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Navigators Art to participate in 2023 York Festival of Ideas with triple venture of art, music & words and film projects. UPDATED with Richard Kitchen interview 26/5/2023

Mapped Head 1, by Nick Walters, from Navigators Art’s Hidden Treasures exhibition for the 2023 York Festival of Ideas

YORK creative collective Navigators Art & Performance are contributing a three-part project to the 2023 York Festival of Ideas, inspired by the festival theme of Rediscover, Reimagine, Rebuild.

The trio of shows and events celebrates rarely seen works in York Art Gallery, books in the city library and intriguing aspects of York life and culture that people might not notice from day to day or even be aware of.

For Hidden Treasures, five artists have sought out unfamiliar but inspiring aspects of York, reinterpreting them in their own way for an exhibition to be hosted by York Explore Library and Archive, in Museum Street, from May 27 to July 6.

Katie Lewis uses textiles and other media to reflect the story behind Thomas Baker’s Crazy Kate in the Treasures from the Stores collection at York Art Gallery.

Nick Walters animates and illuminates on screen the textures of John Davies’s Mapped Head 1, as observed by fellow characters from other works in the collection.

Peter Roman explores the library’s treasures, using collage, paint and typography to delve into the world of books and finding lyrical inspiration from York wordsmiths along the way.

Richard Kitchen switches from his trademark collage format to the camera, pairing it with manual and digital tools to reveal jewel-like qualities in city streets, walls and other surfaces.

Timothy Morrison summons the spirits of Vladimir Tatlin and Greg Curnoe to reveal an artist’s perspective on everyday objects through a variety of materials.

Entry will be free during normal library opening hours. More information can be found at: https://yorkfestivalofideas.com/2023/throughout/hidden-treasures/

Navigators Art’s poster for the Living Treasures performance at The Basement, City Screen Picturehouse, York

On June 10, Navigators Art writers, musicians and performers present Living Treasures, an evening of original music and words at The Basement, City Screen Picturehouse, Coney Street.

For this 7.30pm celebration of secrets of York life and culture, from folk, punk and poetry to fine art via the city streets, they have sought out “hidden treasures” to reinterpret in song and spoken word.

Musical performers include members of the White Sail alt. folk band, Navigators’ composer Dylan Thompson, singer-songwriters Miri Green and Cai Moriarty and up-and-coming York band The Corsairs.

For more information and bookings, head to: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/living-treasures-tickets-621690722687

The poster for Navigators Art’s screening of Martin Nichols’ film There’s Another Country at City Screen Picturehouse, York

In Navigators Art’s third festival event, Brighton director Martin Nichols’ film There’s Another Country will be shown at City Screen Picturehouse on Sunday, June 11 at 11am.

Nichols’ kaleidoscope of post-Brexit Britain unearths parallel traumas in public and private lives while simultaneously anticipating a rediscovery of the radical transforming spirit of 1945 in the immediate aftermath of the Second World War.

For more information and bookings, visit: https://www.picturehouses.com/movie-details/018/HO00012927/there-s-another-country

Here CharlesHutchPress discusses all things Rediscover, Reimagine, Rebuild with Navigators Art co-founder and artist Richard Kitchen

How did you hit on the tripartite format for this event, Richard?

“Originally, we envisaged an exhibition based on York Art Gallery’s Treasures From The Store collection of rarely seen art works, hence our title Hidden Treasures. Our artists would reinterpret some of those works in their own way to suit the festival theme of Rediscover, Reimagine, Rebuild. We also planned a performance art, music and movement event to take place in the gallery itself.

“We were very pleased that York Explore offered to host the exhibition as we’d been wanting to show something there for some time. As it happened, the gallery said they’d be in mid-changeover so we had to change tack. We expanded the brief beyond York Art Gallery to include works of literature and physical aspects of York itself.

“This will also be the basis for the performance event, which will now be on stage in The Basement at City Screen. Again, the performers have created new work based on a rediscovery of something unfamiliar about York that inspired them.

