Tether projects archive
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Tether is an artist group based in Nottingham, founded by graduates of Fine Art at Nottingham Trent University in 2007. Tether is supported by The National Lottery through Arts Council England.

www.tether.org.uk

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Day Zero
Max Warburg, London
May 28th 2010

On May 28th 2010, Tether hosted a series of artist talks and a new moving image work at Max Warburg, Vyner Street, London. The speakers talked about a tangential passion of theirs in a 'soap box moment', presenting short and snappy digressive accounts, which ranged from discussing the pleasures of hand-made shoes, Sunderland's 1973 FA Cup victory, to Ratcliffe-on-Soar power station.

The invited speakers were:

Alice Bradshaw, artist, Contents May Vary, Manchester
Anthony Peskine, artist, Paris
Rob Flint, artist, lecturer, Nottingham Trent University
Tristan Hessing, artist, Moot, Nottingham
Matt Westbrook, artist, Grand Union, Birmingham



To celebrate the launch of the Max Warburg Project Space, Tether produced 50 limited edition gift bags were available for visitors to take away. A new cocktail developed by Grin & Slutsky was also given away at the opening.

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Murder in The Kremlin
The Wasp Room
May/June 2009

For the final exhibition in The Wasp Room's inaugural season, Tether collaborated to create a sprawling studio filling installation, which comprised a kind of abandoned film set or scenes from an ambiguous tale of espionage.

The show began on the front doors of the studio/gallery, with the usually bare windows boarded up with old posters and cardboard, creating the impression of abandonment and dereliction. Inside, a smoke machine clouded the already brooding darkness of the stairs with an ambient mist, leading up to a series of red laser beams, bounced from small mirrors to create a web of impassable lines from wall to wall. Beyond this, the floor leading past The Wasp Room and into the studio was raised with wooden steps and a platform forming a ramp, like a kind of shanty town assemblage, drawing the ceiling closer to the audience.

Stepping into the gallery from the corridor, and initially the room seems nothing more than a narrow janitor's cupboard. Brooms, brushes, a ladder and some clothes hung from hooks, and in the far corner a bookcase. Upon the shelves a book written in Russian, another about conspiracies. On closer inspection, cracks of light seem to protrude from the book case's edge. Push against the shelves and revealed before us is a hidden room.

Filling much of the floor space is one large mass of shredded documents, which reach from a desk and shredder to the corner of the room, where a chair stands. Beside the chair and up the wall evidence of scrambled footsteps lead up to a displaced ceiling tile, suggesting a rushed escape. Turning to the desk and we see the wall is covered with plans, notes, calculations, all seemingly aimed at deciphering a number of letter-based codes.

Returning to the corridor we walk down the ramp, which leads us into an even more unfamiliar and surprising a space. The walls decked and reformed with reams of cardboard and screws, we have entered a kind of lo-fi air raid bunker. The room is bare, but for a large table in the centre, strewn with plans of buildings (The Kremlin and another unrecognisable space), notes in Russian, rolls of cash, a memo taker with reels of tape pulled from it, identity cards and a projector. Playing on the wall is a video message from a long-haired man speaking in Russian. We cannot understand his words, but his eyes seems imploring and passionate, his body language shifting from determined lecturing to fatigued resignation.

At the far end the bunker has been breached, leading to the last room of the exhibition. With the lights off, windows blocked and the floor painted gloss black, a white glow eminates from four small televisions, stood on plinths of variable heights each with their backs to one of the room's walls. Four men's faces, eyes shifting from left to right; wary, on edge, but are they victims or perpetrators? Beyond their faces, beyond our view, what are we missing?

Murder in The Kremlin received rave reviews from viewers and writers alike, including a generous exhibition preview in The Guardian. To read this article, please click here: http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/2009/may/30/tether-nottingham

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All Smoke and No Fire
The Old Truman Brewery, London
May/June 2008

As part of Free Range 2008, Tether produced a five-day collaborative show entitled All Smoke and No Fire.

Focusing on the process of artistic compromise and reflecting upon the reality of post-graduate life, All Smoke and No Fire presented artworks that reacted to the challenge of creating work as a collective, and attempted to live up to the cavernous grandeur of the Old Truman Brewery. Like the Wizard of Oz -hiding behind a curtain and bombastic effects to disguise his slight appearance- All Smoke and No Fire sought to act far grander than it actually was; playing with notions of space and scale, spectacle and ambition.

The show included a 9ft carboard Trojan horse (suggesting Tether's infiltratation of Free Range’s design week) and tragicomic mobile architectural interventions known as "Pillar Men" who followed, hid from or ignored the public, depending on their individual characters. Other works were an illusory mirror installation; floating occult-esque invigilators bearing lanterns, shrouded in grey hooded capes and unresponsive to enquiries; a search light operated to pass through space picking up details of the exhibition and framing the public; an over-head projector combined with an office fan, cardboard box and handmade miniature flag which created the silhouette of a large victorious flag planted in a hill, waving in a breeze, as a symbol of a proud and noble conquest; and a miniature trainset passing through a mountain range, which was rigged up to a sound system and timer, so that when the train was activated a recording of a real-life train would permeate the Old Truman Brewery space, belying the diminuitive plastic carriages rattling round on model tracks.

The pieces that made up All Smoke and No Fire distinguished the show from all other Free Range exhibitions thus far- representing the combined practices of roughly a dozen fine artists, free from individual artistic ownership from any of the group’s constituent members. The curation, management and organisation of the project lay completely with Tether's members; ranging from sponsorship and advertising, down to the construction of the work itself.

This project was supported by Nottingham Trent University.

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Tether Festival
Various locations across Nottingham
November 2007

Spanning three weeks, Tether Festival consisted of events, exhibitions, performances and screenings dedicated to new, ambitious and innovative artworks being produced in the UK. Featuring works by some of the East Midlands most exciting, emerging creative talent, the festival represented the first major project by Nottingham artist group Tether. Hugh Dichmont was co-director of the festival with fellow Tether artist Samuel Mercer.

For information on the festival's programme and projects, please visit the Tether website.

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For more information about these projects, please contact the artist.