“Dialogue with the Present”
CIRCA Projects is a non-profit organisation with a curatorial position. Its main goal is to present the viewer with coherently researched projects that are embedded in the present. Our work is mainly based in the presentation and production of new art works and projects. Hence our aim is to encourage a critical discussion around contemporary art production and we stress the importance of regularly organising artist talks, debates and events in order to create an access point to art and its contexts.
CIRCA Projects’ curatorial interests lie in the potential of the role of the curator to expand the institution. Run by three curators, it uses various sites and partnerships to realise its exhibition programme, in doing so it can address different audiences. Outputs take the form of exhibitions, events, commissioned artworks and publications. Every aspect of its exhibition programme applies a methodology that is appropriate to the concepts developed with artists in the programme.
The prevailing programme titled ‘Space Release’ which takes place over 15 months, at the Stephenson Works site in Newcastle upon Tyne, examines a return to the individual in art practice. An intention is to capture truly original and authentic progressions in art practice which epitomise current artistic and social thought.
Based in the North East of England, CIRCA Projects operates in a peripatetic manner considering the expanded field; where the museum, the gallery or the cinema space are all sites to be considered through both their individual position and typified characteristics.
History
Founded in 2009 by Sam Watson and Adam Phillips, CIRCA Projects has expanded as an organisation, changing from its original project-by-project structure towards a consistent year-round public programme of new art. In 2011 Dawn Bothwell worked with CIRCA Projects to oversee an artist residency project, before joining as Curator in the Summer of 2012.
Between September 2011 – June 2012, CIRCA Projects programmed its first long-term project, ‘CIRCA Screen’. CIRCA Screen was a space dedicated to artists single-channel moving image work, which presented the first UK exhibition outside of London by Clemens von Wedemeyer, the first UK exhibition anywhere by Mario Pfeifer as well as seminal works by John Smith and Manon de Boer, rarely seen pieces by Martin Arnold and Elizabeth Price, and artist talks and discussions with Ed Atkins, Eric Bainbridge and Ben Jeans Houghton. Situated in a new £6m mixed-use building in Sunderland city centre, the space was the only programmed exhibition venue dedicated to contemporary artists’ moving image in the UK following the closure of the BFI Gallery, London.
This volume of activity and its value in contribution to the field of contemporary art, has led to a significant increase in recognition internationally, for a small, independent contemporary arts organisation operating outside of any central art-market.
