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Indonesia Journal #1- Journey and arrival
We took off from Birmingham on Thursday afternoon, arriving at Jakarta airport at 6pm on Friday. It got a bit complicated getting through immigration, signage was confusing, and we joined several queues we didn’t need to, before finally realizing our pre-booked visas and UK passports allowed us to use the automatic gates and we sailed […]
Join Our Board: Seeking a New Chair for Friction
We’re looking for a new Chair to join our diverse Board of Directors. We’re looking for someone who cares about art, community, the environment and social justice and has experience in leading organisations in the arts and non-profit sector. It’s a pivotal time for Friction as we head towards the re-opening of our refurbished and […]
Renewing the Edge
Renewing the Edge As you know, we’re undertaking a major refurbishment of the Edge. This means we’ll be closing for the best part of a year. There’ll be big changes at the Edge, but we’ll be ensuring the soul remains the same. Major changes are: A new, super-accessible ‘changing places’ facility on the ground floor […]
Current artist in residence Jose Witteveen
We’re really pleased to be hosting Rome-based Dutch artist Jose, over July and August. Jose is an artist, photographer and master printmaker and is being hosted at the Edge and working over a range of our current projects. In her own words: ‘ Jose Witteveen, an artist in residence at Friction Arts this month, lives in […]
Kenya Journal #5
Days 7-9 In some ways these days have run into each other. We’ve mostly been mapping, working on archival stuff and planning the rest of the residency, including working out how we can most effectively and usefully share our practice with Kenyan artists. Syowia shared a map of the Nairobi art scene with us, and […]
Kenya Journal #4
Day 6 The early part of the day was spent preparing for the afternoon’s barbecue, with everyone making themselves busy moving tables and chairs around, and chopping and slicing fruit and vegetables. Quite a feast was created, with Kibe manning the piece de resistance that was the barbecue, big enough to hold the whole goat […]
Kenya Journal #3
Day 4 The early part of the day was full of breakfast, (coffee), then being now rested and at home, inevitably having to catch up with some admin. This happily included reviewing photos from our ‘Talking Drum Fest’, which happened immediately before we travelled here. We’re looking forward to the edit Sohelia, our Iranian filmmaker […]
Kenya Journal #2
Day 3 Rising reasonably early, we gathered in the kitchen for coffee before embarking on our first foray into Nairobi and the arts ‘scene’. We were to visit Peter’s pottery, where Syowia and Kibe were helping him to host a pot-making workshop, organised by them and the gallery where Syowia’s current exhibition is living. We […]
Kenya Journal #1
Day 1 Long journey to get here. When we landed, we discovered Sandra’s bag had made its own way somewhere, on an adventure of its own. I really appreciated the sense, once we got on the Kenyan Airlines plane in Amsterdam, that we were moving into a space of Blackness, where we had become the […]
Talking Drum Fest
Talking Drum Fest Playing the Edge in more ways than one We’ve teamed up with intrepid musician Xhosa Cole for a weekend of music, performance, dance, spoken word, talks and all kinds of related shenanigans on 21st/22nd May. Focusing on the Black and African diasporic experience, Talking Drum will feature some of the best artists […]