Spot the Differences!

Bloomsbury time at the Stanley & Audrey Burton Gallery this weekend:

Saturday, 28 May 2011, 2-4pm

The Gallery’s newest acquisition, the delicate still life by Duncan Grant is being restored to finally reunite with Vanessa Bell’s ‘Triple Alliance’ (1914) displayed in the Gallery.

The art of Bloomsbury would not be the same without romance... The Gallery's newest acquisition, 'A Still Life, Asheham House' by Duncan Grant is being restored to finally reunite with Vanessa Bell's almost identical still life displayed in the Gallery.

SEE IT
Spot the differences! The two artists (and lovers) created their respective collages in the same room and of the same objects. It is a rare privilege to be able to see them side by side during the conservation phase.

HEAR IT
Curator Layla Bloom's short introduction to the artists and the their works in the context of the Bloomsbury group and their experiments with new media.

DO IT
The talk will be followed by a creative art workshop facilitated by mixed media artist Amy Balderston.
Amy will provide collage materials and explain techniques of building layers and materials in mixed media art.
The workshop will suit all ages.

This is a free workshop, but places are limited so please book your place in advance by e-mailing Zsuzsa at libzmp@leeds.ac.uk or by phone (0113) 34 32777.
You can also book online at http://bloomsburycollage.eventbrite.com.

Call for Papers

Art versus Industry?

Leeds City Museum, 23 and 24 March 2012

This two-day international and transdisciplinary conference aims to re-evaluate the intersections between the visual arts and industry in Britain during the long nineteenth century.

The complexity and variety of nineteenth-century industrial culture and responses to it remain under appreciated. The idea that an ‘industrial culture’ might have existed in nineteenth-century Britain seemed paradoxical in the wake of Raymond Williams’ Culture and Society 1780-1950 (1958) and Martin Wiener’s English Culture and the Decline of the Industrial Spirit (1981). Both suggested a seemingly non-negotiable opposition between culture and industry. They privileged the writings of John Ruskin, and later William Morris, which resisted the incursion of mechanised production into the sphere of the fine and applied arts.

‘Art versus industry?’ invites papers that look beyond Ruskin and Morris to modify these characterisations. Recent studies of nineteenth-century literary culture have identified the development of a pro-industrial rhetoric in the early nineteenth century. How was this articulated in the visual arts? Debates over design reform in particular suggest the permeable boundaries between the artist, designer, artisan and operative, matched by a taxonomic conflation of art with design. Meanwhile, the prospect of widening the franchise of ‘taste’ often correlated with the embrace of new industrial technologies, as much as with the repudiation of them. ‘Art versus industry?’ seeks to uncover the complexities of the nineteenth-century ‘industrial culture’. Topics for discussion might include, but are not limited to:

• Exhibitions and the display of science and art
• Taste formation and circulation
• The role of the periodical press and print culture
• Industrial art collectors and collections
• The education of the artist and artisan
• Material processes and conditions of production; deskilling and reskilling
• The principles and practice of design
• Historiographic approaches to the debate
• Mechanics’ Institutions and the ideology of self-improvement
• Centralisation and regional specificity
• The impact of trans-national communication and manufacture upon art or upon concepts of national style
• New reproductive technologies and art

Confirmed speakers include Dr. Tom Gretton (University College London), Dr. Steve Edwards (Open University), Dr. Mervyn Romans (independent), Dr. Colin Trodd (University of Manchester) and Dr. Lara Kriegel (Indiana University).

Please email a title, 300 word abstract and CV to Rebecca Wade (r.j.wade@leeds.ac.uk) by 17 June 2011. For further information, visit the blog here.

Heritage-led urban regeneration

Thanks Rebecca for the interesting post (below) on the proposals for the 'restoration' of the Kirkgate Cloth Hall and restoration and regeneration of the Kirkgate area in Leeds - I noticed that there have also been a few reports on the local TV news recently. 
The Kirkgate Character Area Management Plan is indeed a fascinating document (see Rebecca's link below), one that maps out the objectives of the proposals, although I agree with Rebecca that despite the detail in the plan, the purposes of the restorations etc are not actually that clear.  The project seems to be an attempt to restore/preserve some of the undoubtedly important historic fabric of Leeds, but there's an implicit notion that restoring the Cloth Hall and reinstating historic shop fronts in Kirkgate would be enough to breath life back to the area? 
    I was struck that in the plans there also did not seem to be any proposals for the role that good contemporary design plays in the regeneration plans - i.e. the role of the 'present' just as much as the role of the 'past' in regeneration.  The most successful regeneration projects seem to be able to balance these issues - in Bruges, for example, the historic fabric is obviously highly significant, and is privileged, but it is also clear that even with such a rich historical fabric the contemporary plays a significant complementary role, and there is no fear of the 'modern'.

Bruges

Bruges

Maybe within the the Kirkgate scheme there could also be a space for some challenging contemporary architecture too?...and maybe then the regeneration can, Janus-like, speak to those with interest in the past and the present?

Mark