A Slow Art Space

On April 28th, halfway through the two-week residency at the Chinese Arts Centre, we participated in International Slow Art Day (www.slowartday.com) with an interactive open studios event which attracted 88 visitors.

My personal residency project was making food slowly, that was shared with visitors on the day. The menu included 10-day sourdough, Amish Friendship Bread, tea eggs, cheese, radish seedleaves, and ginger beer. We prepared a handout explaining about Slow Art Day, listing the works, and inviting visitors to view or engage with them more slowly than they might normally. Most of the artists were present to facilitate the visitors' engagement with their pieces and to chat afterwards, not just about slow art but also to open up a wider dialogue about the benign potential of "slow" - giving ourselves, our projects and others space the time to germinate and grow organically, especially in the context of city living.

The works-in-progress exhibited by members of our Life Friendly Collective included: a rail of garments with questions about their origin sewn into them by Penny Skerrett, a long 'fluid manifesto' to which visitors were invited to contribute by Kate Bevan, a meditation and writing durational performance by Yan Preston, a video exploring the concept of 'life friendly' with gallery staff by Àgata Alcaniz, a curated 'library of changes' by James Brady, a collaborative story on the gallery wall initiated by Elizabeth Wewiora from a found photograph, a twitter-based project by Erinma Ochu involving a handmade postbox for 'small things', and cress haikus by Maya Chowdhry.

Over a snack of slow-made food, we chatted with many people about their experience of visiting the open studios event and spending a longer time than usual with each artist's work. The response was very positive, people felt the space was relaxing and that felt that they had literally slowed down as they spent time there. Some of the artworks invited participation, and people felt that the context of Slow Art Day made them more likely to spend time thinking and participating in the artworks. Although the works were contemporary and nontraditional, several people were keen to go and view paintings etc slowly by themselves after the experience. Two visitors even took away some of my slow-cake batter to make their own 10-day cakes! - Report written by Jessica Mautner for Slow Art Day International