Blink
Blink is a group exhibition which reunites innovative practising artists who graduated from Bradford College's MA Printmaking and Photography: Prue Dixon, Siobhan Lee-Bond, Caro Blount-Shah, Steve Francis, Louise Limb, Rob McConnell, Kimberley O'Brien Jones, Katherine Phillips and Richard J Stansfield. It features some highlights from their previous show, New Ink, at Dean Clough and debuts their recent work.
We caught up with three of the artists to hear about their latest output:
Steve Francis unveiled two new pieces as are part of his ongoing series of work based around the local area. "Reservoir shows the line at Walshaw Dean Reservoir, just outside Hebden Bridge. They constructed a railway across the valley to take workers to the site to build the reservoir. Enoch Tempest was commissioned to build it. A temporary township ‘Dawson City’ grew up in a farmer’s field and gained a reputation for lawlessness. Enoch was ruined by the project as the reservoir started leaking after completion. He was contracted to put it right and this cost him his entire fortune. The problems were not his fault but geological issues. The print shows an aerial view of the reservoir and all the tributaries. Farm features a National Trust property, half a mile up the valley from the railway, which was originally part of the Saville Estate, where I am currently resident caretaker. It is built with bee boles, which are recesses in the dry stone walls for bees. Before modern hives people used to place straw in bee boles and hope they would be colonised and the bees would provide honey. The print has a honeycomb ground and shows the queen bee as well as the farm.”
Rob McConnell presents a series of three adventures of Agatha and Bertie. “I had the idea of using Agatha and Bertie like Janet and John. My work deals with boundaries and boundedness and transgressions. The high heels are about ambiguity, transgender and what is permissible. The first print, Below the Salt refers to mediaeval times when the high tables had salt and the servants on the lower tables went without. This is a comment on the state of the nation, that we are still living ‘below the salt.’ The second one, Accrue Interest, has a background of computer imagery printed both ways so it has an FT index lines going through it. The ground is Necker cubes, with no shading so if you stare at them they seem to flip. Space invaders were invented in 1978, the year before Margaret Thatcher came to power, and they are relentless and dominant. This is a reference to Thatcher’s political domination and destruction of the economic base of this country. I try to bring something into my work which inhabits a safe place and then remind and re-present things. Incite a Riot is about the G20. It has overlays of yellow and grey. Colour is incredibly important as it absorbs and releases energy which eyes have trouble registering so it shimmers. It is very pretty to draw people in and then you see what is going on behind. It is the job of an artist to put this groundswell of unrest in the public domain. It is no coincidence that whenever there is a revolution, artists are the first to be arrested.”
Prue Dixon's Gone to Find You: G20 Meltdown is another work partially inspired by the G20 protest. "It started from a note my husband left me when we accidentally became separated on holiday. I found it later and recalled my separation anxiety but liked his absolute confidence that he would find me. Then I developed the idea of waiting and hoping; first in terms of waiting for a train and then regarding the G20 protest. I had gone there to accompany my daughter as I thought it might be a dangerous place to be. People were not really sure what was happening, as it was not well organised, but they were all just watching and hoping for change. It ends with the idea that at that event there were more cameras than people. Some people had two or three around their necks. People were so busy photographing that they were not being present. The prints are displayed like placards in a political protest and the space behind gives the feeling of being contained, like the crowds kettled in by the police. The rice inside the bottles represents sustenance and poverty that protestors were calling for an end to.”
Blink runs concurrently with the Multi Box Project exhibition in the Gallery , from 20th April to 15th May 2009. Gallery open from Monday to Friday 10.30 am to 4.00pm.