Posts by sfletcher

We are pleased to announce the first in a series of new commissions with our key industry partners, as part of a wider programme of support for artists during Covid 19.

Open Eye Gallery and University of Salford Art Collection have commissioned two projects examining underrepresented repercussions of the Covid-19 pandemic. The programme, How Will We Remember? seeks to identify gaps in the public consciousness around who is affected by the global health crisis, and create opportunities to document the lived experience of those who have found themselves especially vulnerable.

The two North West-based artists, Sarah Eyre and Kiara Mohamed, will respond to Covid 19 and its impact on creativity and wellbeing through their artistic practices. The resulting artworks will be accessioned into the University of Salford Art Collection.

Kiara Mohamed‘s commission will approach the personal impact that Covid 19 has had specifically on the lives of Black and brown people. Using video calls as a device, Mohamed will photograph these conversations as they occur, giving a view into how daily life and the way we relate to each other have changed.

Kiara is a multidisciplinary Muslim queer artist based in Liverpool. She works with photography, filmmaking, poetry. Her work is primarily concerned with addressing the intersections of race, gender, sexuality and self care, particularly in relation to forms of community and social responsibility. Open Eye Gallery encourages people to make a donation to help a queer, black, non-binary friend of hers move to safer housing; they are a low-salaried cultural worker who has been furloughed; they need to move out of the property they are living in because it is not safe for them. You can learn more and help out here.

Sarah Eyre‘s interest in presence and absence lends itself to the exploration of Covid 19 through a focus on how women are particularly affected by the virus. Eyre uses a cutout technique and layers images from a range of source materials. This could explore the absences that Covid 19 has left in women’s lives, as well as the gaps in provision or support that they might now be facing.

Sarah Eyre is Northern based artist working with photography, moving image and collage. Her practice often combines found imagery, her own photography, animation and sculptural artefacts. Her recent projects ‘Wigs’ and ‘Copy / Cut / Paste’ both explore the way that women’s wigs draw attention to the complex relationships between the body, its external
presence and our formation of self.

The commissions will be released initially online in July, and will be acquired into the University’s permanent collection.

How Will We Remember is part of a wider programme of support for artists during Covid 19, aiming to capture contemporary experiences during the pandemic as well as supporting artists who have otherwise lost work.

Further new commissions will be announced soon, in partnership with: Castlefield Gallery, Hot Bed Press, Centre for Chinese Contemporary Art, and AND Festival.

July 2020

​​​​​​Professor Jackie Kay CBE, University Chancellor and Scots Makar, is sharing a series of poems with colleagues, students and members of the public, reflecting on the current period of uncertainty that we are in.

This week, we are sharing Jackie’s poem ‘Caravan in Avielochan’, which has been written to celebrate Gay Pride. Originally published in the collection BANTAM (2017).

‘Caravan in Avielochan’

The rain on the caravan roof – a skin drum, or

birds dancing – and in the morning,

the hens come to the caravan’s steps, feathery feet,

on the hunt for bacon, maybe egg.

Then – guess what? BIG surprise! The period arrives!

I’m eleven. You’re eleven! Claire Innes says.

Some don’t get them till they’re fourteen. Lucky you.

Don’t tell your brother. Brothers are not supposed to ken.

And then, to the chemist in Aviemore, in the Morris Minor,

to get the towels mum says are like nappies.

I’m disappointed. They’re nothing like nappies!

I’m all emotional. You’ll feel all emotional;

It’s natural. In the caravan, in the middle of the night,

Claire turned to me, the wee curtains shut tight,

the rain pitter-pattering the roof. Wheesht! Wheesht!

I went dead quiet. Not a word from me, not a word.

You’ve a forest, there, Claire said, softly (she had no pubic hair!)

Then she pushed her tongue to the roof of my mouth –

and we kissed, we kissed, we kissed. We really did.

Published in BANTAM, reprinted with kind permission of Picador Publishers.

Don’t miss Jackie’s weekly series of online literary and musical performances. ‘Makar to Makar’ will showcase a line-up of established talent and emerging voices from Scotland and around the world. Read more about ‘Makar to Makar’ here.

Follow Jackie on Twitter @JackieKayPoet to hear a new poem every Sunday.

Professor Jackie Kay CBE, University Chancellor and Scots Makar, is sharing a series of poems with colleagues, students and members of the public, reflecting on the current period of uncertainty that we are in.

