Posts by sfletcher

Mandy Cleveland
Back of the Envelope series (2020-ongoing)
Drawings on found paper

In collaboration with Hot Bed Press, we are pleased to share new work by Manchester-based artist Mandy Cleveland, one of six new co-commissions for the Collection during Covid-19.

Here, Mandy talks with Stephanie Fletcher, Assistant Curator, about making new drawings that reflect on a personal and global sense of uncertainty during the pandemic.

Read more about Mandy’s project here, and more about the Covid commissions programme here.

Mandy Cleveland, Thorny Burr (2020) Drawing on found papers

SF: Can you start by telling us a bit about your background and creative practice?

My time is split between my personal practice as a fine artist, and as a community artist delivering sessions for adults and children. Before Covid I’d usually be in my studio at Hot Bed Press most days, either drawing or getting ready for workshops.

I work on my own practice as much as possible, often under the title ‘Back of the Envelope’ which involves hand-drawn compositions on old or found envelopes. I also use printmaking – woodcut in particular.

My community arts workshops are delivered with various organisations including Manchester Libraries and Archives, Zion Community Resource Centre,  LGBT Proud2bParents, HerArt and Manchester Museums. I’ve also worked on funded projects about International Women’s Day, Art for Wellbeing, and to raise awareness of Hate Crime.

I really believe in supporting community through art projects, and believe that art is a powerful tool for healthy mental wellbeing.

SF: Has lockdown affected your approaches – and if so how?

I’ve been working from home a lot more, juggling childcare as a single parent and with work all in a small space with inadequate technology!

I  lost all of my workshops in the community and that’s a very stressful experience when you are self employed as you lose your income. Work did start to come back as organisations wanted online workshops and videos, which meant a completely new approach for me – which was very challenging yet a great sense of achievement when the challenge is met.

Sometimes it feels like we are bombarded with facts and figures [from the news], yet we are isolated in our homes – in some ways we have a ‘double experience’ as these facts and figures get mixed with our own personal memories and moments.  Some people have spoken about how time seemed to move both slowly and quickly – so many things have happened since the end of March it seems like years condensed into months, and all without leaving the house.

In my drawings, I wanted to try and depict this visually and also try to capture a sense of the inaccessibility and confusion, from my own perspective. (Trying to work and provide home-schooling meant getting up at 5.30am to get drawing done!)

SF: You regularly use found papers, e.g the ‘back of an envelope’. There is something quite special about combining these throwaway materials with your very delicate drawing practice. Can you tell us a bit more about the materials you are drawn to?

At a subconscious level a great sense of guilt about spending and waste draws me to draw on the old envelopes and old papers.  I recognise the absurdity of drawing, carefully filling in the space on the back of a worthless piece of paper, but it’s important.

Some envelopes given to me are just junk mail, and others I buy in job lots. Some I find in antique shops and are very old – from 1890 even. I just like that they’re floating around forgotten – almost thrown away, but not quite. The old envelopes have carried news sent by one human to another –  it’s about communication, and these are the carriers of that communication.

In daily life, we might use them to work things out, to write lists on, to remind us about things we may forget.  That’s perhaps one of the things I’m trying to do:  create snapshots of things I might forget, snapshots of the ‘mundane’.

Mandy Cleveland Chairs 2020

Mandy Cleveland Buttercup 2020

SF: Images of nature are a recurring motif in your work. Many of us have been reconnecting with nature during lockdown – from noticing birds on the windowsill, to exploring local green spaces, or growing our own veg. What do these images mean to you?

Nature appears in my work as it’s all around, but specifically it’s more about the eye seeing things.

Noticing a ladybird resting on a blade of grass with outside the laundrette, while about to cross the road to get spare change – it’s not really about grand gestures, it’s about walking around seeing something here and there.

I draw lots of things and put them together – I want to create a feeling of time passing, of not knowing what to do… like someone who might draw things on envelopes.

I’ve written about drawing brambles it’s because  the seemingly endless scribble seems to suit my mood – they’re unruly and dark when you look into a patch of them.  They’re often  unwanted and take over spaces – and hard to get rid of. There’s quite a few in the back yard of the house I’ve moved into, and they seem to have sprung from nowhere.

Birds also occur often in my drawings – particularly black feathered birds because they are reminiscent of the British hedgerow. They’re scratchy and furtive like my drawings – and they may have a tale to tell. In folklore birds are often messengers – coming back to the idea of ‘communication’ in my work.

As a lot of people have said, the first phase of lockdown was a profound and scary experience – but also eerily quiet at times. This means that you do notice nature more, you take time to look around. Sometimes you are just staring at the wall in despair feeling generally awful – then you might notice some insects crawling around in your backyard and it will feel quite poignant!

The facts are that lockdown was better for wildlife, the birds, insects and the atmosphere greatly benefited and seemed to thrive in our absence – and I wanted to reflect on this in my drawings.