“The film came along a little later and although it isn’t based on York it is very much about rediscovering aspects of the past and how they inform the present both personally and politically.”

How did the partnership with York Festival of Ideas come to fruition?

“I’ve always enjoyed the festival and its range of events. I wanted Navigators to be involved to round off our first 15 months of activity. This year’s theme appealed, so I drafted a proposal for our involvement, which they accepted. We’re very proud to be part of it and they’ve been very accommodating of changes we’ve had to make as our plans developed.”

How does the festival theme of Rediscover, Reimagine, Rebuild resonate with the aims of Navigators Art & Performance?

“In all sorts of ways! Variously, our artists have rebuilt careers, reinvented themselves and how they work, and pursued new directions in life as well as art.

“As a group we’ve achieved extraordinary things from very little. Having no physical studio to work in and no funding, we’ve had to seek out places in which to show our work.

“The StreetLife project, in Coney Street, was a milestone for us and helped put us in the centre of artistic activity in York. I think we’ve shown people how much can be done with imagination and enterprise.

“It’s been about giving ourselves permission to do something when no-one else will. I’d say that has positive implications for society and how it might change for the better.”

York band The Corsairs: Playing the Living Treasures bill at The Basement, City Screen Picturehouse on June 10

York is full of hidden treasures! Is that an inevitable problem for a city so rich in history or a joy when such a treasure is put on show and prompts an artistic response?

“Not a problem at all, unless the focus (and public funding) is always on the same high-profile things. Art and culture in this city are alive and well and there’s a lot going on, but it’s not all about tourist attractions and the well-heeled establishment.

“Anything that communicates beyond the heritage trail, makes an impact on the average resident and encourages all levels of society to engage with creative activity is a blessing. Our group seeks out and celebrates the less obvious and tries to make such things more accessible and better appreciated.”

Who put together the June 10 event. How were the Living Treasures acts chosen?

“Some of them appeared last November at our Coney St Live Jam event for StreetLife and impressed us enough to ask them back. We knew they’d be able to come up with new work based on the themes and we’ve given them more space this time to show what they can do.

“One of them actually chose themselves: The Corsairs cheekily advertised in our visitors’ book last December and I liked their attitude. They turned out to be a very exciting discovery. Then we reached out to a few writing and other creative groups to encourage under-represented performers to get involved.”

How did you discover the film There’s Another Country?

“It’s directed by one of my oldest friends, Martin Nichols. After many years exploring familial and social issues in writing and film, he’s found the perfect vehicle for his concerns. It’s highly original in style and while moving and beautiful, it’s also highly critical, irreverent and angry.”

What would a York version of that film look like?

“It’s not ‘about’ any particular place. Its range of reference encompasses a 1913 Welsh mining village, the Second World War, a suburban town in the 1970s and recent anti-government demonstrations in London. It’s pretty universal. A York version would just have the Minster in the background!”

What’s next for Navigators Art?

“We’ll be compiling our next collection of pictures and words for the York Zine Fest in July. We’ll have a spot at the York River Art Market in August and then a short and well-deserved rest before our next show at Micklegate and Fossgate Socials. Nothing concrete for next year as yet but we’re already getting involved in some major plans.”

Navigators Art & Performance: the back story

ESTABLISHED in 2019, this group of York creatives has expanded to a collective of 12 artists, writers, performers, musicians and a composer.

Their mission is to work with community groups and projects, to enhance and creatively interpret their activities for as wide an audience as possible.

In January 2023 they completed a three-month residency at the StreetLife hub in Coney Street, York, presenting a large-scale exhibition and a charity fundraising performance.

They encourage enquiries from potential collaborators, particularly those who are less established or underrepresented, via navigatorsart@gmail.com; likewise head that way for sales and commissions.

Keep an eye on Navigators Art on Instagram and Facebook at: @navigatorsart.

Detail of interior window, Huntington, by Richard Kitchen, from the Navigators Art exhibition at York Explore Library and Archive

UPDATE: 12/6/2023: What was the reaction to Living Treasures and There’s Another Country?