This week, we are sharing Jackie’s poem ‘A Banquet for the Boys’.

‘A Banquet For the Boys’

(For MK, Andy, Phazey, B-man and Bailout)

When your foot was stood on and you couldn’t stand

And you couldn’t cook for Phazey or B-man,

I ordered you a feast to lend a helping hand:

For your benevolence, some baba ghanousk

And for your fidelity, your empathy -fattoush,

For your brotherly ways, some moujaddara set al beit.

For Black Lives Matter some barnia bel zeit

Tabbouleh since you’re all trans-affirming bros.

Halloumi to hail the halo round your afro.

Zucchini since you’re so queer affirming,

Makdous, moutabal for loving diversity and the mandem.

Restorative justice in a Vegan Lovers’ Platter.

For love, for the love of protest – pickles, bread.

For keeping your head, boys, for knowing what matters.
​​​​​​​

Copyright Jackie Kay. Reprinted with kind permission from the author.​​​​​​​

Don’t miss Jackie’s weekly series of online literary and musical performances. ‘Makar to Makar’ will showcase a line-up of established talent and emerging voices from Scotland and around the world. Read more about ‘Makar to Makar’ here.

Follow Jackie on Twitter @JackieKayPoet to hear a new poem every Sunday.

1st July 2020

We are pleased to announce the online launch of Everything I Have is Yours by Eileen Simpson and Ben White (Open Music Archive), an ambitious film and sound work that looks back to the first decade of the UK pop charts (1952-62).

The film – released almost exactly a year on from when we premiered the film at Salford Museum and Art Gallery in 2019 – is distributed under a Creative Commons (CC by 4.0) license: meaning you can watch online, as well as download, keep, share, or even reuse and remix.

Click here to find out more and watch the film online

We are delighted to announce that we have awarded 6 Graduate Scholarships to students from the School of Arts and Media.  The Graduate Scholarship Programme is run by the Art Collection in collaboration with Castlefield Gallery. It provides a bespoke programme of professional development for a small number of students in the first year after graduation.  As we enter the 7th year of the programme we are also offering one place to an MA student.  Following a competitive application process, including online interviews, we can reveal the successful artists are:

Jack Jameson, BA Media and Performance (Islington Mill)
Rachel Mason, MA Socially Engaged Photography
Kate Oakes, BA Photography (Redeye, The Photography Network)
Barbara Smith, BA Fine Art (Paradise Works)
Chelsea Smith, BA Fashion Image Making and Styling (Islington Mill)
Mimi Waddington, BA Fine Art (Hot Bed Press)

Each artist will receive support tailored to their individual needs and aspirations by Castlefield Gallery including:  a bursary of £1000 to spend on materials or travel, studio space or place on a programme with one of our industry partners (in brackets above), and a 12 month programme of coaching, mentoring, professional development sessions, local and national trips and 12 month honorary membership of Castlefield Gallery Associates, providing further opportunities for professional development and training.
Although sadly the 2019/20 cohort have been unable to access their studios for several months, they have remained busy. The  professional development programme moved online and we will update on progress in our next newsletter.

“Receiving a scholarship has given me a platform for the next year. Despite the uncertain times I have been able to focus my planning and begin talking to other artists and researchers online with the knowledge I will have a studio and support to make new work.” – Barbara Smith, BA Fine Art

July 2020

Professor Jackie Kay CBE, University Chancellor and Scots Makar, is sharing a series of poems with colleagues, students and members of the public, reflecting on the current period of uncertainty that we are in.

Jackie’s poem ‘Mirror’ considers that for many people living alone in lockdown, the only company that they might have had during this time is a mirror. The poem also sees Jackie reflect on the fact that we might not want to go back to certain things from our ‘old lives’ once lockdown ends. 

‘Mirror’

I am not going back, I said to myself

One day of the days last week,

Which day I can’t say for sure.

I said it out loud to the lone mirror,

The mirror that’s been my listening ear.

Not going back; this time a whisper in my ear

These days have held up a strange mirror.

I can’t: this much I know for sure,

As sure as the day slides into a week.

I’ll find a way, I promise myself.

​​​​​​​​​​​​​

Copyright Jackie Kay. Reprinted with kind permission from the author. 