SF: Occasionally, people appear in your work too – they seem quiet, thoughtful, waiting. Can you talk a bit more about their presence (or in some cases their absence?)

When we watch people in the street, we build up ideas and stories about them – what are they doing? Where are they going? It’s the same for the people in my drawings – it’s for the viewer  to decide what they’re doing, what they’re waiting for, or who they are. I deliberately set up scenes that seem impassive – creating part of a story and letting the viewer fill in the blanks.

I also started to draw empty chairs during lockdown because, like everyone else,  I’m confined to the house and my resources are limited. I was thinking about how to represent ‘leaving’ a space – and what an empty chair might mean. Is it that we’ve left our chairs behind at work, in the pub, church or community centres – is it a chair of a loved one who is no longer here? Is it a park bench that we walk past, but can’t sit on?

SF: What’s next for your practice?

 I’m still developing this commission – it’s been difficult as I draw a lot and it takes a long time to get ideas or fully formed works.  I have also been back to Hotbed Press studios, and I’m starting some editions from my drawings – as well as continuing projects with the community.

As well as building my website, I’ve been tentatively thinking about animation and video. As someone who mainly works on paper I wouldn’t have ever considered such things before lockdown! The thing about the many stages of lockdown appears that we all have to be quite adaptable – it’s a very surreal and sad time, but creatively some interesting things are happening.

Mandy Cleveland Works in progress (brambles) 2020

Mandy Cleveland Flying stats murmuration (2020)

Cleveland is an artist based in Manchester with a studio at Hot Bed Press. Her fine art practice is being increasingly recognised, alongside her work within local communities with her company Curious Crafty.
https://mandycleveland.com/

Hot Bed Press aims to support artists, promote printmaking and educate a wider audience in printmaking and related arts. It has been based in Salford since 2006, has an ambitious programme of development and is a key player in the Salford and Manchester arts ecology. https://www.hotbedpress.org/

University of Salford Art Collection is an ambitious and growing collection of over 700 works of modern and contemporary art, founded c1968. The Collection is actively developed through new co-commissions, working directly with artists in order to tell a story of now to future generations.

September 2020

Streaming live Tue 01 Sep, 18.00 BST
Then online until 30 Sept
Watch at the Somerset House Studios website here

Beginningless Mind from Marija Bozinovska Jones is a three-fold audio-visual narrative which interacts in real time with search engines using natural language processing (a subfield of AI) to decipher today’s ordering of knowledge. Featuring music by 33EMYBW and G.G Biberkopf and software developed by Jayson Haebich, the work examines the ‘flowing process of interconnectedness’.

Beginningless Mind follows life on Earth as energy and information unwinding the cosmic law from order to disorder, where the earthling is the youngest, yet most detrimental species. 

The audiovisual trilogy observes a (post)colonial symbiosis of nature and culture through Wikipedia as knowledge commons. Scalable timeframes explore earthy life from its early imaginings to live satellite imaging. The worldmaking produced by remote sensing of scientific apparatus is queered with ancient systems of beliefs. 

The threefold narrative considers planetary kinship as a visceral sense of interconnectedness grounded in terrestrial breathing patterns and how other ecosystems’ (animals, plants, earth elements) breath is mirrored in our own. 

Beginningless Mind will be streamed online with interactive elements, from 1st September at 6pm BST.  

An element of the final artwork will be permanently acquired into the University of Salford Art Collection.

Beginningless Mind by Marija Bozinovska Jones is commissioned by Abandon Normal Devices, University of Salford Art Collection and Somerset House Studios. Produced by Abandon Normal Devices and Somerset House Studios, and supported using public funding by Arts Council England.

Commissioned as part of the Somerset House Studios I Should Be Doing Something Else Right Now programme in response to the worldwide Covid-19 pandemic. An element of the final artwork will be permanently acquired into the University of Salford Art Collection.

Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/PA

In collaboration with Castlefield Gallery, we are pleased to premiere Birds or Borders by Iranian-born, Manchester-based artist Parham Ghalamdar. Usually known for painting, Parham has recently been exploring animation in his practice. Here, he reflects on sound and vision from a painterly perspective with Lindsay Taylor, Curator, University of Salford Art Collection.

Birds or Borders is one of six new co-commissions for the Collection during Covid 19 – read more about the wider programme here, and more about Parham’s work here. The full video is available to watch online below, and will be exhibited at our New Adelphi Exhibition Gallery in 2021. It has also been selected for Warrington Arts Festival in September 2020.

Parham Ghalamdar
Birds or Borders (2020)
Animated video
Duration: 6m12s

Use the arrows in the bottom right to maximize the video player, and make sure your speakers or headphones are turned on.

Q&A With the artist and Lindsay Taylor, Curator, University of Salford Art Collection:

Lindsay: Hi Parham, can you start by telling me about your inspiration for the project?