“WE have had the most extraordinary weekend,” says Navigators Art co-founder Richard Kitchen. “Mark Nichols’ film, a kaleidoscope of post-Brexit Britain, generated a passionate discussion with the audience at City Screen Picturehouse.

“Saturday’s Living Treasures in The Basement at City Screen sold out. The performers were tremendous and the more experimental improvised pieces involving musicians from very different backgrounds, ages and experiences worked superbly well.

“The audience loved it and we’ve been offered a regular spot at The Basement. We actually have plans for a fluid Navigators ‘big band’ to work up some pieces for performance, such as ambient pieces, songs, spoken-word interactions and experimental collaborations.

“It felt very special and inspiring and perhaps the beginning of a unique venture in York.”

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Exit Piccadilly Pop Up, but Navigators Art gains new momentum with Moving Pictures exhibition at City Screen. What next?

Cillian Murphy’s Thomas Shelby, from Peaky Blinders, by Steve Beadle in Navigators Art’s Moving Pictures exhibition at City Screen Picturehouse, York

WELCOME to the next chapter in the story of Navigators Art, the York group of artists that found a temporary home at the Piccadilly Pop Up Collective studios and gallery in the old York tax office.

Given notice to vacate the expansive HRMC building in Piccadilly by December 28, to enable redevelopment to start, they have ridden the blow they always knew was coming by mounting an exhibition in the café and on the first-floor corridor gallery at the City Screen Picturehouse in Coney Street until April 15.

For their first post-lockdown project, two founder Navigators, Steve Beadle and Richard Kitchen, have invited fellow artist and teacher Timothy Morrison to join them in the Moving Pictures: From Fan Art To Fine Art exhibition.

Presumably that show title is a nod to films being moving pictures, Richard? “Of course!” he says. “And that’s why we’re glad City Screen wanted us to show there. But the title is deliberately ambiguous, and we’ve responded to it accordingly. There are works that relate to cinema and other media but also many of them interpret ‘Moving’ in other ways.”

That Old Devil Moon, collage, by Richard Kitchen

“Moving” has always been part of Kitchen and Beadle’s artistic endeavours, first as part of a group of MA student artists at York St John University that set up Navigators Art in 2019. Then, as postgraduates, they worked at The Malthouse, the studios and social space set up in a derelict warehouse in The Crescent in November 2019, and latterly at Piccadilly Pop Up, where they exhibited as part of a team and initiated community engagements, such as mentoring young emerging artists from York College.

“Now, the redevelopment of Piccadilly has prompted us to look to resurrect Navigators as a channel for making and showing work,” says Richard, who has taught literature and theatre in Britain and Spain, as well as pursuing his cross-disciplinary artistic practice, fuelled by drawings, paintings, photography and poetry.

“My collage work is influenced by the impact of time, nature and people on the environment,” he says. “It finds value in the unloved and the discarded and suggests we can make sense of a world in crisis – and perhaps re-make it, better – by editing together fragments of experience that offer us hope.”

Richard should have been exhibiting elsewhere in April but the exit from the Piccadilly premises brought him an additional consequence. “I was selected for York Open Studios 2022 but I was later disqualified because we lost the studios in December and the York Open Studios admin team said it was too late to find me another space,” he says.

When it was beautiful: Marcelo Bielsa in his now-terminated days at Leeds United, by Steve Beadle

Nevertheless, the Moving Pictures show gives him an April window, alongside Hull artist Steve Beadle, who pursued a more abstract direction while studying Fine Art at Manchester Metropolitan and York St John University but has returned to a more familiar portrait and figurative style, inspired by characters in the films and popular entertainment that inspired him to make art in the first place. 

Based in York, he works in oil, gouache, watercolour and pencil, creating framed originals and prints and framed originals, and he is always available for portrait commissions.

