Manchester Open 2024, HOME

Wonderful evening catching up with a number of familiar faces and meeting new ones at the Manchester Open 2024 (a few of whom are captured here).

It was too busy to really see the work properly so I will head back in the not too distant future for a closer look! The show is open until Sunday 28th April so there is plenty of time to see a snapshot of what Manchester’s creative scene has to offer. A catalogue of participating artists is available here.

Many thanks to Ruby Knopf who has kindly given me permission to share a couple of her photos of the evening.

Bury Open 2023, “Passage” Interactions

Great to have the opportunity to return and see the interactions which have taken place during the third and final stencilling of my piece.

I find it exciting to see the different kinds of mark making and the interplay they have with the letterforms preceding them – you never know what will happen to the piece next! Special thanks to Usie Isaac for the final picture (taken on the 20th January). The other pictures were from my visit on 4th January.

Selected for HOME’s Manchester Open 2024

I am thrilled to announce that I have been selected for the Manchester Open 2024 at HOME. My work will be on display in the gallery space along with 480 other creatives from Saturday 3rd February until Sunday 28th April. It promises to be a huge celebration of the creative talent Manchester has to offer and I am very much looking forward to taking part.

Stay tuned for more information!

Open 2023, Preview at Bury Art Museum and Sculpture Centre

Really enjoyable and absolutely packed preview this evening for the Open 2023. Huge thank you to the judges Paulette Brien, Mike Chavez-Dawson, Tony Heaton and Jez Dolan for selecting my work and to all the team at Bury Art Museum for their hard work in bringing everything together so beautifully!

If you weren’t able to make it to the preview, there is still plenty of time to catch the pieces there as the show is on until the 3rd February 2024.

Two works selected for Bury Open 2023

Really happy to have received news that a couple of my works have been selected for Open 2023 at Bury Art Museum. This is the museum’s first ever open exhibition and it will be showing the best of the North West as selected by a panel of highly esteemed judges:

Paulette Brien (Curator – Grundy Art Gallery, Blackpool), Mike Chavez-Dawson (Artist/Curator), Jez Dolan (Artist) and Tony Heaton OBE (Artist).

The OPEN 2023 Preview & Prize Giving is due to take place on Friday 20 October from 18:00-21:00. The show will run from 21st October 2023 – 3rd February 2024 with most works available to purchase.

Tees Preview at Rogue Artists’ Studios

 

Doors opened at Rogue Studios this weekend for the Tees “shop”. If you have been unable to make it this weekend, the show is open by appointment or between 12-4pm on Saturdays. All T-shirts are available to purchase (including the ones I made).

The catalogue from the show is available here (although the information I supplied did not make it in for some reason so I will supply it here instead).

Title of the diptych and medium:

“Mind the Gap”, unique recycled fabric embellishments on sustainable cotton shirts.

What was the idea behind the T-shirt: 

Language is a powerful tool. When adopted by artists, it is utilised to interrogate the political, social and cultural landscape. Its position on t-shirts is no different. Through the use of text, we are drawn to question how we think, feel, function, judge, and differ from one another.

With this premise in mind I was inspired to create a piece exploring text as a direct (or rather indirect) form of communication. I was interested in how material usage and approach can be harnessed to create emphasis, drawing subtle references for those who decode it.

I decided to recycle and repurpose fast fashion slogan T-shirts sourced from charity shops, in order to highlight the waste generated by the industry through such “joke” products and comment on the duplicitous actions of some suppliers.

Price of T-Shirt:

£200 each

 

Live with It Preview at Mura Ma Art Space, Marple

Lovely preview event this evening at Mura Ma. It was wonderful to view the results of the unseen installation performance! The premise definitely gave the space a very different atmosphere.