Parham: Yes of course, I’d be happy to. The aesthetics of the short animation Birds or Borders were preliminarily inspired by the Protect and Survive public information series on civil defence, produced by the British government in late 1970s and early 1980s during the Cold War. The series was intended to inform British citizens on how to protect themselves during a nuclear attack, and consists of a mixture of pamphlets, radio broadcasts, and public information films. The Protect and Survive series had originally been intended for distribution only to educate the civilians, but due to lack of context and miscommunication, whether intentionally or mistakenly, they provoked public panic!

Lindsay: without giving away my age I have a vague recollection of that series – and being scared by them. I remember an impending sense of doom, though of course I was too busy being a child to take much interest – I probably saw them as modern day fairy tales! When we commissioned you, we asked you to respond to Covid 19 however you saw fit. Tell me more about your approach.

Parham: During the lock down each and every one of us has experienced a unique context in lack of freedom of movement: people were not authorized to leave their houses. However the restriction of movement is nothing new. Asylum seekers, refugees, immigrants and people holding week passports have been dealing with life- threatening forms of such limitations; Trump’s travel ban is an extreme example of it. Hopefully the Covid situation will help society empathise with people from disadvantaged backgrounds. 

Lindsay: I mentioned fairy tales previously, and it strikes me that story telling is a really important part of your practice?

Parham: Yes that is right. The storytelling methods in the animation are incorporated from the Shahrzad character who is the muse of the One Thousand And One Nights myth. Shahrzad tells a fresh story every day to “forestall death, to postpone the day of reckoning that would silence the narrator” by postponing the punch line to tomorrow. This episodic approach of narrating crystalizes in the animation by picturing a situation and jumping to another one without an ending.

This introduces an opportunity; the animation doesn’t end and more content could be added again anytime. Jumping from one epigram to another and the way each episode connects to the next one, all together, create a mood as if one is watching TV and hysterically changing channels one after another, hoping that there was a good ending to the little absurdist epigram you just watched. 

Lindsay: Quite early on in the process we had a conversation about the use of suspense in film making and storytelling, and I think it works really well in the animation.  Would you like to expand on that?

Parham: Suspense is a technique of promising to say I know something to the story that you don’t and if we keep watching/reading the story I promise to tell you the secret. What if I break my promise? It frustrates the audience. What if there are sequences of promises and each broken with a new promise?

I wanted to see how far I could push the suspense before it became exhausted? Could there be joy alongside the frustration? Such a suspense could be created with being playful with time. It is basically stretching time and breaking it: You have a long and repetitive scene and then a disruption, or the opposite. However, there is an intrinsic value to art that even if we experience frustration and disappointment with the art piece, there is still some level of joy and intellectuality to it. 

Lindsay: I completely agree – and I certainly felt both joy and frustration.  As well as using your own drawings, you also use images found from the internet and stitch them together?

Parham: Yes, I find that searching the internet archives for ready-made videos for making video collages is a bit like hunting – it provokes a primitive sense of searching the forest, or the unknown territories, for the desirable prize or reward. Of course the internet is a chaotic ocean of information. Once the desirable material is found, putting together the collage of the ready-made materials with created drawings feels like putting the internet into order bit by bit. 

We try to rationalize the connection of the things we perceive together even if those two things have come together randomly. Not every act of editing is montage. To montage is to put together two images to achieve the third invisible image. Studying Moscow’s film school VGIK which was the first film school, agitprops, Sergei Eisenstein’s Potemkin Battleship film and Kuleshov’s theories in montage are still highly relevant, even in the context of painting, for producing a disciplined image that functions the way artist expected and needed. 

Producing the Birds or Borders wasn’t a straightforward process, it involved experimenting with the arrangement of the symbolic elements of fences, birds, landscapes and glitch voids to come up with the right pace to create a sense of deferment and frustration. 

Lindsay: Until recently you have really concentrated on painting, I think this is only your second animation?  Can you tell us why this new direction?

Parham: The Webster’s New Collegiate Dictionary describes ‘absurd’ as a state, where man exists within an irrational and meaningless universe and in which man’s life has no meaning outside of his own existence. In such a world, the very act of searching for meaning pushes the curious man into a more unwanted conflict with his universe. That is the space where my paintings – and now expanded paintings/animations – happen. This is a restless struggle to find reason, order, and above all discipline.

A good example of such behaviour would be The Myth of Sisyphus. Sisyphus protests absurdity by embracing his fate, continuing it, refusing to resign. Perhaps I find painting and continuing to paint an act of co-operating with life without actually being able to come to terms with the displacement. My practice explores painting through a paradoxical trust and mistrust in relation to the aesthetics of Realism and 2D cartoons, and the possible absurdist method of switching between these two codes. Following my Absurdist agendas, the volume of the absurdity is so immense, it strips off elements of narration or storytelling, to encourage the painting/expanded painting/animation to develop its own identity. 

