TRADING STATION is POST’s second project exchanging within Istanbul which seeks to uncover methods for artists to work together internationally, making the most of personal relationships and finding useful ways to develop work together using virtual methods.
Four invited Turkish Artists are participating in the project, together with the five core members of POST and their platforms for delivery include a series of four newspapers detailing their research, development and exchange. The newspaper publications provide a space to share the development process of this exchange model with a wider audience in both Turkey and the UK.  The results of this exchange process will culminate in an exhibition at Curve Gallery during Liverpool Biennial 2012, including two Open Conversation events that will profile the artists involved with invited guests and audience members.

Artists 
Istanbul
Nancy Atakan (Istanbul)
AtilKunst:  GulcinAksoy, YaseminNurToksoy, GozdeIlkin (Istanbul)

POST – Liverpool
Cecilia Kinnear (Liverpool)
Susan MeyerhoffSharples (Liverpool)
Amanda Oliphant (Liverpool)
Claire Weetman (Liverpool)
Robyn Woolston (Liverpool)

POST is a co-curatorial body of artists based in the North West of England who explore, within an inter-disciplinary context, strategies for dialogue, dissemination and exhibition. Their foundation is to build upon collaborative relationships for all involved. Five women currently make up the core of the organisation, with a growing number of associate artists who have participated in previous projects nationally and internationally.

Atilkunst – Istanbul got started in 2006.  Atılkunst acts and thinks with irony. Instead of considering a single concept at length, it creates a contemporary and up-to-date reaction area. Atılkunst acts start with spoken language and catchwords. Used language is being transformed to printed images. Those images are shown in public or private places, as stickers, videos, photo novels. This actions can’t be considered completely as street art in strict sense of the term, but streets are also a stage for Atılkunst actions. Atılkunst, using the communication methods of mass media, makes strong remarks on political agendas and dominant daily expressions.
In addition to its artistic context, Atılkunst can be considered as an activist and culture jammer group. Under the attack of today’s image bombardment, Atılkunst produces by using same images for the purpose of constructing a new alternative lateral culture.

Nancy Atakan
Born in the USA, Nancy Atakan who has lived and worked since 1969 as an artist, teacher, art historian, and art critic in Istanbul.  With a PhD in Art History, Atakan has written two books about conceptual art in Turkey and writes reviews for Flash Art.  After teaching contemporary art at Bosphorus University for many years, she co-founded the Istanbul off-space, 5533.  As a Pi Artworks artist, her video work was shown at the 2012 Armory Show and she has had numerous solo exhibitions dealing with social, gender, and psychological issues.  Her artwork was shown at the 2009 ‘Istanbul New Waves’ exhibition at Akademie der Kunste, Berlin, and the 2011 ‘Dreams and Realty’ show at Istanbul Museum of Modern Art.

In the last pages of my book, Searching, Alternatives to Painting and Sculpture, published in 1998, I predicted that the art event would become more and more a place for dialogue. I see the art event as a place to build models and experiment with their feasibility.  I encourage artists to create models for working and living together, models for learning to interact, communicate, network, establish relationships and live side by side with polarity.  To achieve this goal, I envision all types of collaboration both for the materialization and presentation of art objects in art events.
While I continue to make digital videos, photographic work, digital prints, installations, and artist books that explore the relationship between image and word or deal with psychological, social, gender and personal topics to be shown in local and international group and solo exhibitions, the most important step in my own art practice was the opening in 2008 of an experimental off-space, 5533, together with Volkan Aslan. Over the past three years this space has opened its doors to a population of people located on the periphery of the Istanbul art scene as well as local and international students, art initiatives, institutions and individuals.