Southern Exposure is proud to announce the recipients of grants in Round III of our Alternative Exposure grant program. In this round Southern Exposure awarded $60,000 to 17 projects. With major support from the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Alternative Exposure offers direct support to Bay Area based unincorporated groups, burgeoning art and gathering spaces, publications, websites, collectives, events, and projects that fall outside the traditional frameworks of support. In the three years since launching Alternative Exposure, SoEx has awarded $155,000 in direct funds to 50 Bay Area projects.
The Round III, 2009 Alternative Exposure grant recipients are: Adobe Books Backroom Gallery, Alula Editions, AoRTa Magazine, Art Practical, Average magazine, Chris Fitzpatrick & Post Brothers, Critter, Destructibles.org, Happenstand, iiiahh, Pueblo Nuevo Gallery, Ribbons, SMITHS, Stop & Go Rides Again, THE THING Quarterly, The Upper Left Ethnography Project, and VOLUME & Kadet Kuhne.
SEE BELOW for a brief description of each project.
An outside panel selected the 2009 grantees, including Renny Pritikin, curator and director of the Nelson Gallery and Fine Arts Collection at UC Davis; Margaret Tedesco, artist and founder of [2nd floor projects]; and Weston Teruya, artist and program associate with the Cultural Equity Grants program of the San Francisco Arts Commission.
Southern Exposure is committed to continuing to serve as a resource for the vibrant independent visual arts community through this and our other programs. Launched in 2007, Alternative Exposure was the first in a now newly established national network of regional re-granting programs supported by the Warhol Foundation, including initiatives in Houston, TX; Chicago, IL; and Kansas City, MO, in addition to San Francisco, CA.
ROUND IV OF ALTERNATIVE EXPOSURE IS COMING UP! Guidelines for Round IV will be available in May 2010. Stay tuned for more details, information sessions, and new guidelines at www.soex.org.
Round III, 2009 Alternative Exposure Grant Recipients
Adobe Books Backroom Gallery
Adobe Books Backroom Gallery is an alternative exhibition space located inside Adobe Books, an independent used bookstore in the Mission district. The gallery primarily supports emerging artists through monthly art exhibitions, where artists can make momentous decisions in their practice and experiment freely in the company of their peers.
Alula Editions
Alula Editions publishers Helena Keeffe and Amber Cady will work with artists to create repeat patterns which will then be screen-printed onto fabric and made into an edition of objects. Alula Editions is interested in alternative modes of distribution which provide artists a way to engage in cultural production outside of traditional models.
AoRTa Magazine
AoRTa Magazine is a radical, independent print production that inspires a cross-pollination of art and identity for the diversity of queer, transgender, feminist artists. AoRTa Magazine is committed to media activism and tackling political, community related issues being confronted locally and globally from feminist and queer perspectives. AoRTa Magazine also serves as documentation and reference for artists, who despite and because of their circumstances have developed their own performative, visual, written, analytical, and sexual languages.
Art Practical
Art Practical is an online magazine that enriches critical dialogue for the Bay Area visual arts by providing comprehensive analysis of events and exhibitions. The Art Practical website choreographs a coalition of three independent chroniclers of contemporary art and culture—Shotgun Review, Happenstand, and Talking Cure quarterly—to create visibility for individual projects and a forum for critical reflection within the broadest possible audience.
Average magazine
Average is a limited edition series of publications initiated by Kate Pocrass and produced in collaboration with a variety of invited artists. Average is a magazine about average things and averages, celebrating ordinary moments that we usually fail to give proper contemplation while going about our day. This publication is a collection of articles and visual contributions illustrating the minutia of our lives, without pretension & full of honesty.
Chris Fitzpatrick & Post Brothers
Chris Fitzpatrick & Post Brothers will present projects by local and international cultural producers within SC13, a glass showcase at the San Francisco Antique & Design Mall. Exhibitions will be punctuated by public programming, including performances, experimental docent tours, auctions and other events. A print-on-demand catalog will document the activities occurring both inside and outside of SC13.