Every time the timeline is switching between the two aesthetics of the stop-motion hand- made drawings and the glitching hazy landscapes, it looks as if the Sisyphus is rolling the stone up to the peak of the mountain, coming back and repeating the cycle. Every time the timeline takes on a quicker pace and gets intense, it looks like Sisyphus is rolling the stone to a higher peak this time. 

Painter goes from point A to point B to create the static painting and it is experienced as a compressed parallel layers of information, perhaps like a time capsule, in a dynamic way at the flattened point of A+AB+B 

Animator goes from point A to point B to create a dynamic time-based animation and it is experienced statically in a manipulated timescale from point A to point B which means the AB during the creation and the AB of the final production are two different experiences of the same route. 

Lindsay: As we discussed early in the project – there is a sense of your lived history in the work.  Can you tell us more about your experience?

Parham: As dissident diasporic Iranian-born artist here in the west, I cannot help but to notice the overlaps, echoes and reflections of parallel situations. Of course the Protect and Survive quickly remind me of references such as the air raid alarms, rations, public information broadcasts and a neighbour’s martyred son from the Iran-Iraq conflict – “the 18^th deadliest conflict of the century”.  That’s where my local references of the past are organically aligned with my understanding of the new home, practically as a defence mechanism to avoid repeating the mistakes of the past and to situate myself in the current context.

Based on the American Heritage Dictionary, a highly used reference in USA, Middle East is “the continuing scene of political and economic turmoil” therefore conflict is not just one of the attributes but the very meaning of this region. (American Heritage Publishing Company, 2000).

Middle East, which is the south of nowhere and east of nothing, has seen so many conflicts, invasions, famines etc. on extreme levels that the residents have grown a working class survivalist mentality. Such way of thinking and processing wants everything all-together at the same time in the same place because there might not be another chance on another day, this is a maximalist behaviour. Iranians are used to bulk buying and storing even when there is no famine, simply the maximalist behaviour has stayed and has turned into misbehaviour now – or maybe it’s preparing for the next famine. 

When one is in isolation, whether it was the bomb shelter during an air raid in the past or in quarantine due to the Covid-19 these days, one is in suspense. Such a situation could be interpreted as a temporary semi heterotopia, a place where the norm is on hold and normality is something in the past. One becomes nostalgic for just a couple of weeks ago when a previous abnormal situation seemed normal in comparison to the moment. Perhaps this suspense of narration has been the most important exploration of the animation. A situation to contemplate reality and sociality. 

www.ghalamdar.com 

Sarah Eyre
Digital GIF series (2020)
(Please note: the below images are animated GIFs, and uses flickering images. It may take a few moments to load on some internet connections!)

A new series of 5 GIF works by Sarah Eyre, and one of six new commissions during Covid 19 for our Collection – read more here.

Click to view each GIF:

1 – Untitled (Curtain)
2 – Untitled (Heads)
3 – Untitled (Melt)
4 – Untitled (Morphing women)
5 – Untitled (Zooming backgrounds)

Twitch, shift, jerk, slip, repeat. These are words that describe this series of GIFs made in response to the How Will We Remember? commission. They are also words that might summon up the now familiar feelings of dealing with life during a global pandemic.

The starting point for these digital works was the impact of Covid-19 on women. Research has shown that statistically women are more likely to suffer economically and many women have effectively been ‘re-traditionalised’ – confined to the domestic space of the home. But, we are all navigating unfamiliar terrains, constantly re-drawing our boundaries as our physical presence and visibility in the world continually slips and changes. Many of us find ourselves existing in an in-between place, somewhere between virtual and physical worlds, communicating through barriers, windows and screens and having to negotiate the unexpected materialities of this new space including the disruptive buffering, freezing and glitching of our virtual lives.     

There is a feeling of being on the cusp; of being suspended between different spaces and states, and the feeling of fragmentation as we sit at home looking out of the window whilst our digital doppelgängers play in virtual space has informed my choice of using GIFs as the output for this commission. There is a feeling when you view the GIFs that their surfaces could slip at any moment. GIFs can make us loose the awareness of our own edges as we get sucked in to their never ending loop. The repetition, at first comforting, can quickly become uncomfortable. The analogies with our current situation don’t end there – GIFs are open, endlessly adaptable – and of course, they can go viral.

My use of paper and digital collage – an artistic method already associated with disorientation –  when merged with the jerky animation caused by the GIF process, makes the original source photographs unfamiliar. Combining different digital and analogue textures and effects suggests uncontrolled slippages and uncanny movements. The five GIFs are all different yet similar motifs, colours and textures repeat and dissolve across all of them – a subtle acknowledgement of the repetition of daily life under lockdown and partial lockdown. The colour palette is subdued, monochrome at times, however the colour blue features most frequently as blue is the colour most associated with liminal states – it is the colour of twilight and also the colour associated with cleanliness and protection – disinfectant bottles, PPE gloves and masks. The recurring silhouette motif alludes to the continual multiplication and dematerialisation of our bodies, as we flit between different physical and virtual spaces and states and protect ourselves behind layers of surfaces and screens. 

