I am very excited about this exhibition! It will be the first one we do with our new space, the artists we have lined up are interesting and I love the works we’ll have the privilege to show.

Naturally, we need to keep in mind that we might be evicted at any point. We have plans in place of how to get all the works safely to the next building and how to keep the ball rolling if this would happen. Because of this, we are doing this on a very tight schedule, hoping that we get to stay in this building for the whole duration of the show. Of course, I wish that we could stay for a long time since we have finally got it to run smoothly and I am utterly in love with the space.

But without further a do, let me introduce our artists:

Nicola Ellis
www.nicolaellis.com/context/

Nicola Ellis (b.1987, St Helens) currently lives and works in Manchester. She studied BA hons Fine Art at The University of Central Lancashire and following this, completed an MA in Fine Art at Manchester School of Art. In recent years she has undertaken research projects including Sculpture: A Fabrication(2017), which focused on the mechanics of large scale sculptural commissioning, and Play/Pause: the turbulent history of UK steel (2016). She is currently undertaking an open door residency at ACA and The North Pennines Observatory. She is also doing a placement in manufacturing in order to produce a commission for The National Festival of Making in Blackburn. Her work recently featured in exhibitions including; From A to C, this being B. Caustic Coastal, Salford. Da Vinci Engineered, Zebedees Yard, Hull; It’ll Hold Until It Breaks (solo exhibition), Platform A Gallery, Middlesbrough; More room for error (touring solo exhibition), Arcadecardiff, Cardiff, &Model Gallery, Leeds & Bloc Projects, Sheffield; You won’t see that bit anyway (solo exhibition), 20-21 Visual Arts Centre, Scunthorpe, UK; Head to Head: Nicola Ellis and Aura Satz, Castlefield Gallery, Manchester, UK; Part of the Programme, FAFA Gallery, Helsinki; and Cabedal, Plataforma Revolver, Lisbon. 

Riikka Enne
www.riikkaenne.com

Riikka Enne (b. 1990, Tampere) lives and works in Manchester. She studied her BA in Fine Art in Tampere School of Art (2014) and continued to her MFA in Manchester School of Art (2016). Enne works in sculpture and performance: Her work examines the gap between an individual’s experience and the tensions of society through found objects seen as revealing residue of human life, concentrating on materiality and restrictions. Recently she exhibited in Disponere, 5th Base Gallery, London; Femfest, Tanner Street, London and Pittsburgh Performance Festival (PGHPAF), Pittsburgh; Emergency Break Glass, Manchester Art Gallery, Manchester. Most recently her work has been visible as public space performances across Manchester. 

Matt Girling
www.mattgirlingartist.tumblr.com
www.instagram.com/subsurfacepondwater/

Mutabase
www.mutabase.net/
www.mutabase.bandcamp.com/releases

Review by silent radio: “With Strange Friends off the stage, the next act to wow us is Mutabase, she is incredible! I would say she is a performance artist in her own right and she captures the crowd with her haunting voice and impressive songs. She completely owns the stage, and calls herself a “DIY electro punk rocker.” With a few gigs already under her belt it seems today is the biggest one to date which is hard to believe. I can see Cristi becoming a big star and I would buy tickets to her next gig in a heartbeat.”

Sophia Moffa
www.sophiamoffa.com/

Sophia Moffa (b. 1994 Rome) is interested in the relations and tensions between the body, and the socio-political and technological events surrounding society. Initially working intuitively, experimenting and negotiating within her settings and materials, her works question topics surrounding existentialism, the human condition and modern ethics. She mainly works in performance, video and sculpture to materialize the concepts, and has exhibited in the UK, Italy, Singapore and Egypt.

Willow Rowlands
www.willowrowlands.com

We have had two events in the studio, they were like pilot runs of how to move everything quickly and transform the space to suit any kind of event the crew has planned. The other side of the building is living quarters, so combining the event space and the studio is really the only viable option. Not necessarily the most convenient solution, but so far, I have found that every time I had to move my sculptures and materials they have ended up back in the studio in a different way. As if every move was contributing to the process.

So far, there are only four of us working in the studio more or less consistently. I don’t want to crowd the space by having too many people, but we could do with a few more. Our model is still the same as it was supposed to be back in Cozy; we have a few people who have their own working stations in the studio and any one from the community who wants to do a project, build something or just needs a practice space can come in and if they need help or tools we will provide it. We have had a few people come in to do things, building carts and boxes but I think we need to get the word out more now that we have got the space up and running smoothly.

This is the first post of a new gallery and studio space founded by Riikka Enne and Sophia Moffa: Tape Modern. Tape Modern is a mobile gallery, currently collaborating with a squatting crew Love C.O.Ps [Community Occupied Properties] and operates in various buildings in Manchester. Love C.O.Ps are dedicated to hosting events that are open to all and everyone.
I should start from the beginning: Sophia, myself and a third friend of ours, a fellow artist Katerina Eleftheriadou, founded a collective called modestly ambitious. The goal was to find a studio space where we could also host exhibitions and build workshops for wood and metal with all proper equipment, but most importantly, we wanted to start an international artist residency to have an exchange with artists from all over the world. We did a crowdfunding campaign in the autumn of 2017 to have a little nest egg for our new initiative to get us off the ground. We had our eyes on a specific building, an old GP’s practice in Miles Platting that had been empty for a few years. The building was owned by the city council so we approached them only to hear the sad news that the building would be taken down the very next month. But since we had a conversation channel open with the city council, we started the council supported process to get another council-owned space. The only problem was, we could get started in our new space in a year. Naturally, we couldn’t wait that long, so we started searching for other affordable options.
Cutting a long story short, we found Love C.O.Ps, who kindly offered us the basement floor of their building as a studio if we cleared it out and offered project space and assistance to anyone who wanted to work in the space. The building was a gorgeous old knitwear mill with four floors in all. The building was casually called Cozy, short for Cozy Dragon which was the name of the pirate ship that the squatters had built in the event space.
The basement was a beautiful space, but it had been used as a tip for the squats rubbish and due to some unattended leaks it took quite some time and hard work to make the space up to a functional studio.

In the vast open space, the amount of rubbish didn’t seem like that much but we cleared three full vans of bin bags, rubble, carpeting and loads more. Luckily, through gracious donations, we also collected two vans full of furniture, brand new carpet, wood and all sorts of bits and bobs.
I got a lot of help from some of the crew members, one that should be specially mentioned is Paul. He was cleaning with me almost every day and often when I arrived at the studio, he was already at work. Paul has now become our gallery technician. Another person who should also be mentioned is Triky. He fixed the electricity into the studio. Not an easy task since the building was squatted sometimes before we came there and some bits of wire were missing so the greatest challenge was to try and follow all the wires and figure out which cables brought electricity to where. But all that got sorted. After two weeks the rubbish was cleared out, we had electricity on all sockets and lights and the only thing left was the fun part; building working areas, a little kitchen and bringing in our own tools, materials and all our studio gear.

There are more stories to tell from the early days; all the events held there during the time, people coming in and out, the squat life in general to be honest, seems to be full of stories! I’ll start a thread later, titled the Memories from Cozy to show more images and get to the details of things, but for now, this is the beginning in a nutshell. We got the studio to a point where we could start doing our art but we didn’t get to enjoy it for long, full two days…