B-Side Multimedia Arts Festival

b-side is a biennial multimedia site specific arts festival, animating public spaces in Weymouth & Portland. The programme presents an ambitious, experimental, site-responsive and often quirky programme of artists commissions in sound, installation, visual art and live art in unusual locations across Weymouth & Portland, Dorset UK.

b-side multi media festival in 2012 treated us to a double helping of intriguing events and artworks, intended to delight and provoke audiences throughout the summer during the London Olympics . SHA was a curatorial partner helping to deliver the year’s programme.

Following the success of the b-side bus stops ‘ad’ campaign in September 2010 featuring local community heroes from Weymouth & Portland photographed by Andy Whale , in 2012 London based artist Wendy Elia was been commissioned by b-side and SHA to paint a portrait of a local person who explored the extremes and limits of their body. The portrait was reproduced as large posters, displayed at various sites around Weymouth during the festival throughout the Olympic Games. Wendy exhibited with Sherborne House Arts in 2009 as part of the Bodyscapes exhibition presented at Kube, Poole and Weymouth, and curated by Deanne Tremlett.

Other artists previously exhibiting with SHA and commissioned for the years festival included Day Bowman who produced new work for installation alongside the rail track at Weymouth Station and Stig Evans . Stig received a bursary from SHA in 2006 to produce work in collaboration with Andrew Hanson Senior Research Scientist from The National Physical Laboratory as part of the Colour + Chemistry project. For b-side Stig will be developing a colour library for Portland.

b-side multi media Festival will took place in Weymouth during the Olympic Sailing Events (27 July – 12 August 2012) and on Portland during the Paralympics (29 August – 9 September 2012).

For more detail  www.b-side.org.uk