Joshua Y'Barbo

Hello All, This month has seen two projects that i've been working on over the past 6 months come together.  The first is 'Communicating Values' a Chelsea College of Art & Design / Kupambana Art Foundation Collaboration. The project aimed to create an exchange of dialogue between Lewis PR employees and students and alumni at Chelsea College. The culmina First thing I have to say about this project is that I regret not giving the title more thought. It came out of back and forth emails as well as questions of value and value structures that had arisen within my research at the time of the start of this project. I think a more appropriate title would be 'Limits of Language' or maybe 'Do We Know More Together?'  Anyhow, the 6 month project ended with what I thought to be a successful exhibition that showed what we'd been doing in our discussions with one another and also art practice based responses within groups.

The work posted below is in response to the theme of TROPICAL LAB 7 and took place between 24th July to 7th August 2013. ECHO: The Poetics of Translation Walter Benjamin once compared translation to hearing an echo in a forest. Such a  metaphor for the act of translation suggests the sonic if not oral dimension of language  and reminds us of the way in which there is a space between the original and its  repetition. Translation then is a rich terrain of exploration for the arts.  Tropical Lab 7 draws together student artists from all over the world, bringing them  together to learn about Singapore and that of its neighbors. At the same time, it  provides these artists with the opportunity to collaborate and work across the  boundaries of country, bringing together differences. While, on one hand, translation  allows for the discovery and creation of connections between two or more positions, it  also makes evident a gap. This unbreach

Salon Advert (tree III) digital print on raw canvas 50 x 50 cm 2013 Salon Advert (tree IV) digital print on raw canvas 50 x 50 cm 2013 Above are two digital images that i had printed on raw canvas for a recent exhibition at Chelsea College. The exhibition was for 1st Year PhD Students who's research is practice-led.  This is a tricky area for me as i mainly work in participatory art (creativity and learning through community engagement i.e. Chelsea Salon Series) which tends not to result in material objects. However, t hese works were created as advertisements for the Chelsea Salon Series. I combined images of individual practices and documentation of salon events and the resultant images roughly take the form of a tree. The images were selected randomly with only the overall hue, colour and tone of the image as a uniting factor. The combination of individual practices can be seen to form a network - a networks that is based on intera

HEAT, SMOKE,  KITCHEN UTENSILS,  SOUND, SOUND INSULATION,  DETERGENT, 3-D and 2-D work'.  Some of the works in this exhibition concentrate on the use of senses other than sight. This not only refers to works producing or dampening aural sensations (a.k.a sound-art), but to the 'clean' smell of detergents and the hotness of a heater. How much are we willing or prepared to invest in a work that is not only 'in front of our eyes'? There are other themes emerging from the clutter of this seemingly eclectic mix of art work : “experiments” that might remind one of high-school science classes, diy sound insulation that could look like an empty canvas, collapsed cardboard structures that could get more attention than the ones next to a bin, organised detergents in the style of dot painting or a religious ritual, painting and drawing a picture, buying a heater from Argos,  mimicking a guitar body or stacking clay.The ma