This commission is part of How Will We Remember?, a programme of commissions from Open Eye Gallery and University of Salford Art Collection that 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. 

Aug 2020

click the arrows icon in the bottom right to view fullscreen.

Seven Days in Summer “Starting” (2020)
Mollie Balshaw
digital video, 7m 42s

Part of our Salford SPRING Micro-commissions programme, which invites artists from the region to respond to works in our Collection. Find out more & view other works here.

Mollie Balshaw is a Manchester based artist and curator; graduate of the School of Arts and Media (BA Fine Art, 2019) and recent participant in our Graduate Scholarship programme (2019/2020).

Their practice explores non-binary gender, and gender fluidity, mainly through contemporary abstract painting. In this micro-commission, they have responded to notions around ‘flux’ and ‘process’ in the work of Manchester-based artist Darren Nixon.

Working from the Warrington New Art Space (a scheme ran by Castlefield Gallery), Balshaw has recorded themself painting in the studio, revealing the ‘performance’ behind painting: usually a personal, private and intuitive process. This video forms the beginning of a new body of work:

“…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.

NAS Warrington is an extremely interesting space, it was a perfect spot for this commission with its long stretches of empty walls and almost complete isolation from anybody else. Fitting for the current circumstances. I am really excited to continue working in there.

“I’ve really enjoyed working on this micro-commission – and it’s going to develop to be a much larger project from this starting point which I’m excited about!”

Talking about their inspiration from Nixon’s, work Mollie adds:

stills from video, 2020

Darren Nixon was originally commissioned by the Collection in 2015/2016 through Mark Devereux Projects Studiobook scheme. The Awkward Ambassador, a large painted sculptural installation, exists in three different forms each with multiple painted components, which can be assembled differently on each display of the work. Rather than a ‘fixed’ object, the work takes a shifting and restless existence – presented differently whether in storage, on display, or on external loan. These three forms or ‘personas’ of the work, titled The Intern (when in storage) The Mixer (when on display) and The Awkward Ambassador (when on loan) reflect on the work’s changing relationship with the people and environments around it.

Nixon’s recent practice continues to explore movement and process, combining his painted installations with performance and video based collaborations.

Mollie Balshaw is a graduate of the School of Arts and Media (BA Fine Art, 2019) and current participant in our Graduate Scholars programme.

They explore painting with an expanded field: exploring the painting as an ‘object rather than an image’, and challenging the restrictive structures often associated with painting practice. Identifying as non-binary, their work attempts to be a mediator within the masculine/feminine traditions and tropes in the history of painting.

Exhibitions include the Neo Art Prize 2019 at Bolton Museum and Art Gallery and Material Concerns at PAPER Gallery. Currently they are undertaking a year of study with the School of the Damned Class of 2020.

Balshaw is also co-director of Short Supply, an artist-led curatorial collective established to generate opportunities and events for artists in the North West. Exhibitions in 2020 include Queer Contemporaries, supported by Superbia and Manchester Pride.

https://www.molliebalshaw.com/

Part of our Spring Salford Micro-commissions programme

Salford based artist and art handler Richard Shields has produced a new drawing of a technician installing an imagined exhibition of works from the Art Collection. Part of his ‘Technical Drawings’ series – which seek to expose the ‘hidden processes in exhibition production’.

“When writing about my practice I often state that I’m doing a ‘residency in my own life’ and this recent series of works is no exception. Perhaps someday I will make drawings about lounging by the pool in my second home but for now I’m making drawings about being an art handler and my observations within the arts. The drawings are small, you can look at them on your phone at their original scale, then scroll past. Maybe the next post will be a meme with an art technician struggling on a ladder. Since the outbreak of Covid-19 there has been little art handling going on due to the closure of art spaces and the risks in going anywhere.

For the micro commission I proposed a scenario where an art handler would be installing works that said something about Salford and the Art Collection. As a technician who often works closely with curators installing other artist’s work, I wanted to recreate that dynamic currently off the cards due to the virus. I asked Stephanie to select the work for my depicted technician to install. Some of the artists selected were old friends and acquaintances, former studio colleagues, all were from the surrounding area.

The technician uses a laser level to mark a midpoint all the pictures will be hung at. However, the sophisticated device highlights a sloping floor that can often trick the viewer into thinking the work isn’t straight. In a way the drawing is a show that isn’t happening in the normal sense but instead joins the ranks of online degree shows and other nonphysical events offering an imperfect lifeline to artists and galleries during the pandemic.

In recent years Salford has offered artists shelter and support where they have otherwise been neglected. It isn’t as wealthy as some places but it has shown its potential to those who are prepared to work with its issues. Beyond the arts ecology it is a city that suffers from great poverty but also enjoys great investment that can boost the surrounding areas or highlight the disparity.”