Jane and Nan on curating and developing ideas for the show:

“Jane and I wanted to explore ideas around creative and artistic practice in the home and questioning who gets to be the curator. We believe that anyone who creates an environment, however small, be it a shelf, a studio flat, shelter or a house does so with their own artistic, aesthetic, and cultural sensitivities. Reading Shaun McNiff’s book, Trust the Process in the early days of my own practice, helped me tune into this idea that domestic space, arrangements, physical activities around the home, each offers insights into our unique expression as humans.

“Collecting objects is associated with building meaning into our lives and the things around us are vessels for memory. The way we display those objects is vital to our creating a world in which we feel safe and sheltered from the outside world and in that becomes an expression of our inner world.”

“Rethinking, re-imagining the gallery space as a place not only to experience artworks but to participate in this mise en scene as actors performing their roles. As a modern gallery we want to show people that art offers a multi-dimensional value to life, whether that is art, or a handmade item or even something given to us with all that embedded meaning and memory. It is about creatively constructing our own reality and bring together objects that help us to create that world, express who we are and to act as memory holders.”

Nan Collantine

“It seems a simple act to place my work in an empty space but there is something profound and quite daunting in the act of choosing, as the first actor on the stage setting in motion the scene for what is to follow.

In activating the space within a freeform concept lays the foundation for an unknown structure and that is exhilarating. Like a seed whose DNA has been scrambled and knows not what it will become but knows that from its germination something new and wonderful will bloom.

I’m excited to play my part at the start of the construction of a stage setting to which each artist will bring their own flavour and when the viewers arrive to take their part the mise en scene will be complete.”

Jane Fairhurst

You can find information on the exhibiting artists here.

The show is open until 21st October and the space will host an accompanying programme of events and activities. These sessions will investigate home as a place of creative endeavour, observe and discuss the practice of collecting and arranging, and explore how domestic labour and caring can be reframed as valuable creative capital.

The exhibition will also evolve as art and all objects in the exhibition are available to buy and be taken away (as in a shop). Sold items will be replenished on a weekly basis and different artists will be invited to place work within the installation, so no two viewings will ever be the same!

Upcoming show: Live with It at Mura Ma, Marple

Delighted to share news that I will be participating in Live with It (an artist-activated home environment):

“Somewhere between an expanded still life and a stage set – an invitation to participate in an imagined occupancy. Mise-en-scene.”

“A lived-in house is animated by assorted daylight practicalities: the tasks and furnishings associated with eating, cleaning, sleeping, revolving arrangements of domestic clutter; the comings and goings of friends, lovers, children, and relatives; or the intricate rituals of the solitary dweller.”

Co-curated by Jane Fairhurst and Nan Collantine, this exhibition will give way to an interior space furnished and inhabited with items made and found by thirty artists.

Jane Fairhurst and Kat Button will be activating the space with soft sculptures. There will also be items that carve up the space to create inner rooms and furniture pieces to denote the uses for each space. From these, the installation will be built in the gallery from the artworks and objects brought in by the artists.  Both artworks and objects will be available to buy from 2nd September – 21st October 2023.

The artists’ home is “a boundary between the world at large and the private centre, as a container of the everyday, and as an activated environment”.

Upcoming event: Tees Show

Exciting news to share… I have been invited to take part in Tees at Rogue Studios; an exhibition exploring the t-shirt as art form. Taking ‘Article 19’ as its point of reference, the show poses the question: “Protest / Self-expression, what is the difference?”. It will feature work by Sir Peter Blake, Jeremy Deller, David Shrigley, Bob and Roberta Smith and artists from Rogue, Paradise Works, Suite (my studios), Bankley, AWOL, Islington Mill and beyond.

The preview is due to take place on 30th September 2023 from 2-5pm (to coincide with an open studios event). You can catch the show until 31st October 2023 (opening times are between 12-4pm on Saturdays or by appointment.

The exhibition is curated by Mike Chavez-Dawson and assisted by; Jamie Kirk, Grecia Balassone, Vincent Patterson, Maggie Stick and John Paul Brown.