Curator Talk and Portfolio Critique at the Stanley & Audrey Burton Gallery

Saturday, 9 April 2011, 2-4pm

Talk and Portfolio Critique by Curators James Moore and Dawn Woolley

James Moore and Dawn Woolley will be giving an introductory talk about the projects they have worked on, focusing on the current Virtually Real show, addressing practical issues like the process of writing proposals, arranging funding, and project management in artist-led activities.

James Moore and Dawn Woolley are practising artists who have worked together as curators since 2003, and recently guest curated 'Virtually Real' for The Stanley & Audrey Burton Gallery.

Their exhibition projects originate from concerns and ideas within their individual art practices, which they explore through small group exhibitions. Past projects have included Show Home, an exhibition exploring domesticity and the uncanny set in a vacant apartment, and Making Love To My Ego, a self-portrait exhibition.

The talk is free, no booking is necessary.
The talk will be followed by a limited number of one-to-one portfolio review sessions for students and emerging artists.

To reserve a portfolio review session please book your place by e-mailing Zsuzsa (libzmp@leeds.ac.uk) or by phone (0113) 34 32777.

You can also book online by clicking here.





Photo: Sea Wall, by James Moore, 2010, oil on canvas © The Artist

"Contrariwise," continued Tweedledee, "if it was so, it might be; and if it were so, it would be; but as it isn't, it ain't. That's logic."
Lewis Carroll

The Stanley and Audrey Burton Gallery turned into a magical Hall of Mirrors yesterday when the long-awaited 'Virtually Real' exhibition opened its doors to the public. Artists and curators Dawn Woolley and James Moore, as well as Grant Miller, one of the exhibiting artists straight from Kansas (no, Toto could not make it) were talking about their work to a captive audience among strange tales of the illusory and the deceptive, where human eyes flutter uneasy: is it real or am I being tricked here?

Some of the art on display is unrelenting like the Moebius strip, for example, Miller's precision of architectural elements making up the infinite impossibility of Escher, or James Moore's realistic paintings capturing the fictitious spaces of video games and CGI. Bruce Ingram's bonsai trees seem to blossom incongruence right in front of our eyes.

Some, on the other hand, wink and nudge: spectators are in on the joke when they spot the minute imperfections that give away the optical illusion: the edges of the cardboard cut outs in Dawn Woolley's work or the dollhouse details in Petros Chrisostomou's imagined spaces. Julia Willms plays on our modern discomfort about blurring the boundaries between inside and outside (flapping pigeons. Ew.), but remains seated in domestic familiarity.

But the playful and the confusing side by side, address serious questions of the traditional aesthetics of representing space in art, in a world of instant facsimile spaces created with the ease of digital photography and CGI. The curators created a coherent space with a consistent subject matter, where the seamless juxtaposition of artworks invites the audience to think and question received modes of interpreting landscapes and interiors.

The exhibition's comment board with its red and blue comment cards ('like' and 'dislike', respectively) adds an interactive angle to the show: the stark utility of the hooks to hang the cards on demands honesty and openness in the midst of uncertainty and illusion.

Following the tremendous success of Aubrey Beardsley's decorative world of the grotesque, the Stanley & Audrey Burton Gallery continues to enchant and whizz the audience to a land of the impossible. Come and step through the looking glass with us once again: this little gallery is truly big on the inside.
Have a look at the catalogue of 'Virtually Real':

Open publication - Free publishing - More virtually real

The End of Gallery Rage?

Since the recent Gauguin show at Tate Modern attracted criticism for inducing 'gallery rage' as a result of overcrowding, it seems particularly interesting that Google has just released its Art Project, which has repurposed the cameras used for its street mapping activities to allow digital 'visits' to international museums and galleries. I wonder how an isolated, two dimensional ocular encounter might disrupt the socio-behavioral function of the museum and if it remains an embodied experience? I'm starting to miss the troublesome toddlers and walkie-talkie static already.

Museology Seminar Series

Here's news of our latest 'Museology Seminar Series'....hope to see you there?....