– Richard Shields 2020

Acknowledging disparity is the first step to addressing it, or ignoring it, however Ignoring it usually makes it look worse. 2020 Richard Shields Pencil on Fabriano Accademia off cut. 7.5 x 29.5 cm

“Though presented online, Richards’s detailed drawing offers something of an alternative to the straight-to-digital exhibition making that’s happening a lot now. The artworks we chose are all connected to Salford – a little love letter to the city while we’re still working remotely. I miss the camaraderie of working on site with our technicians, spending time carefully devising and installing exhibitions – fussing over a few millimetres here or there to get it ‘just right’…

It’s exciting that museums and galleries are starting to open again, though the future is still uncertain for many. Please check out and support campaigns such as #WeMakeEvents and the #ArtistTechnicianEmergencyFund which highlight how these crucial – but often precarious – ‘behind the scenes’ roles in our sector are being hugely impacted by Covid.”

– Stephanie Fletcher, Assistant Curator, UOS Art Collection

From left to right, the featured works from the Collection include:

Sarah Hardacre Arms Open to Welcome the Sun (2012), screenprint
Sarah Hardacre Forget Mermaids (2012), screenprint
Lizzie King & Craig Tattersall Studio (2015) c-type print
Mandy Payne In Limbo (2017) paint on concrete
Rachel Goodyear Unable to stop because they were too close to the line (2008) archival limited print
Maurice Carlin Temporary Custodians (2016) CMYK ink relief on paper
Adolphe Valette Romiley (1916) oil on board

November 2020: Limited edition prints & t-shirts now available!
The drawing has been released as limited edition of 5 signed print (£80 + P&P) or as a printed t-shirt (£30 + P&P) available to purchase directly from the artist. Please visit Richard’s website to find out more and order, or contact him via Twitter / Instagram.

Richard lives between Manchester and London and works out of a studio in Paradise Works, Salford. He has been delivering a series of performances featuring an Opera about excuses artists hear when they are let down and a reimagining of The Emperor’s New Clothes, where the Emperor struggles with mental health issues as he chases ‘artworld’ success via social media.

The University of Salford is delighted to announce Mandy Cleveland as the fifth of six artists selected for new commissions for the Collection – aiming to capture contemporary experiences during the pandemic, as well as supporting artists who may have otherwise lost work. Read more about the wider programme here.

Mandy Cleveland, who has a studio at Hot Bed Press in Salford, works with found paper and used envelopes, combining drawing, collage and printing techniques. Attempting to capture some of the feelings of uncertainty at this time, Cleveland will create 6 new works on paper that encapsulate the domestic, the mundane, and life’s reflective moments. Cleveland says her concern when drawing is to capture a feeling:

 ‘it is not specifically about what is depicted on one envelope but how the pieces work in unison to create a feeling of something bittersweet, like an eye resting on one subject then another.’

She continues:

“Some of my moments during lockdown have been swinging from panic to extreme boredom – at the same time we are barraged with facts and figures in newspapers and on TV.  Through drawing and work with paper, looking at some ideas, experiences of home life at this time,  I want to try and capture the natural world, close to home, in the hope that it will show an individual viewpoint while reflecting on some of our shared experiences of this rather large pause.”

Assistant Curator, Stephanie Fletcher adds:

Mandy’s work highlights the strange time we find ourselves in: where daily, intimate experiences such as taking time to notice nature in the garden, are inextricably linked with living through huge-scale, global upheaval and uncertainty. Hopefully, this experience of slowing down, changing pace, and re-connecting with the environment will be able to endure in a meaningful way far beyond Covid 19. Mandy’s work will provide an important legacy of this time in our Collection.

Sean Rorke – Artistic Director at Hot Bed Press adds:

It is great to see Mandy’s work being recognised and supported through University Salford Art Collection and this special commission. I have been lucky enough to glimpse Mandy’s work in development over recent years and see the capturing of fleeting and intimate parts of life, and nature. Mandy’s work reminds me of the quote about the great photographer Robert Frank capturing the world “almost out of the corner of the eye” and seeing the world as it really is if you take the time to stop and look closely at the world around you. It is very fitting to be included in the Covid Commissions at a time of worldwide reflection and individual introspection.

Cleveland is an artist based in Manchester with a studio at Hot Bed Press. Her fine art practice is being increasingly recognised, alongside her work within local communities with her company Curious Crafty.
https://mandycleveland.com/

Hot Bed Press aims to support artists, promote printmaking and educate a wider audience in printmaking and related arts. It has been based in Salford since 2006, has an ambitious programme of development and is a key player in the Salford and Manchester arts ecology. https://www.hotbedpress.org/

University of Salford Art Collection is an ambitious and growing collection of over 700 works of modern and contemporary art, founded c1968. The Collection is actively developed through new co-commissions, working directly with artists in order to tell a story of now to future generations.

