Artist's Statement by Leonardo Caravaggio

My interests include drawing, painting, sculpture (art in general), architecture, science, engineering, mathematics, anatomy and astrology. I like to think of myself as 'ahead of my time'. I recently discovered that the length of my foot is a sixth of my height and my ear measures a third of the length of my face. I'm also into painting pictures of fruit and any kind of beheading.

Hello from Piet Vasconcelos

For me it began in the Netherlands, around the beginning of the 19 hundreds. At this point it was all about paint. I became obsessed with pairing down my visual language and in reducing the world in order to unearth the divine blueprint implicit within all things.

Having achieved this, I then decided to move to warmer climes, Portugal in fact, where I learnt to crotchet and had much fun with dogs!

Regarding Austin Osman Banner

I came into this world at some equitable hour on May 17th 1974. On the same day the majority of the Symbionese Liberation Army was destroyed in a shoot-out. My father worked at the Babington colliery (Cinderhill, Nottingham) and my mother worked at Wolseys in Kimberley; their respective places of work no longer exist...with all the local pits closing and the hosiery factory demolished my options for toil began to narrow...the only remaining option for work was at the local Blanchard's bakery in Watnall...so I took a job working in the bread plant; creating Wonderloaf...I could draw and had an interest in Art so in due course (and with my parents blessing) I became the first member of the family to enter higher education; I went away to college and attained a BA in Fine Art. I have been resident in San Francisco, Rome and London...I currently live in Nottingham with my family and our two cats...Lucifer and Marcus Aurelius

A little bit about Wassily Goldsworthy...

I was born in Russia in 1944 and I have been interested in exploring the relationship between sound and colour. These days I am in England and I make ephemeral works which are about man's relationship with nature.

Introducing Robert Ader

I'd like to introduce myself and implore my esteemed colleagues subsequently to do the same. My name is Robert Ader, I was born in 1925 in Port Arthur, Texas and studied at Black Mountain college in the late 1940's. I've spent part of my life living in the Netherlands and around 10 years living in Los Angeles before staging my disappearance in a miraculous endeavour to cross the Atlantic Ocean in a 13ft guppy (a small sailing boat). This event marked my departure from the art world and so I'm currently gracing the floors of Nottingham Contemporary and imparting my wisdom to its visitors.

I am hopeful that my legacy in the contemporary art world will live on. Notable works (or so I'm told) are a silent film of me crying to myself, a rams head donning a rubber car tyre around it's midriff and a black and white film of me riding a bicycle into a canal in Amsterdam. My interests centre on the idea of combining sentiments of the everyday with the notion of failure and repetition in an attempt to draw light on the parralel of art and life.

Perhaps it's apt that this initial post is coming at a time when we are in 'change-over' - a transitional moment when one exhibit clears out and another takes its place. During this process, never is there a time when the galleries become truly cleared. Never do the spaces revert to their original unadorned state where the architecture is laid-bare, when space becomes purely space; becomes pure potentiality.

This said there is perhaps no better moment to embark on a project such as this, or at least to begin with an informal introduction? If indeed these thoughts are ordinarily to transpire 'from the floor' then perhaps no time would have been found in which to state what in fact it is we hope to do? The purpose after all is to reflect on the works on display when the works are on display, to relate to the viewers reactions to the work when the work is being viewed. It stands then, that once an exhibition is installed there will be little time, nor reason, to talk about anything else.

At present the floors are strewn with the customary detritus of exhibition set up - giant rolls of bubble wrap, small piles of screws and picture hooks, multiple rolls of masking tape and accumulations of strange multicoloured foam blocks with a colouration reminiscent of Zap ice-creams. The only works to be found are draped in protective diaphanous veils or packed snugly in wooden crates. Sneak previews might be achieved from passing glances through the window when entering the reception area at works leant against gallery walls awaiting their allocation to the cohesive whole. But, of course, this might just ruin the big surprise.

Unfamiliar, or at least uncomfortable, with the domain of drills, fixings, pallet trucks and Genie’s (as in the aerial work platform as opposed to the ‘of the lamp’ variety) I’m left with little to say other than to offer a warm welcome to our blog. I hope you’ll enjoy the ramblings from myself and my colleagues and trust this alternate, insider’s view of the gallery and its exhibitions will be of interest. So, here’s to a moments reprieve, to gaining head-space from acquired physical space and here’s to beginnings.