Catherine Bertola & Laura Lancaster: "Obsession: Contemporary Art in the Lodeveans Collection" The Stanley & Audrey Burton Gallery, Leeds, UK

Obsession: Contemporary Art from the Lodeveans Collection

22 September — 28 November 2009

Artworks selected from the Lodeveans Collection of contemporary art, set up by Stuart and John Evans show the diversity of artistic talent and imagination emerging on a global scale. The collecting interests of the father and son are showcased in this exhibition of thought-provoking and often challenging new work.

Opening Night: Tuesday, 22 September, 18:00-20:00

Trevor Appleson

Delphine Balley

Anna Barriball

Catherine Bertola

Sebastiaan Bremer

Joshua Cardoso

Yves Caro

Robert Currie

Flavio de Marco

Nogah Engler

Juan Fontanive

Richard Forster

Neil Gall

Richard Galpin

Andy Harper

Kay Harwood

Mustafa Hulusi

Pauline Kraneis

Laura Lancaster

Gareth McConnell

Julie Mehretu

Kim Meredew

Danny Rolph

Bob and Roberta Smith

Gary Webb

Lei Xue

Images:

Laura Lancaster

Black oil on MDFUntitled, 200640 x 30 cm

Catherine Bertola

Flight of Fancy (Manchester circa 1900) Interior 1, 2005Lambda print (Edition of 5, 1/5)6.2 x 10.9 cm

Mike Pratt: "Some people deserve everything they get" The Royal Standard, Liverpool, UK

Private View Thursday 24 September 6-10 pm (part of The Long Night)

Exhibition opens Friday 25 September – 17 October

Wednesday to Saturday, 11- 5pm

Some people deserve everything they get assembles the most remarkable, outstanding, significant and superlative artists graduating from courses the length and breadth of the country this year. These graduates outshone their peers with unrivaled aesthetic choices; climbing the supreme ladder of success to pass with flying colours… Welcome them…

Charlotte Betteley

Dan Cervi

Joe Evans

Katherine Gallacher

Samuel Jeffery

Di Lu

Harry Meadley

Salma Noor

Alistair Owen

Mike Pratt

Jamie Singh

Carrie Skinner

Tim Stock

Louise Emily Thomas

Joe Weldon

Ben Wheele

Artists were selected by The Royal Standard from a pool of graduating artists nominated by Airspace (Stoke-on-Trent), Catalyst Arts (Belfast), Castlefield Gallery (Manchester), Eastside Projects (Birmingham), G39 (Cardiff), Outpost (Norwich), Project Space Leeds (Leeds), Spike Island (Bristol), Tether (Nottingham), Transmission (Glasgow), and Workplace (Gateshead).

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The Royal Standard

Unit 3 Vauxhall Business Centre

131 Vauxhall Road

Liverpool

L3 6BN

www.the-royal-standard.com

www.thelongnight.org.uk

image:

Mike Pratt

Yes Please

2009

Acrylic on Canvas

MP0010

Private Collection, Courtesy of the artist and Workplace Gallery, UK

Catherine Bertola: "Artist l Object l Project" National Museum Wales, UK

Artist l Object l Project

Catherine Bertola Michael Cousin Deirdre Nelson

Artists respond to national ceramics collection

Brecknock Museum & Gallery, Brecon will host Artist l Object l Project - three major new installations based on Amgueddfa Cymru – National Museum Wales’ ceramics collections - from 5 September until 31 October 2009.

Artists Catherine Bertola, Michael Cousin and Deirdre Nelson have used museum pieces ranging from the quotidian to the kitsch to investigate the human, universal nature of the ceramic object.

Catherine Bertola’s site-specific installation work explores the forgotten and invisible histories of places, people and communities. For The People’s Collection of Pottery, Brecknockshire 2009 (image attached), Bertola has assembled and catalogued a temporary museum collection of pottery owned by people from the Brecknockshire area. She reflects on the personal significance and everyday purpose of these items, and the ongoing importance of ceramic as part of our personal and cultural heritage. Bertola has created a wallpaper, Blue Babylonica, based on the familiar Swansea Willow pattern to act as a backdrop to the collection.

Filmmaker Michael Cousin looks at the history and decline of commemorative ceramics as an outlet for political and social commentary in his film H1N1. He has selected a jug made by the Cambrian Pottery, Swansea, dating from 1814, depicting the banishment of Napoleon to Elba. Cousin has digitally recreated this jug with a current major news story - a series of images exploring the paranoia and global hysteria surrounding swine flu (image attached).

Deirdre Nelson is interested in the human stories behind collections and objects. In No Bed of Roses and the sound piece Shift (in collaboration with Matt Hulse), she focuses on the Nantgarw China Works in South Wales, using the lowly 10% success rate of ceramics in the firing process to create an installation exploring the gulf between the luxury of the finished object and the poverty, disappointment and dogged perseverance involved in its production.

Artist l Object l Project has been organised in collaboration with Brecknock Museum & Gallery and the University of Glamorgan as part of Celf Cymru Gyfan – ArtShare Wales - Amgueddfa Cymru – National Museum Wales’ visual arts partnership programme which aims to increase access to the national art collection through innovative collaborative projects around Wales. ArtShare Wales is funded by the Esmée Fairbairn Foundation.

One of the project’s organisers, Dan Allen, said:

“The exhibition not only promises to be a rich visual experience, but will form a useful case study on how artists view, respond and regard collections. Each artist’s chosen object or objects will be exhibited alongside their own response.”

