It is worth providing context to introduce this blog. My name is Jack Welsh, a freelance arts administrator, researcher and writer currently based in Liverpool. A few months ago, Sara-Jayne Parsons, Exhibitions Curator at the Bluecoat in Liverpool, invited me to write a text for the Bluecoat exhibition Portfolio NW.
Portfolio NW brings together eight artists who have been specially commissioned by the Bluecoat to make new works. The exhibition continues the Bluecoat’s ethos of supporting artists and practitioners at significant stages of their career.
With this in mind, the departure point for my text was the relationship between the exhibition and critical writing in the region. It also focused on the artworks in the exhibition. This resulted in a printed publication produced in collaboration with the Bluecoat Print Studios.
To support and expand on this text, several writers, artists, curators and academics from across the region have been invited to contribute to this a-n blog. As my original text concentrates on the term ‘platform’, within the context of both artists and writers, it is appropriate that Artists talking – itself a prominent platform for critical writing – acts as a vehicle for wider discourse around the exhibition.
Each new contribution will look at themes pertaining to critical writing in the region and beyond. A new text will be uploaded weekly to the blog until the exhibition closes in September.
Here is more information about the artists exhibiting in Portfolio NW:
Portfolio NW
Fri, 26 Jul 2013 – Sun, 15 Sep 2013
10.00 AM – 6.00 PM
Rebecca Chesney, Tadhg Devlin, Dave Evans, 0point3recurring (David Henckel, Dan Wilkinson & Leon Hardman), Hannah Wooll, Kai-Oi Jay Yung
Preston-based artist Rebecca Chesney’s new work was developed during a recent artist residency in Romania and involves investigation of an abandoned village. Using video, sound and studied artefacts, her installation for the Bluecoat will examine village life and myth through connections between birds, humans and catastrophe.
Tadhg Devlin (Wirral) explores the theme of immigration in Liverpool in a new series of photographic portraits. Devlin is in the beginning stages of a long-term project to document the Irish in Liverpool, from people who came to the city in the 1950s to new immigrants who have arrived in the last several years due to the economic crisis.
Dave Evans (Liverpool) pursues his ongoing fascination with science fiction, time and history. Considering what he terms an “economy of means” alongside the “ambition of narrative,” Evans attempts to articulate the mundane and the epic in sculptural objects, using simple materials such as paper and recycled tinfoil.
Hannah Wooll’s (Macclesfield) surreal drawings and paintings focus on female portraiture, referencing historical and contemporary depictions of women, from fine art traditions to the pages of glossy fashion magazines. Wooll’s mesmerizing and strange figures are often located in forests or imagined landscapes, and sometimes accompanied by tiny creatures.
Performance features critically in MODZ, the work of collaborative project 0point3recurring, artists David Henckel, Dan Wilkinson & Leon Hardman. However cars, rather than people, are the performers in this interactive audio-visual installation. MODZ documents 3 modified cars with custom audio setups being used to play analogue synthesisers while driving around Preston, including a visit to the city’s iconic bus station.
Similarly blurring boundaries between what is video, sound, sculpture and performance, Kai-Oi Jay Yung (Liverpool/London) transforms the gallery into a dance studio in new project Shadow Dance. Through workshop collaboration with local dancers, she sets out to learn new choreographic skills, before passing on her new knowledge and teaching others. Yung will document the process, allowing her to chart her progress and further develop her performance practice.
**Open call for FREE dance workshops** Take part in a series of experimental dance workshops with artist Kai-Oi Jay Yung during the week of 5 – 9 August. Click here to find out more.