August 2020

We’re pleased to be working with artist Jack Tan on one of six new artist commissions this Summer. His project Tale As Old As Time addresses important moments in Chinese civil rights history in the UK – read more about Jack’s project here.

Update: September 2021:

In our Q&A, Jack talks more about the tradition of ‘disaster ceramics’, the history of Chinese disasters in the UK and the ‘civil rights moments’ he is highlighting, as well as his background and practice – in conversation with Stephanie Fletcher, Assistant Curator, University of Salford Art Collection.

Please note, this article includes references to racist language and incidents. If you are affected by these issues, please refer to the resources section at the end of the page; alongside petitions and campaigns that you can take part in.

Stephanie: Firstly, can you give us an introduction to your practice and artistic background? How does this work relates to your research interests and previous projects?

Jack: I discovered art quite late and only started training in my early 30s. Before that, like any good Asian kid, I was supposed to be a lawyer. I went to Law School in Hull, then worked in various paralegal and legal secretarial jobs before training at a commercial law firm, as well as doing civil rights campaigning and pro bono case work alongside. I started doing pottery at a local arts centre and one thing led to another, and I ended up leaving the law to go to art school to study ceramics at Harrow/University of Westminster.

Since then I have mainly been creating art installations and performances that explore aspects of the law or social justice. For instance, I created a work called Karaoke Court in 2014 that adapted arbitration law in a way that allowed people to resolve real disputes under binding arbitration contracts by singing karaoke before a jury-audience who would decide the verdict. This reforms litigation as a hostile activity into a fun and conciliatory one. In another work called Four Legs Good, I took over the bottom floor of Leeds Town Hall for Compass Festival 2018 converting it, signage and all, into a working Animal Justice Court where we revived the medieval animal trials for a day with modern cases argued by real advocates on behalf of live animal litigants.

Right now, I am working on an intergenerational education project where we are creating a new game app together that allows the player to roleplay a non-human and to lobby local councils to change planning and environmental policies from the non-human person’s viewpoint. This commission, Tale As Old As Time, however takes me back to my first love which is pottery, but allows me to combine it with social justice concerns and my interest in critically examining the effects of law and government policy on the Chinese community in the UK.

Stephanie: Can you tell us a little more about the tradition of ‘disaster ceramics’ that this work continues?

Jack: Disasters have been depicted on ceramics for a long time but often from the perpetrator’s or conqueror’s point of view. You see this for example in ancient Greek or Roman vessels or murals of war or invasion. But I am interested in a 19th century British tradition and the visual impulse to commemorate major public disasters on everyday pottery. Teapots, mugs, plates and other vessels were illustrated with disaster events to raise money for victims, to campaign for political awareness or simply to commemorate and commit these events into a material that is as long-lasting as bronze or stone, but much cheaper.

Events such as the Peterloo Massacre of 1819, where cavalry troops charged into a large crowd protesting the Corn Laws and killed 18 people and injured 650, was remembered quite viscerally on ceramics. Major industrial disasters were also commemorated in pottery such as the Oaks Colliery Disaster of 1866 in Barnsley where 361 miners died in two massive methane explosions.  Tableware and figurative pottery was also used as awareness raising tools in political campaigns, notably the abolition of slavery movement in the early 19th century. This pottery, depicting slavery scenes of abuse and political slogans, circulated within domestic settings alongside pamphlets arguing for the abolition of slavery. The famous potter Josiah Wedgewood himself commissioned an anti-slavery medallion which he distributed freely in support of the anti-slavery movement. While it might seem like ‘bad taste’ now, at the time it was an important way to make sure that these stories were not forgotten, and remained a part of everyday life and history. The tea sets in this commission will depict disasters in a similar way, except they will use a more contemporary design language and commemorate my view of major events experienced by Chinese people in the UK.

Stephanie: What are the other key moments in history that the works will discuss – and how has Covid 19 continued these narratives?

Jack: I am making five tea sets which are inspired by significant events in British Chinese civil rights history. But I make three caveats here. First, I am not a keeper of British Chinese history and consider that there are many histories of the Chinese in the UK. Secondly, what is significant to history is for the community to decide. However, events that appear in the tradition of commemorative disaster ceramics tend to be those that have gained visibility in the public consciousness through newspaper reporting. As such, I chose events that have been reported in the recent news. Finally there are of course more than five significant moments. But time and budget constraints meant that I had to choose only five. So this is really a snapshot of a political history of the Chinese in the UK from the viewpoint of an artist:

• the deportation of Chinese seamen from Liverpool (late 1940s) and their surviving children’s ongoing search to find their disappeared fathers; 
• the violent murders of takeaway workers like Simon Tang (2013) and Migao Chen (2005); 
• the mass drownings of Chinese cockle-pickers at Morecambe Bay (2004), which relate to other mass deaths at or around the sea in Dover (2000) and Essex (2019); 
• the official blaming of Foot & Mouth disease (2001) on the Chinese; and 
• racist attacks against Chinese people or anyone who looks Chinese during the Covid 19 pandemic (2020) . 

