THE WOMBLE COLLECTIVE
Art Platform of Experimental Research & Media Ecology.
https://www.thewomblecollective.net/
The Womble Collective was born from that need to analyse the impact within Art of current themes such as the environmental movement, inside Art’s own creative processes. However, it is known that this type of artistic project, that is initiated online, as a kind of "mutualism", is made up of projects intended to be changing, multidirectional, multiform, tending to mutate over time according to need.
To take some examples of this type of Conversation or Art Collaboration projects, reference points could include:
Raqs Media Collective, e-flux video rental, also Otolith Group. These are today's artistic or creative models, which are also interdisciplinary. First, they have a recognized track record, today they are unavoidable references in Contemporary Art and Art Media. So, these projects arise when they’re triggered by some desire, they are self-institutional platforms. Each one of us as an artist works in a different way, and by working in collaboration, institutionalising ourselves, gives us the chance to have a presence on the internet and to be able to respond to artistic calls for proposals, etc.
It’s this self-institutionalism and the collaborative, transformational and pop-up temporalities of production which generate these audiences, publics and other collectives.
In that sense, and I think we all agree, in this presentation we wanted to say that, for us, the role of art is vital. And we can say that each of us has different training. Now we’ll get to know a little about each one's life, but the dynamic is one of Art. And Art sometimes overflows into a kind of artistic interdisciplinarity, not always only scientific, but in this case, our project is, in some sense, artistic above all. In fact, we once thought that The Womble Collective was like a Work of Art. But we’re not sure so, for now, our answer is no. We do know that we use different methodologies, above all artistic methods and techniques. On an artistic level we are already preparing a proposal for an exhibition that has to do with The Womble Collective. That's for New Zealand, but the our meetings give us a motive to make Art. For this type of platform, the singularity is when it changes form, location and essence at the same moment. In this platform that we are working on, there are no patterns, there are still no concrete rules, beyond those that we are generating in the exercise itself, nor are there are collectors associated with this project, no institutional agents. In other words, we cannot say that this work that we are doing here is a business, we are not working on that idea of innovation or suchlike, this work that we are developing is not very different from what we do as artists all the time, because sometimes artistic thought, as you know, is not a linear process but, sometimes, it turns up answers even before the questions.
Our Story
This is like what they say, that the friends of my friends are my friends. Rosa, Neal and Juan have lived in the same city in Colimbiafor about 5 years, are friends and worked together as a group in 2014, when we wanted to do an art project in the Elephant and Castle neighborhood of London. Neal is an Arts Director that they have met in at Film and Performance festivals, he had already worked with Juan Toro doing set Art Direction, while he was director of Short Films. Later, Rosa invited her old friend Alexander Buzzi, who is a professor at the Conservatory of Arts, where we have also studied. Felipe joined a few months ago, since he is the art director for a project with Neal and we have tied well.
in 2017 Rosa and her family moved to New Zealand. We were always in communication and talked about the Wombles and their meaning. By then Rosa had already done two exhibitions including the idea of the Wombles, her fascination infected us, and she herself invited us to be part of a third installment of this Womble attitude. there are always creative links between us, and the truth is that we have a great time in our meetings, but it is clear that we do not always have the same opinions and criteria.
In everything that we're working on, we are a group of friends, who agree to work artistically on the idea of the Womble. The idea of those big-nosed, hairy characters from the '70s who started out as a book and went on as a TV series. But what interests us is that these characters reuse and recycle rubbish. We say bad rubbish, like “make good art from bad rubbish”. So this is a group of friends working with different creative elements that we have available, like Zoom and like what we're doing here, right now.
Perhaps that is why we say that this is a platform for art, experimental research and media ecology. It is a platform that addresses various concerns and various positions, sometimes contradictory, of Contemporary Art. Within our scope, we could have reflections on climate science, or on recycling, cultural recycling, we could have Lecture Performances, Conferences, etc. In this group we will see many possibilities for work on different projects.
The Team Group:
La Rosa (Rosa Baquero)
has had individual exhibitions in Wellington (“Product of Colombia”, Matchbox Studios, 2011 and “City of Children”, Thistle Hall, 2010) and was part of an “artists open house” organisation that do exhibitions in their artist homes, “ Colombian Womble House, 2017 and Colombian Womble House Revenge, 2018 in Brighton, UK.
Felipe Leal
Multidisciplinary artist, he covers various methods of the arts making use of them in order to dematerialize bodies and forms. Firstly, it was born from the idea of art and anthropology, I began doing research on amorphous situations in popular neighbourhoods of the city of Cali, specifically in the east of the city. The video and the interview make situationism the margin of the work. He actively participated from an early age in different salons and exhibitions from the city of Bogota and all over the country
Neal Alexander
Neal Alexander is the Head of Extraliminal Producciones which for 9 years ran CineToro, an international festival of experimental film, which hosted Colombian and international guests including the directors Lech Majewski and Sarah Sofian.
Alexander Buzzi
Alexander Buzzi is a teacher at the Fine Arts Institute (Bellas Artes) of Cali and most recently (in 2021) curated an exhibition of his father’s work at the Cali Cultural Centre.
Juan Toro
has worked as a gallery owner at the university where he studied (the Departmental Institute of Fine Arts of Cali). He has also worked in the Cultural Area of the Banco de la República and the Chamber of Commerce in Colombia. On the other hand, he has worked as part of the Audio Guide service at the Pergamon Museum in Berlin.
Pitalito & Blue Womb
We have experience of curating exhibitions in conventional and unconventional spaces, and also of running other cultural events including a film festival.
ART STUDIO
LA ROSA WOMBLE
200 Daniell Street, Newtown, Wellington 6021, New Zealand.
© 2021 BY THE WOMBLE COLLECTIVE.
PROUDLY CREATED WITH ANOTHER ARTISTIC COLLABORATION