Moving Pictures’ third artist, Timothy Morrison, has exhibited widely across the UK and in Schleswig Holstein and his work is in the collection of the V&A Museum, London. In 2011-2012, he curated the ArchitekturalReinstallationestival festival at various sites in York. At City Screen, he is exhibiting two “Modern Altarpieces”.

“Art is the religion, and they are ideal for private devotion in the home,” he says, describing works that display a narrative of travel, enlightenment, longing, memory, central urban experiences, metro systems, Magnetic Fields (Champs Magnétiques) and constructivism. “The pictures can’t move, but our eyes and thoughts can,” he propounds.

Modern Altarpieces, by Timothy Morrison, inviting “private devotion” in the cafe at City Screen

Delighted to be exhibiting at City Screen, Steven says: “The café  wall is wonderful; that old brick. Very textural, very organic. Bigger works in particular benefit from being displayed there.

“The upstairs gallery is a more traditional white-wall area, ideal for smaller pieces as you can get right up close. Some of our work rewards a look at the details. We were lucky to be offered both spaces at the same time, which is quite unusual, especially as it coincides with the York Open Studios season.”

Looking ahead, Richard and Steven hope to open up the Navigators Art group to others and to establish a fluid collective of artists, writers and other creatives. 

“We encourage enquiries from potential collaborators, particularly those who are less established and have no regular platform for displaying work,” says Steven. “Navigators can be found on Instagram and Facebook as @navigatorsart.”

Charles Laughton’s Quasimodo in The Hunchback Of Notre Dame, by Steve Beadle, in the Navigators Art show at City Screen

Richard adds: “We’re trying hard to forge ahead as a working unit after the disappointments of losing the Piccadilly studios and consequently York Open Studios too. The group is growing, and we’ll be curating the visual art aspect of York Theatre Royal’s Takeover week from May 9.

“After that, we’re thinking about a series of themed exhibitions featuring a variety of artists and disciplines and we’ll be seeking appropriate venues. We’d welcome suggestions and offers.

“We also want to revive Wordhoard, an event celebrating art and the spoken word, which Steve and I started when we were at The Malthouse studios but went on hold when Covid struck.”

Is there any likelihood of a new home for the artists that gathered in Piccadilly? “There is no news yet,” updates Richard. “We’d love to hear out of the blue that there’s a brilliant empty building just waiting for us! Please email navigatorsart@gmail.com.

Brave New World, by Richard Kitchen

“Steve and I became the main motivators at Piccadilly in terms of community outreach, events and promotion. Some of the others weren’t really involved beyond their own interests, which undermined the collective ideal.

“When it came to an end, however unfortunate it was, it felt like the right time. However, we’d like to host some of the younger artists again who miss their studio space and can’t afford normal rent rates in York.

“It’s a thousand pities that a building like the former HRMC tax office that housed us can’t be taken over and maintained as a vibrant arts centre and community resource. That’s really what we’re after; that’s our ideal. Resources for residents!”

Over the two years at Piccadilly, each week’s artworks, whether painting, drawing and sculpture, or collage, murals, graffiti, street art and photography, went on public view on Saturday afternoons as part of a scheme run by the charity Uthink P.D.P.

The poster for Navigators Art’s Moving Pictures exhibition

“What we miss most, aside from the working space, is the interaction with visitors to the gallery on Saturdays,” says Richard. “For us, it wasn’t just a chance to sell our work. We came to realise that the true value of 23 Piccadilly was in what you couldn’t put a price on.

“Namely, the joy we gave to people who didn’t know what to expect; the safe place of escape and motivation we represented for the unfortunate and the down at heart; the inspiration we gave to other artists; the proof we provided of what can be achieved without money or other good fortune.

“Almost without knowing it, we took it beyond its initial premise and turned it into a very special environment with a part to play in people’s wellbeing and motivation as well as its cultural impact. That’s what we hope to continue to represent in this city and encourage in other creatives here and elsewhere.”

Navigators Art’s Moving Pictures exhibition runs at City Screen Picturehouse, York, until April 15. Admission is free.