Taxi (as) Gallery Closing Event

12 November 2005

After three years and over 30 exhibitions by a diverse range of artists Taxi (as) Gallery celebrated a transition in which its activities won't necessarily exclude "art" but WILL be including other possibilities and roles as neighbourhood landmark and resource (see the about section for more info on these changes). To mark this transition on the afternoon of Saturday 12th November there was a retrospective exhibition of Taxi Gallery 2002 - 2005, performance, conversation about these future plans, refreshments and film screenings in the Taxi itself and neighbouring Scout Hut.

The event included:

Premiere of "Audience - a collection of silences" by Rachel Gomme (in the Taxi)
Rachel Gomme is making a collection of silences, and requests contributions. This one-to-one performance interview taking place in the Taxi reflected on the intimacy, presence and exchange value of silence. 12 appointments were offered and all contributors will receive a CD of the collection. Audience is a New Work Network Networked Bodies Award project.

feedback from one contributor >

a silent ride in (slight) retrospect
teachers telling you to keep quiet/ playing the 'silence game' in the car on long journeys/ can't remember who won/ silence of remembrance / silence of embarrassment/ intimacy is not just a title by Sartre / looking at you looking at me/ being an object/ being a subject/ being part of a much bigger whole/ feeling very small/ feeling lonely/ feeling scared/ feeling like there is no world out there/ being not doing/ being or not/ therapy/ the couch/ is there anybody there? / not sure what to do/ what's the code/ Hearing yourself think/ hearing another person breathe/ not knowing what it would be like/ not worrying what it would be like/ warm and cosy inside / cold and wet outside/ sit back and relax/ a ride at night with someone you don't know/ will something happen/ should something happen/ I wish I'd done this / I wish I'd done that/ will I do this/ will I do that/ hearing all sorts/ being aware of every inch / not being aware of anything / a blank/ am I holding my head up too high/ feels like its about to fall off/ or take off/ what do I look like from the side/ had no idea it could be like this/ surprising/ enticing/ lots more/ sharing a black cab going nowhere with a total stranger on wintery evening/ have not done done that before/not for a long time/ remembering other rides/ other nights in other places/ riding cabs with strangers/switching on and off/ the lights/ the nights/ the rides of life..

Material Woman

a 20 minute film made by Elspeth Owen and Anna Grimshaw during Elspeth's three week performance of "Curtains!" inhabiting Taxi Gallery for three weeks in Nov/Dec 2003 - the film will be screened at 3pm, 4pm & 5pm in the Scout Hut. A selection of Elspeth's Curtains provided privacy for the performance of "Audience - a collection of silences" described above.

+ an exhibition of the Taxi Gallery archive and Radio Taxi sounds.

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Rachel Gomme is an artist working in live art, installation and dance. Her work explores the embodied nature of being in the moment and how this may be engaged in performance, looking for ways to create a shared space of experience between performer and viewer. Through an examination of the intimate relationship between body and environment, and the ways that experience is stored and expressed in the body, she seeks to question the nature of presence. Previous work includes durational, site-specific and installation-based solo performances (Longshore Drift, Second Skin, Weaving Ghosts), site-specific installation (Artery) and a series of pieces based on stillness (performance works Stillspace 1 and 2, In the Beginning... and Self-Portrait, and the video installation Still Point, Turning World). Her work has been shown throughout the UK and internationally.
Rachel has also worked as a performer with a number of artists, including the Strange Names Collective, Gary Stevens, Philipp Gehmacher, Rebecca Skelton and Marie-Gabrielle Rotie.

Elspeth Owen’s most familiar material is clay and her ceramic work has been widely shown in this country and in Canada, Croatia, France, Germany, Netherlands, Scotland, Sweden, Switzerland, Taiwan, USA and Wales. Since the time of the Women’s Peace Camp at Greenham Common, Elspeth has been interested in moving aside from making finished objects and into work where the passage of time, the live process is a key element. Long distance walking and the finding of temporary shelter have inspired photographic and performance experiments and collaborations.
Elspeth writes; "Tender, direct, resilient, with a thin skin: that is how my work touches you. To sustain this means remaining open to the emotions and sensations of an ordinary life. I keep slipping between categories - life, art, therapy, play, ritual - and find that I’m usually in more than one at a time, with something up my sleeve!"

Anna Grimshaw is Associate Professor in Visual Culture at Emory University, Atlanta. Her research interests are visual anthropology, documentary cinema, and experimental ethnography. Recent publications include - Co-editor: Visualizing Anthropology: Experiments in Image Based Practice, Intellect Books, 2004 and The Ethnographer’s Eye: Ways of Seeing in Modern Anthropology, Cambridge University Press, 2001