June 2020

Don’t miss Jackie’s new weekly series of online literary and musical performances. ‘Makar to Makar’ will showcase a line-up of established talent and emerging voices from Scotland and around the world.

Follow Jackie on Twitter @JackieKayPoet to hear a new poem every Sunday.

Early in Spring 2020, the University was successful in a small grant application to The Paul Mellon Centre for the Study of British Art, for research into South African artist Albert Adams (1929 – 2006). 

Adams, who was of African and Indian heritage, was denied access to formal education due to apartheid policy. He moved to the UK in the 1950s, where he continued to live, study and teach until his death in 2006. Much of his work focused on political oppression, abuse of power, and personal identity.

The University holds one of the most significant archives of Adam’s work, including prints, drawings, paintings and studio artefacts. The collection was acquired with Art Fund support in 2012 and made possible with the generosity of Adams’ surviving partner, Edward Glennon. You can read more about the collection here.

Research Fellow in Art History Dr Alice Correia, will host a study day on Adam’s work in Spring 2021 (post-poned from Summer 2020 due to Covid-19), and curate a new display in Albert Adams room – a permanent exhibition of Adam’s work, in a room renamed in his honour in 2015.

Here, Dr Correia reflects on one of Adams’ later drawings (Celebration Head, 2003, pictured) in light of the Black Lives Matter movement.

One of the art works by Albert Adams held in the University of Salford Art Collection is titled, Celebration Head, 2003. It is a large oil and charcoal drawing on canvas and depicts the head and shoulders of a male figure. Despite its title, the drawing is a mediation on suffering and pain. It is a powerful work, and looking at it in the summer of 2020, at a moment of global anti-racism protests, its relevance to current conversations about blackness and discrimination is considerable.

As part of his Celebration series, 2000-2002, Adams’ drawing can be placed within a larger body of work that addressed the subjugation of the black body in South African culture. Marilyn Martin (Director of Art Collections, Iziko Museums of Cape Town) explained that the Celebration series “referred to post-apartheid South Africa and the challenges, dangers and threats that came with political change”.i Although Adams had left his native South Africa to study at the Slade School of Art in 1953, and settled in Britain permanently in the early 1960s, the country and particularly the ways that it oppressed its black population through its apartheid laws, remained central to his work. A year before his death, in 2006, he wrote “My work is based on my experience of South Africa as a vast and terrifying prison, an experience which even now, after a decade of democracy, still haunts me”.ii In this context, Celebration Head seems to caution against too much celebration in the post-apartheid era. His work reminds us that the deep wounds and traumas experienced by generations cannot simply be celebrated away, that past atrocities continue to affect the present.

In Celebration Head, the man’s head angled in a jarring expression of pain. Although his facial features are smudged and obscured, it is clear that he is presented with two mouths, both of which are grinning in anguish, teeth bared. Around his neck is a plaque, with the number 7867. The number is reminiscent of prisoner numbers included in police mugshots, and as such becomes a sign of criminality, reinforcing a stereotype that casts black male bodies as threatening. In the disparity between the man’s suffering and his identification as criminal threat, as audience members we are asked to question our own prejudices. Although Adams’ drawing was created in response to a South African context, it could just as easily refer to black experiences closer to home: from the systemic anti-blackness found within our institutions including the police and government; the historic and continued framing of black people as criminal in the press; to the racist micro-aggressions that impact the daily lives of black people in Britain.

In March 1945 Pablo Picasso stated that, “painting is not done to decorate apartments. It is an instrument of war for attack and defence against the enemy”.iii Adams, it seems, was well aware of Picasso’s words,iv and Celebration Head is exemplary of his life-long commitment to engage with the painful inequalities and injustices at work in our global societies.


Dr Alice Correia, June 2020.

Albert Adams (b. 1929 Johannesburg, d. 2006 London) was painter and printmaker of mixed-raced (African/Indian) heritage. His triptych, South Africa, 1959, is considered by many to be one of the most important paintings in the history of twentieth century South African art. A selection of Adams’ work is on permanent display in the Albert Adams Room in The Old Fire Station, University of Salford.

A study day examining the work of Albert Adams will take place in Spring 2021, funded by The Paul Mellon Centre for the Study of British Art.

