Young Rembrandt exhibition landing page on Ashmolean Museum website © The Ashmolean Museum Oxford

 

A group of Oxford based artists responded to an open call online earlier this year for artists who trained at least twenty years ago, and who work in any medium, to apply to join a small artist group to meet at the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford and to participate in an exhibition in response to their upcoming ‘Young Rembrandt’ exhibition which runs from 27th February to 7th June.

https://www.oxonarts.info/opportunities/19141

The Groundworks project was set up by artist and CouCou curator Clare Carswell. The group were invited to join one of the staff preview tours of the exhibition, which,“explores the early years of the career of the most famous of all Dutch artists, Rembrandt van Rijn (1606–1669). Beginning with his earliest known paintings, prints and drawings made in the mid-1620s, and ending at the moment he rockets to stardom in Amsterdam in the mid-1630s, this exhibition charts an astonishing transformation.”

Over four, two hour meetings held between March and June, the group were, through an informal sharing of work, to identify themes in the exhibition that resonated with them and that may be as relevant to the maturing of an artist now as then : the journey an artist makes from hesitancy to confidence; the importance or not of innate skill or perceived talent, the influence of others, what success as an artist may mean, as well as observing differences culturally or due to the passage of time.

We would review works we made in the first ten years of our own careers and would reflect together on those early stages, on how we accessed our training, how we found our subjects and defined our ambitions as young artists and on how feel we met them, or revised them, as we developed our practice and integrated it with other parts of our lives, family, employment etc

Clare worked closely with the Oxford – Leiden Link, Leiden is one of the twin cities of Oxford and the birthplace of Rembrandt, and museum staff to arrange for preview access to the exhibition and catalogue and for future support from the Link organisation for an exhibition in Oxford at a later date of the visual responses made by the artists to the Young Rembrandt exhibition.

Then in mid March Covid happened and we were in lockdown. Artists were contacted and discussions were held as to the feasibility of running the project once the museum and exhibition were closed, we did not know how long for. It was clear that the Groundworks project could not continue in its planned form. Artists were, and continue to be, preoccupied with family, health and work related matters over the three months of the lockdown and it was not possible to organise a participatory project online.

During that time The Ashmolean and curator An Van Camp did make the Young Rembrandt exhibition available online for viewing and it is still on the museum website.

https://www.ashmolean.org/youngrembrandt

Curator Clare Carswell is hoping that now that the government have announced further easing of the lockdown that artists may feel more able to think about work and that it may still be possible for the group of artists who applied to the Groundworks project to make a response to the exhibition, at first online through this blog, and perhaps later on in an exhibition in Oxford once it is possible to hold them again.

Artists have been contacted and if they want to proceed to an online response they and their work will be introduced through this blog as the project unfolds.

 


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