New solo exhibition opens at Pittsburgh Centre for the Arts, 10th September 2010.

The Spoken Word Archive, an ongoing archive of every word spoken over the course of a day by a series of individuals across the city, has received a seed award from Pittsburgh's Sprout Fund.

The first manifestation of the archive will be shown at Pittsburgh Centre for the Arts in September 2010.

"The Sprout Fund enriches the Pittsburgh region’s vitality by engaging citizens, amplifying voices, supporting creativity and innovation, and cultivating connected communities.  Founded in 2001, Sprout facilitates community-led solutions to regional challenges and supports efforts to create a thriving, progressive, and culturally diverse region.  With strong working relationships to many community organizations and regional stakeholders, The Sprout Fund is one of Southwestern Pennsylvania’s leading agencies on issues related to civic engagement, talent attraction and retention, public art, and catalytic small-scale funding.  With ongoing local support and continued appreciation by the communities it serves, The Sprout Fund will continue to catalyze creative solutions to pressing challenges, engage people in community conversations, respond to the needs of its target audiences, open doors to civic participation, and promote responsible stewardship of community interests."

Mysterious Letters were sent to all 620 residents of the neighbourhood of Polish Hill, Pittsburgh. Please visit www.mysteriousletters.blogspot.com to read all letters and the local reaction.

A series of four films I made on the working practices of artists Clifton Wright, Ntiense Eno-Amooquaye, Doreen McPherson and Mauwena Kattah of the artist group intoart will be shown in the exhibition See the Revolutionary Art Exhibit at the Whitechapel Gallery, London. 7th November - 6th December 2009. The films were made according to instructions given in a series of questionnaires by the artists. They will be posted on this website soon.

I'll give a short presentation of work at Dorkbot, Pittsburgh.

The Repairing Lebanon series will be shown as part of an installation curated by VVork at the 3rd Fotofestival Mannheim, Germany, opening in October 2009.

Today I will move to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania!

Zweifel and a new sculpture, BerlinBerlin, will be shown in Reconstructed Zone at the Kunstverein Wolfsburg, 04/09/–08/11/2009.

please click here to read all the letters or here to find out what on earth, why etc. (and to watch our mysterious letters being opened on the BBC Northern Ireland news).

Article in the Higher Education Chronicle about my recent residency in Upstate New York. Please click here

The finished blog of stories from Allegheny County, New York. 

The Times, Saturday 11th April 2009.

Michael Crowe and I will be realising our latest collaboration “Mysterious Letters” during a two week residency founded by Bill Drummond in Curfew Tower, Northern Ireland.

"Mysterious Letters is a collaboration between artist Lenka Clayton and writer, Michael Crowe. We aim to send each inhabitant of a small British town a personal hand written letter. The letters will be positive in spirit, differing greatly in form and content. These beautiful unsolicited letters will prompt neighbourly discussion that will spread across the town, promoting community curiosity. When compared between neighbours, no two will be the same.

The art work consists solely of the discussion between the recipients about what on Earth these letters are, who sent them and why, etc. On completion it will be announced in the national press."

People in Order received an HONORABLE MENTION FOR HUMANIZING STATISTICS at this year's Flex Festival!

Our film Conversation will be shown at the Iranian International Documentary Festival in Tehran this October.

My new project made front page news! Please see Amnesty for the Museum for full description.

I have been awarded the Theodore Randall International Chair position at Alfred University, New York State, America. I am currently living there, working on a new body of work and running a project with the students to make a start a brand new town museum.

if you want to read about life in upstate New York have a look here: http://alfreddiary.blogspot.com

James and I will be involved in a group exhibition based on the rules of the Learning to Love You More website by Miranda July and Harrell Fletcher. The show is curated by Nicky Peacock and will be held in the co-operative buildings in Middlesbrough, England.

Ein Leben Lang curated by and exhibited at NGBK, Berlin

James Price and I will be showing our series People in Order as part of this exhibition critiquing the depiction of the ageing process in Western cultures. Each 3 minute programme will be showing on its own monitor with the films running concurrently.

Also showing: Birgit Brenner, Baldur Burwitz, Donigan Cumming, Evelina Deicmane, John Coplans, Regine von Felten, Margie Geerlinks, Peter Granser, Friederike Kersten, Felix Pestemer, Annegret Soltau, Miwa Yanagi.

Clayton & Crowe

Lenka Clayton and Michael Crowe are an artist led collaboration based in London, working with sculpture, photography and text. Their aim is to mix and muddle their different approaches to writing, storytelling and art practice. Past projects include Text Message Archive , 2005, a project made on the first day that they met. The artists agreed to exchange exact transcriptions of all the text messages they received during a given period, regardless of content. This project explored notions of privacy and exposure. Current and future projects include Same Age Sculptures, 2008, a series of sculptures made when the artists were the exact same age. Lenka Clayton and Michael Crowe produced them all blindfolded, in order to remove aesthetic anxiety, and to emphasize elements of surprise and play. Michael, being older by 34 days made one a day, for 34 days. Then Lenka began, and 34 days/sculptures later her first piece was coupled with Michael's first piece, second with second, and so on. They explain: “Age is frequently used to compare what two people have accomplished, creating a winner and a loser. This work gently throttles that belittling system. The most interesting pair of sculptures will be cast in bronze.”

In their next collaboration, Mysterious Letters, the artists will send every inhabitant of a small town a personal hand written letter, composed in Bill Drummond's artist's residency, Curfew Tower in Cushendall, Northern Ireland, over a period of two weeks in December. Each one, heartening in aspirit, will arrive on exactly the same day and will differ greatly in form and content. When compared between neighbours, no two will be the same. The unsolicited mail will prompt neighbourly discussion that will spread across the town, promoting community curiosity.

By Emilia Telese

please see http://www.lenkaclayton.co.uk/gallery.php?gallery=sameage for the whole Same Age Sculpture project.

Conversation (co-directed with James Price) will be shown at Hotdocs documentary festival in Toronto.