Artist l Object l Project is in conjunction with The Go Between, a major international conference focusing on the role of the artist as mediator between collections and audiences. For more info visit www.glam.ac.uk/cci.

Entry to Brecknock Museum & Gallery is free for the duration of the exhibition. For opening hours and further details please phone 01874 624121 or visit www.powys.gov.uk/breconmuseum.

image:

Catherine Bertola

Blue Babylonica

2009, screen printed wallpaper

Commission for National Museum of Wales, Cardiff

Courtesy of the artist and Workplace Gallery

Rachel Lancaster: Workplace Gallery, Gateshead, UK

Rachel Lancaster

5th September - 3rd October

Tues - Sat, 11am -5pm

(or by appointment)

Preview: Friday 4th September, 6-9pm.

Workplace Gallery is pleased to present the first solo exhibition of work by Rachel Lancaster.

Rachel Lancaster's recent practice has focused on taking numerous photographic 'stills' from found moving imagery, which are then translated into paintings and drawings. Taken from her home television set with a digital camera whilst watching popular movies and TV (such as Madmen, The Horror Channel or The Thing) Lancaster uses the process of photography as a filter through which images are selected and seen afresh, dissociated from their origin. The 'cult' film and television images that Lancaster captures evade the typical themes with which these movies are associated. Instead Lancaster is drawn to seemingly insignificant passing shots, extreme close-ups of inanimate objects, and commonplace domestic interiors.

Lancaster interrogates the mundane fragments of a greater narrative, focusing on the split second moments that are in-between – an empty chair in a room from Network, a chequered blanket from Chinatown or a bed from The Day of the Triffids. These apparently disparate source materials are brought together and unified through scale and isolation. The resulting, often blurred or pixelated, photographs are then used as the source material for a series of oil paintings. Mediated by the poor resolution of affordable technology and divorced physically from their position within a narrative structure these paintings become abstract and ambiguous. Yet instead of diminishing their meaning, Lancaster's fetishisation of these images enables them to accrue status and power whilst signifying the unknown "event! that precedes or follows. In this way Lancaster!s work is 'Uncanny' through: the psychological charge of the selected image compounded by its cinematic monumentality, the reproduction or 'doubling' of an image in common cultural parlance, and in the subliminal evocations dependant on our familiarity with the language and conventions of Hollywood.

This exhibition at Workplace Gallery will consist of a new series of epic - scale oil paintings shown alongside a selection of her photographic source material, and a new sound installation by Lancaster.

Rachel Lancaster was born in Hartlepool in 1979; she studied Fine Art at Northumbria University, and lives and works in Newcastle Upon Tyne, UK. She is an artist and musician and an active participant in the growing and increasingly acclaimed North East England music scene. Rachel regularly performs as a solo artist, and alongside her twin sister Laura Lancaster (also represented by Workplace Gallery), and drummer Narbi Price in the band Chippewa Falls, and with Paul Smith (from Maximo Park) in the band Meandthetwins.

Paul Merrick: Salon 09

4th - 19th September 2009
Friday to Sunday (12.00-18.00).


Project Space, 25 Vyner Street, London, E2 9DG.

Matt Roberts Arts is pleased to announce the opening of our annual art prize exhibition Salon09, which will take place at our new 1000 square foot project space on the internationally renowned Vyner Street, East London. Salon09 features 58 artists’ work, ranging from Painting, Printmaking, Photography, Collage, Drawing, Sculpture, and Installation.


The selected artists are: Henny Acloque, Iain Andrews, Tim Bailey, Aglae Bassens, Fiona Cassidy, Louisa Chambers, Noa Charuvi, Charlie Coffey, Lucy Conochie, Ben Deakin, Dolores DeSade, Robin Dixon, Aidan Doherty, Freya Douglas-Morris, Tamara Dubnyckyj, Marko Dutka, Alice Evans, Andrew Griffiths, Dominic Hawgood, Neil Hedger, Liz Hingley, Atsuhide Ito, Monica Ursina Jäger, Lauren Kelly, Ilona Kiss, Sai Hua Kuan, Anna Larkin, Alanna Lawley, Alastair Levy, Hayley Lock, Cathy Lomax, Fiona MacDonald, Susie MacMurray, Garry Martin, John Mclaren, Georgina McNamara, Aidan McNeill, Paul Merrick, Arnaud Moinet, Eleanor Moreton, Lourival Cuquinha, Kala Newman, Ellen Nolan, Thomas Owen, Claire Palfreyman, Erik Parra, Regine Petersen, Barbora Rybarova, Michelle Sank, Anthony Schrag & Alice Finbow, Anja Schaffner, Guy Shoham, Georgina Sleap, Carole Suety, James Tye, Laura Zilionyte.

The work has been handpicked by a panel of prominent art experts, including Ceri Hand, Director of The Ceri Hand Gallery, Liverpool, Gordon MacDonald, Editor and Head of Publications at Photoworks, Brighton, and Margot Heller, Director of the South London Gallery.

NEWS:The Salon09 Selectors' Prize and John Jones Award for Contemporary Painting have been awarded as follows:

The John Jones Award for Contemporary Painting - Tim Bailey
The Selectors' Prize - Neil Hedger

We would like to take this opportunity to thank all of the exhibitors and all of those who submitted applications. We were extremely pleased with the quality of applications and look forward to seeing you there.