Mark

‘MUSEOLOGY SEMINAR SERIES’

Centre for Critical Studies in Museums, Galleries and Heritage

School of Fine Art, History of Art and Cultural Studies

University of Leeds

To Display or Not to Display: Human Remains

Dr Myra Giesen

Lecturer, Heritage Studies

International Centre for Cultural and Heritage Studies at Newcastle University

Thursday 17th February 2011

2.00pm-3.00pm

Baines Wing, Seminar Room 4.12

ALL WELCOME



Rethinking the Museum

We are all aware that there are seismic shifts taking place, politically, culturally and socially; non more apparent to us than in the world of museums and galleries. What will our 'industry' look like in 2030? What changes are likely to happen to us? What changes do we need to drive forward as current and emerging professionals?

Helpfully, the North West Museum Federation have asked these questions and more:

“Informed by futurology and some genuinely inspiring work overseas, this vision is intended to help us break out of pondering an immediate and uncertain future and undertake those most vital of tasks: long range thinking and a willingness to take a few risks.”
Piotr Bienkowski, Chair of the NWFE (NWMF website)

Read their vision here

Beryl Beryl

The Yorkshire Craft Centre has two highly recommended exhibitions of work by the staff of the Bradford School of Arts & Media until 17 February: Workers' Playtime and Beryl Beryl [which is, I'm told, what Rebel Rebel starts to sound like sung under the influence]. The latter is a particularly excellent display of work by Ian Taylor and Brendan Croker, but then I must declare my interests - Ian taught me the the ways of the chisel as a Foundation student almost ten years ago and more incredibly, also taught my father in the dim and distant primordial past. Just about the best sculpture you'll find this side of Wakefield.

This weekend Leeds-based mixed media artist Amy Balderston is taking over the Stanley and Audrey Burton Gallery for a very interesting experiment with the help of our visitors. To quote Amy's train of thought here, the starting point is the way Aubrey Beardsley deals with his backdrops and scenery: "I feel that within his complex worlds he makes the ordinary extraordinary. The landscapes often have something the viewer can connect to, rather than completely plucked out of his imagination. It is the characters and unusual additions to these backdrops that create such a captivating image." To explore this (very astute) observation further, visitors will be given simple templates of different backgrounds and sceneries, and Amy will help them fill these with their own thoughts and imagination with an expert hand.

The question 'What Would Aubrey Do?' arises, when it comes to Amy's art and the workshop's focus. Does it make sense to explore Aubrey Beardsley's fine black and white ink drawings by creating mixed media art at all? I think this is exactly what makes this workshop challenging and inspirational. Instead of recreating the style, the accomplished forms and lines in Aubrey's images, Amy's workshop is designed to look deeper and search for what lies in less conspicuous aspects of these pieces: the power of composition, perspective, characters, hidden, barely visible quirks of expression, the importance of the background, and other means to create the slightly ominous and almost tangible atmosphere, familiar to those who have come to see Aubrey Beardsley's art at our current exhibition.

The workshop is also carefully designed to accomodate various abilities and levels of artistic skill. Amy's templates will help to overcome the paralysing feeling of incompetence most of us experience when staring at a blank page, when we're told to create something there and then. While giving something for the mind to latch onto, the art templates are also designed to provide inspiration, a starting point for expression. The added bonus of working with mixed media is that while it is far from being basic and childish, it is a great way to alleviate the pain and frustration of the half of humanity that I belong to: I want to draw, but I just don't think I'm good enough. This normally makes me steer clear of arty workshops and run to the hills (Plus I always get to sit next to people who complain how they can't draw a straight line to save their lives and then proceed to draw the Guernica with Etch-a-Sketch, which really doesn't help). Not this Saturday though! You'll find me at the Gallery doing what I like best: cutting up pretty magazines and play with yarn.

I'm not sure Aubrey would be okay with that with his hangups about aesthetics and all, but I know that I'll come out knowing more about the artwork that I see at the Gallery almost every day. Now that is something he, the king of arcane weirdness and subtly hidden grotesque, would certainly approve of.

Join Amy and of course the illustrious company of dead book illustrators, Aubrey Beardsley, Arthur Rackham, Kay Nielsen and the rest of the gang at the Stanley and Audrey Burton Gallery, 2pm on Staurday, 4 December 2010.

Visit the website for more info on this and other events at the gallery.