Eight Days a Week

Eight days a week' is a Project co curated by Pete Clarke from Liverpool and Bryan Biggs, Director Bluecoat Arts Centre with Jurgen Kisters, Journalist and Art Critic Kolner
Stadt Enzeiger and artist Georg Gartz from Cologne. This Project facilitates artists from Liverpool and Cologne taking part in a unique cultural exchange through an ongoing programme of exhibitions, residencies, films, performances, discussions and publications.

Eight Days A Week, Capital of Culture 2008
Liverpool, Merseyside in the context of the North West has been awarded European Capital City of Culture for 2008 from a short list of six major British Cities. Liverpool City Council highlighted 'Eight days a week' an inclusive collaborative project linking Liverpool and the North West with Cologne, Germany as a major featured event for March 2008.
The steering group led by Pete Clarke and Bryan Biggs, Bluecoat Arts Centre plan a major exchange Project in Liverpool and Cologne developing exhibitions, conference and a significant publication to document the philosophy and history of the project.
The steering group will develop the 'Eight Days' Project to define its organisational framework, its mission and objectives to facilitate widening participation and audience development for contemporary art in the North West within the context of Europe.
To develop a cultural programme leading up to 2008, create publicity and funding opportunities and draft a strategy related to Liverpool City Council and the Capital of Culture Programme.

'Eight Days a Week 2002'
Eight days a week' projects in both Liverpool and Cologne encompassed a wide range of activities, craft, installation, video, photography, sculpture, architecture, printmaking, digital media, performance, music and painting. They are the result of collaborations between artists, both individuals and groups, working with a number of venues and sites, including galleries, colleges, artists' spaces, civic buildings and the internet.
Artists and other representatives from Liverpool and Cologne visited each others cities providing further opportunities for a wider audience engagement and dialogue with the exchange process. As part of the 50th Anniversary event there were civic, ecumenical, business and other exchanges.

Liverpool and Koln Exchange Programme, July 2004.
Pete Clarke gave a Tate Gallery Talk to contextualise the recent Koln exhibitions 'Rhinegold', Tate Gallery, 'Drawing Exhibition ZG', Bluecoat Gallery and Liverpool Art School 'Accidental Lines and Red Splashes'. These 'Eight Days' projects in 2002 were funded by the Bluecoat Arts Centre, Liverpool, The British Council, The City of Liverpool and Köln, The Door, Merseyside Youth Association, Liverpool 2008 European Capital of Culture Bid and Liverpool! Cologne Twinning Anniversary, Eight Days and Uclan, Preston.'

'Collaboration', a painting project by Pete Clarke & Georg Gartz.
This project produced work in England and Germany since 1998 and has made reciprocal exhibitions in Cologne and Liverpool. Through this dialogic process a body of painting has emerged which offers us, not a series of composite impressions of the urban landscape, but a kind of visual meditation on the city, an amalgam of differing perspectives. The paintings raise questions about how we picture the world, challenging the notion of a single fixed authorial point of view. They also interrogate the practice of painting itself through the methodology of the collaborative approach - the process of applying paint to canvas becoming a discursive act.' From 'Collaboration' catalogue essay by Bryan Biggs, Director of Arts, Bluecoat Arts Centre, Liverpool 2000. '

'Kunstwerk', Koln October-November 2001.
The exhibition at Kunstwerk included twelve recent paintings made collaboratively with Georg Gartz in the studios at Uclan and an installation made of twenty previous collaborative paintings. The exhibition was well presented in a large independent art gallery which is part of the artists' group at Kunstwerk. The exhibition opening had many visitors and included a programme of theatrical and musical performances to broaden access to the visual arts. The project and exhibition costs, publicity and transport were funded by the British Council in Germany, Eight days a week, Kulturamt Cologne, Kunstwerk and Uclan. The exhibition was reviewed by the 'Kölner Stadt Anzeiger', featured in the Stadt review and significantly publicised by the British Council in Germany's website included five pictures of work and review of the exhibition.

'Long night of the museums', Saturday 10/11/ 2001.
The exhibition Kunstwerk' was highlighted as a major part of the 'Die Lange Nacht der Museen' [the long night of the museums] when Cologne has a celebratory evening for the visual arts organised by the City of Cologne and sponsored by the Stadt Review. All the major Koln museums participated with Kunstwerk the selected independent exhibition.


'Crash 1': Artists' in Collaboration, curated by Georg Gartz and Pete Clarke
VHS Käln-Lindenthal
Crash explored how artists' work in various forms of collaboration, challenging concepts of originality and authenticity through dialogue and experimentation from formal painting, painting and poetry, interactive presentations and photographic installations, contemporary printmaking and textiles.
The Exhibition was formally opened with speeches by Helga Blömer- Frerker, Bezirksvorsteherin Lindenthal, Andrea Pohlmann- Jochheim, Head of Department of Culture, Stadt Cologne and an introduction exploring concepts of collaboration within the European cultural context by Georg Gartz.

'Crash 2' New Painting from Liverpool curated by Pete Clarke VHS Köln- Nippes
The Exhibition was formally opened with speeches by Bernd Schössler, Bezirksvorsteher Nippes, Andrea Pohlmann- Jochheim, Head of Department of Culture, Stadt Köln and an introduction exploring Liverpool within the cultural context of the International by Pete Clarke.
The Exhibition and catalogue for 'Crash 1 and 2' was funded by Liverpool Art School, The University of Central Lancashire, Preston and Roger Morris, P.H. Holt Trust in England and by 'Eight days a week', Stadt Cologne, 20/10 Kulturhauptstadt Europas and DOM KOlsch, Germany. Reviewed in the KOlner Stadt Enzeiger, 'Ausstellungen von Kolnern und Liverpoolern sind in VHS-Galerien zu sehen'.

'In exposed areas’ at the Kulturbunker, Mülheim, Köln and Atkinson Art Gallery Southport were the most recent reciprocal exhibitions, Pete Clarke was exhibitor and lead curator giving a gallery lecture and editing the exhibition catalogue with a critical essay by
Dr. Martin Turck,Cologne and Philip Wroe, exhibition curator, ISBN 0-9552820-1-2.
In exposed areas explores the social and cultural climate for contemporary practice where different attitudes to painting can be seen as a form of critical and engaged dialogue. ‘In exposed areas’ was reviewed in the Kölner Stadt Anzeiger by Jürgen Kisters, May 2006, featured in the Guardian June 2006 and Pete Clarke was invited by A-N for Artists magazine to write a piece with photograph for October 2006.

‘Eight days’ projects were funded by The British Council in Germany, The Cities of Liverpool [Liverpool Culture Company] and Cologne [Stadt Kulturampt]. Recently Pete Clarke has written successful grant applications to the Liverpool Culture Company [£5000] and the Arts Council [£15000] and the PH Holt Charitable Trust to develop projects for 2006 and 2008.

In October 2006 Pete Clarke was Editor of ‘Eight Days A Week’ 3rd edition newspaper,
ISBN 0-9552820-4-7, 978-0-9552820-4-1
which was launched as part of Independents, Biennial Liverpool. Pete Clarke chaired the artists’ forum and gave a contextual introduction to lead the discussion.