Salford Museum & Art Gallery and University of Salford Art Collection present:
Rachel Goodyear: Stirrings
15 July 2022 – 26 February 2023
Salford Museum & Art Gallery
This summer Salford Museum & Art Gallery in partnership with the University of Salford Art Collection will host solo exhibition Stirrings by the internationally recognised, Salford-based artist Rachel Goodyear. Co-commissioned by University of Salford Art Collection and Grundy Art Gallery, Blackpool, this is the artist’s first major solo exhibition in Salford. Following the acclaimed launch at the Grundy Art Gallery in spring 2022, we’re delighted to now bring the exhibition ‘home’. Rachel is based at Islington Mill studios in Salford, and is now a co-director and strong advocate for the wider artist community across the city.
Lindsay Taylor, Curator of the University of Salford Art Collection says:
“This exhibition is a kind of homecoming for Rachel. Her work has rightly been recognised nationally and internationally and this is a long overdue solo show in the city she has been committed to for over 20 years. Through the co-commission process Rachel has been able develop an exciting new body of work – experimenting with both scale and ambition. This is exactly what the University Art Collection aims to do – through working in partnership to support artists in our city to be bold and courageous, and to make new work for the Collection that tells a story of the world we live in now.”
Over her career Rachel has retained a core commitment to the act of drawing, as well as the expansion of drawing as a medium. Throughout her practice, her drawings have found their way onto bus tickets, diary pages and envelopes, as well as onto more conventional sources of paper; while her experiments with drawing as a form have seen her works take shape as sculpture, animation, performance and installation. For Stirrings, Rachel has experimented with scale, making her largest and most detailed drawing to date. With heightened detail, bodies contort, a wolf-pack is tangled into a single entity of snarls and fur and figures explore sensations that hold an ambiguous balance of pleasure and discomfort. The exhibition also includes a new animation exploring structure, space and sound. With nods to mythological journeys into the Underworld, Dante’s levels of Hell and our continuous scrolling through social media, Hole takes the form of a never-ending descent. With a specially commissioned soundtrack by Matt Wand, Goodyear’s frozen moments are locked in time to be repeated forever.
Selected works from the exhibition will be jointly acquired into the permanent collections of the Grundy Art Gallery and the University of Salford Art Collection.
Rachel Goodyear comments:
“There are so many aspects of this commission that have been very special for both me and my practice.
It has given me the opportunity to push the boundaries of my drawings – exploring a larger and more immersive scale than ever before – whilst realising and producing the animation Hole which has been a vision running through my mind for a number of years. It has been so meaningful to produce this exhibition with the collections, curators, collaborators and writers who have all been a part of my 20+ year journey as an artist at different points over the years.
It is incredible to have the support to create such significant new works, and also for them to be showcased in the city where they were created and the place where I have grown both as an artist and a person.”
Claire Corrin, Exhibitions Manager at Salford Museum & Art Gallery says:
“We are delighted to be working with Rachel, the University Art Collection and the Grundy Art Gallery to bring Stirrings to Salford Museum & Art Gallery. It is really important for us to promote Salford based artists and display high quality contemporary art, and we are excited to be showing work by a national and internationally recognised artist who is based in our city.”
A specially commissioned text by Dr. Catriona McAra accompanies the exhibition.
Stirrings runs from 15th July at Salford Museum & Art Gallery, and is free to visit – plan your trip here. An accompanying programme of events will be announced soon.