Critter
Critter producer Phil Ross and manager Lauren Allen bring together artists, scientists, institutions and hobbyists who are interested in the relationship between ecological practices and cultural expression. These interactive public events are presented in a salon-style environment that is tuned to the interests of its audience, creating a unique situation for learning about the sciences that affect our lives.
Destructibles.org
Modeled after the popular “Instructibles.com” website, Destructibles.org is an advertising free DIY site that presents projects of protest and creative dissent. The site will allow the public to upload and download templates and step-by-step instructions on how to build and implement projects for demonstrations and interventionist actions. It will also feature a bulletin board for posting activist events, such as protests, lectures, civil disobedience, and workshops.
Happenstand
Happenstand is an online resource for the Bay Area arts community that enables anyone of any means to create and consume information about local art activities. In addition to the website’s calendar, directory, news aggregator, email list and archive, the site also hosts an API (application programming interface) that allows site users to link Happenstand hosted information to their own websites, desktop or mobile applications. This self-propagating form of distribution promotes artistic activity and encourages artists and event organizers to submit their events to the system.
iiiahh
With iiiahh's portable collections, the visual arts can become an everyday yet odd neighborhood encounter full of things, pictures, and words. The potential of such sites for play, silliness, obsession and dallying with objects and images is then amplified. The project is composed of a public display (actual and virtual) of miniature objects co-produced by iiiahh and the public; a workshop open to the public; and a themed collection of objects with carrying cases shaped like musical instruments that are available for public handling.
Pueblo Nuevo Gallery
Pueblo Nuevo Gallery is an alternative artist-run space that produces monthly art shows, art-making workshops, film screenings, and artists’ discussions. Pueblo Nuevo’s objective is to promote local visual artists, and the intersection between education, social justice organizing and the arts in the East Bay.
Ribbons
Inspired by the community and landscape of the Bay Area, Ribbons combines the unique energies of place, performance and participation into unique collaborative gatherings. Artist David Wilson will produce series of books to document these gatherings through collections of ephemera surrounding each event from invitations and maps to photographic, audio, and video recordings taken by show participants.
SMITHS
SMITHS is a project inspired by the history of general stores as intimate spaces of public exchange. From tinsmiths to tunesmiths, artist Allison Smith invites an ever-changing repertoire of local makers to her downtown Oakland storefront to share their skills and stories. These lively monthly gatherings engage participants in conversations on the social histories of craft in order to locate useful models for creative practice in the present, especially in times of war and economic uncertainty.
Stop & Go Rides Again
The Stop & Go animation festival features a broad range of emerging work in the field of animation and pushes the boundaries of cinematic possibility by showcasing a diversity of techniques and approaches. The festival will commission four Bay Area artists who otherwise might not make animations and give them the opportunity to express themselves in the medium, challenge their process, and screen the resulting work at Stop & Go Rides Again.
THE THING Quarterly
THE THING Quarterly’s S.A.S.E. Project is a limited series of free posters designed by artists, which anybody can collect by mailing in a Self Addressed Stamped Envelope. It introduces the work produced by four commissioned Bay Area artists to broader audiences, allows people who may otherwise not buy or collect artwork to start their own collection, and embraces the possibility of engaging with artworks and with artists through participation and exchange
The Upper Left Ethnography Project
Using an exploration of portraiture, The Upper Left Ethnography Project will record the existing and developing culture of the upper left corner of the Outer Sunset neighborhood. The project will begin with a display of existing artifacts and narratives collected from the neighborhood, and continue with portraits created of neighbors while they are being interviewed about their surroundings. The entire project will be documented in a final catalog and exhibition of portraits, performances, and readings.
VOLUME and Kadet Kuhne
VOLUME and Kuhne seek to merge two artists communities, electronic sound and music composers, and filmmakers, to produce Electronic Cinema. For Electronic Cinema, VOLUME and Kuhne will commission four women Bay Area sound artists to perform an original sound score to an existing experimental film and video work by another Bay Area artist of their choosing. Presented as a series of performances and a limited edition DVD, this project will create new relationships and possibilities for expanding the experimental art community.
