opportunities to skill up.
“Plymouth Art Weekender is a unique opportunity for Plymouth’s expansive cultural scene to come together and celebrate the breadth and diversity of artist practices based in the city.
“The DIY ethos of the festival and Plymouth’s artists’ commitment to delivering a huge host of events in a variety of spaces encapsulates a lot of the reasons Plymouth is such an exciting and welcoming place to visit and to live in. We are very pleased to bring back the festival, after a brief hiatus, and look forward to seeing how it evolves in future. “
Artists Hannah Rose and Rachel Dobbs – who work and live in Plymouth and are known as Low Profile – also comment on the opportunity. Hannah says: “We’re excited to see the return of Plymouth Art Weekender this year. It has become a real fixture and focus point on the creative calendar for artists, and people who are curious to see and experience art in the city.
“There is otherwise a limit of opportunities and spaces for artists to test out new things and show their work to audiences. PAW supports this to happen on a large scale by opening up underused/empty spaces and creating a platform for artists to share their ideas with broad audiences.”
Running alongside the weekender are a series of national and international exhibitions within the city’s art galleries. Featuring a stellar line-up of historical and contemporary exhibitions at The Box archive and gallery, including Land Sea Sky with works by Turner Prize nomineeIngrid Pollard MBE, celebrated landscape artist JMW Turner and New York-based photo-realistic painter Vija Celmins this shows the breadth of art and culture across the city.
A highlight of The Box collaboration with the National Portrait Gallery includes Jeremy Deller’s Acid Brass & Afterparty, an evening of music and dance. During the weekend, there will also be a chance to enjoy Bloomberg New Contemporaries 2024, an annual survey exhibition of emerging and early career artists from UK art schools and learning programmes. Returning to Plymouth for the first time in 60 years, it launches across three venues – KARST, The Levinsky Gallery and MIRROR.
One of those exhibiting at the New Contemporaries is multi-disciplinary artist, designer and folklorist Libby Bove whose work centres around ideas which reposition folk custom and magical practice at the forefront of daily life. She says: “As I arrived in Plymouth to see my work presented alongside the cohort’s works of exceptional quality, depth and diversity, the scope of the project really hit home: this is a benchmark.”
Libby is also showing The Museum of Roadside Magic, her travelling archive set in the back of a Luton van housing an array of ceramic, textile, sound and photographic works, all relating to various applications of Roadside Magic.
Ben Borthwick, Head of Programme for KARST, believes PAW has been an essential ingredient in Plymouth’s emergence as a centre for contemporary art at national and international levels: “It creates a moment of intensity when individual artists, grassroots DIY projects and established institutions all come together to animate our city.
“This is the perfect moment for PAW to return, coinciding with New Contemporaries where the most exciting graduates across the UK begin their artistic journey at KARST, MIRROR and the Levinsky Gallery, amid all of the brilliant, unpredictable, activity PAW has to offer.”
Destination Plymouth Chief Executive Amanda Lumley concludes: “This is a fantastic opportunity to support Britain’s Ocean City’s position as a centre for contemporary art and innovation and our plans for the future. The Art Weekender will showcase the breadth of our wide cultural scene, and we are delighted to see so many events and exhibitions taking place in such a variety of spaces.”
For more information on Plymouth Art Weekender please visit: Plymouth Art Weekender Returns for 2024
