The Parts & Labour exhibition sets out to celebrate, subvert and confound our expectations of what animation is, bringing together different artistic approaches that connect through their exploration of the concept of animation as craft. It features 21 cutting edge animated films selected from an international open call that attracted 198 entries. The works are grouped under three headings: Industry, Manufacture and Material.

Parts & Labour: experiments in animation features 21 cutting edge animated films selected from an international open call. Selected from 198 entries, the exhibition includes works by artists from the UK, USA, Canada, France, Austria and Korea, representing an extraordinary breadth of contemporary animation practice. The exhibition runs at QUAD Gallery, Derby from 28 November 2015 until 24 January 2016 and admission is free. Parts & Labour emphasises the sense of animation as something that is made and crafted, both physically and digitally. The exhibition reveals animation as a medium at the front of creative innovation. It sets out to celebrate, subvert or confound expectations of what animation is, with different artistic approaches which all explore of the concept of animation as craft.

Works range from Vicky Smith’s Noisy Licking, Dribbling and Spitting - in which the artist used her tongue as a 'tool and stamping pad' to make marks directly onto celluloid film – to Rui Hu’s Metropolitan Triangle Garden, in which digitally rendered classical sculptures' participate in a destructive performance triggered by software glitches, distortions, and misused simulation'.

Parts & Labour is a collaboration between Animate Projects and QUAD. Following the gallery exhibition at QUAD, a selection of works will be shown online at animateprojects.org, and in cinemas as part of Move It, Animate’s new touring programme.

The artists are: Kristian Andrews, Jane Cheadle, Sophie Clements, James Duesing, Richard Fenwick, Guillaume Martial, Vicky Smith, Catherine Anyango, Jake Fried, Jonathan Gillie, Michaela Grill, Rui Hu, Wednesday Kim, Peter Millard, Edwin Rostron, Steven Subotnick, Sebastian Buerkner, Kent Lambert, David Theobald, Sean Vicary, Alan Warburton

Animate Projects is an internationally renowned strategy agency working out of Derby and London that supports and champions experiments in animation. For the next seven months, Animate will be working in partnership with QUAD on projects including the forthcoming exhibitions Parts & Labour: Noriko Okaku and Silent Signal, and during this time, they will be partly resident in QUAD’s offices.