Black Lives Matter
Read more:

UOS Library – BLM Reading List
UOS Student’s Union – Statement
UOS Vice Chancellor – Statement

Endnotes:

ⁱ Marilyn Martin, in Albert Adams 23/6/1929-31/12/2006: A Tribute, p.6. Available at: https://adamsalbert.files.wordpress.com/2016/12/albert-adams-a-tribute.pdf , accessed 25 June 2020. 

ⁱⁱ Albert Adams, as cited in Albert Adams 1930-2006; Press Release, Northumbria University Gallery, 2015.  

ⁱⁱⁱ Pablo Picasso, statement March 1945, in Herschel B. Chipp, Theories of Modern Art: A Source Book by Artists and Critics, Berkeley: Universityof California Press, 1968, p.487. 

^iv See Lorna and Graham de Smidt in Albert Adams 23/6/1929-31/12/2006: A Tribute, p.3, as above. 

Five artists have been selected to complete micro-commissions following an open call in April. The artists – all based in, or with strong connections to Salford – are each taking different approach to the brief of creating new content in response to the University’s art collection.
The commissions, worth £200 each, intend to support artists who may have lost income or opportunities during Covid-19, and are part of a bigger programme of activity to support our artist communities. The final content and new artworks will initially feature on our website in July 2020.

Visit our SPRING Micro Commissions page to view the works – going live from July – August 2020

Mollie Balshaw is a graduate of the School of Arts and Media (BA Fine Art, 2019) and current participant in our Graduate Scholars programme. For this commission they are developing new work in response to The Awkward Ambassador by Darren Nixon – a painted sculptural installation which can exist in numerous different configurations. Mollie’s own practice explores non-binary gender, and gender fluidity, through contemporary abstract painting – and will respond to ideas around flux and process in Nixon’s work. For this commission, they will produce a digital video capturing their studio painting process:

“I’m looking to continue my enquiry into gender identity as explored through painting by trying a different approach…I usually record my process in a very private way for my own reference only, but I am keen to break that habit for the first time in this new piece, and demystify some of the spontaneity and nuance of painting in process”.

Richard Shields, resident at Salford studios Paradise Works, works as an artist and an art handler. His recent drawings take inspiration from both of these roles – exploring the physical and mental challenges of precarious working in the art sector: “useful contacts on zero hour contracts”.

The drawings, made on off-cuts of paper, seek to expose the “hidden process in exhibition production”. Whilst museums and galleries remain closed in the UK due to COVID-19, Shields will instead produce a pencil drawing of a technician installing an imagined exhibition from the Art Collection, accompanied by an anecdote-as-title – reminiscent of the growing trend of ‘art technician memes’ online.

Katie Tomlinson, also a member of Paradise Works, depicts “bizarre narratives that are a response to the everyday” in her painting practice. Katie will respond to the 1922 painting Figures by a Fence by Adolphe Valette – a small oil painting of two figures meeting in a peaceful local rural landscape:

“I believe this piece has gained new meaning when reflecting on our current climate. For most, the ritual of a daily walk has become a silver lining [during the pandemic], and Valette’s painting depicts just this; a content and peaceful couple, adhering to social distancing, and enjoying a moment with nature”

Jesse Glazzard graduated from BA Fashion Image Making and Styling at the University of Salford in 2018. After taking part in our Graduate Scholarship scheme, he has gone on to a successful photographic practice – with clients including Vice, Dazed, and i-D magazines. His work champions the LGBT+ community, aiming to strip away stereotypes and delve into class and politics.

For this commission, Jesse will revisit and reflect on his own body of work made in 2018, which was donated to the University Art Collection:

I will revisit the work I made in Salford in new forms – writing and collage – to make a digital zine. The work aims to look back on how Salford changed my life, and how the struggles were over come from a present version of myself.
I’m grateful to be taking on this work as it gives me time to really reconnect with a place that pushed me to be where I am today.”


With Covid 19 becoming a time for reflection and re-interrogation of the ‘reality’ around us, Pat Flynn has also taken the opportunity to revisit his own previous work, acquired by the Collection in 2016.

His realistic, digitally-rendered work focuses on “how we understand ourselves in light of mass media and commodity: the seduction, security, rituals and belief systems that transpire from mass production and consumer culture”

Using the latest ‘fluid dynamics software’ – a digital technology often used in adverts and movies to recreate motion, waves, liquids and gases – Flynn will revisit his ‘Cheese Series’ and effectively attempt to ‘melt’ the contents of the earlier works.

All images courtesy the artists.