past projects

FLUX

During summer 2005 Focal Point Gallery worked in partnership with Cue Music and two highly regarded music, fashion and art photographers Doralba Picerno and Christopher Sims, to run a series of workshops with young people. Part of Southend YMCA, Cue Music are a dynamic outreach organisation whose aim is to give life-changing vocational opportunities to young people who are outside of formal education. Over 4 weeks the young people explored how photography and music work together, and developed their own photographic skills. The resulting portrait works were shown at various public sites from November 2005 - July 2006, including the gallery's Education Space, and on hoardings surrounding the University of Essex Southend 's new town centre campus development. The Flux Publication is now available please contact the gallery for more details..

babel - simon biggs

Images from Babel project

www.babel.uk.net

In 2001 Focal Point Gallery, in association with Southend and Essex Libraries, commissioned a major new internet work from artist Simon Biggs. The site is linked to online catalogues of the partner libraries and was seen as a multimedia interactive installation in libraries around Essex during July and August 2001.

With this project Biggs was given the opportunity to create a site-specific work for a non-physical site. The challenge for Biggs was to come up with a metaphor that related directly to the character of this site. The Dewey Decimal numbering system, used in the cataloguing of library contents, is that metaphor, visualised in a three dimensional multi-user space that is itself a metaphor for the infinite nature of information. In Babel the Dewey Decimal numbering system is employed as a means to navigate the internet itself, the numerical codes mapping onto web-sites that conform with the defined subjects.

The project was funded by a New Audiences award from the Arts Council of England and the website was launched on 13 July 2001.