I see the way that Covid 19 has emboldened casual racism and violent racist attacks against Chinese, East and Southeast Asian people as a direct result of a history of anti-Chinese racism in the UK. Starting from the Opium Wars (1839-42), when the victorious British forced China to buy opioids in exchange for tea, porcelain and silk leading to mass drug addiction in the population, to the Ministry of Agriculture blaming Chinese restaurants for the national outbreak of Foot and Mouth disease in 2001, the Chinese, Chinatowns and Chinese bodies have been framed in the UK as containers of disease, crime, seediness, forgery/deception and clandestine or covert invasion. In an increasingly hostile environment against non-Whites and migrants following the Brexit vote and the election of an openly racist and homophobic Prime Minister, the racialisation of the coronavirus pandemic has given license for the latent racism in the general population to erupt into attacks against any person or business perceived to be Chinese.

Stephanie: can you tell me more about the images you have used?

Jack Tan. Tale As Old As Time (ceramic decal), 2020. Digital image. Courtesy of the Artist / University of Salford Art Collection

Jack: This image is a work-in-progress sample of a typical digital file that would be converted into ceramic waterslide decals. This is a process where artwork images are printed onto decal paper, a kind of transparent acetate-like film, using ink made from raw ceramic glazes. The individual images would then be cut out, immersed in water, and then slid onto pottery before being fired in the kiln. This digital sheet contains sample patterns and images that will be applied onto 5 bone china afternoon tea sets that will comprise the artwork Tale As Old As Time.

Starting at the top left corner:

1. For a tea set highlighting Covid 19 racism, “Why don’t you fuck off back to China and take your filth with you” was a phrase whispered to British Chinese film-maker Lucy Sheen by a White man on a London bus during the Covid 19 pandemic in February 2020. Below, the multicoloured teardrops are derived from the shape of bruise marks on the face of Singaporean student following a violent racist attack on him in February 2020 by two teenagers who shouted ” I don’t want your coronavirus in my country” as they kicked and punched him.

2. The garden spade, garden fork, baseball bat and repeated kung fu figures comprise decorative elements of a tea set that will draw attention to the vulnerability of Chinese takeaways who experience racist violence. In particular, CCTV footage of a fatal and ‘frenzied attack’ in 2005 showed youths adopt a ‘karate kid’ stance to mock Mr Chen, a takeaway owner, before the gang of 20 children and youths beat him to death with bats, poles, spades and heavy tree branches.

3. The silhouette of a hanging cow represents the 2001 foot and mouth epidemic. The Ministry of Agriculture Fisheries and Food briefed journalists that the Chinese community had  introduced the disease into the country through smuggling contaminated meat for restaurant use. This saw an increase in racial attacks against the Chinese, East and Southeast Asian communities but it also led to the first mass Chinese political protest in British history. This tea set commemorates Chinese community grassroots activism and organising.

4. The triptych of portraits at the top right shows a merchant seaman who had been separated from his British wife and children in the mid 1940s, and under deportation orders was expelled to China possibly via Singapore along with all other Chinese sailors living in Liverpool. The surviving children of these missing fathers are still looking for them and any information about them today: http://www.halfandhalf.org.uk/missing.htm. This tea set considers discriminatory laws and policy enacted in order to expel, penalise, obstruct or target the Chinese community, Chinese people, Chinese trade or culture in Britain.

5. The silhouettes and shell patterns at the bottom of the decal sheet will decorate a tea set commemorating the Morecambe Bay disaster in 2004 where 23 unauthorised trafficked Chinese cockle-pickers got stuck in the sand and drowned as the tide came in. The words in blue “Sinking water, many many sinking water” were uttered in desperation by one of the cockle-pickers in a 999 call to the police before he drowned.

Very much like the tradition of 19th century disaster pottery, these contemporary tea sets will similarly depict political events using the decorative motifs typically seen in ceramic tableware, such as the use of polka dot design, stripes, edging patterns, or pastoral and action scenes. The Covid 19 tea set for example will create a cognitive dissonance between the whimsy of its multi-coloured teardrops and attractive cursive writing, reminiscent of Emma Bridgewater pottery, with the tea set’s traumatic subject matter. The potential activation of this artwork through the rituals of taking afternoon tea also opens up questions about how and what it means to embody or ingest a culture of colonialism or institutional racism today.

Share your thoughts: 

Using the hashtag #PoliticalPottery
You can find us at:
twitter:  @UoSArts  /  @jackkytan
Instagram:  @uos_artcollection  / @jackkytan

Resources:

CARG – Covid Anti Racism Group
The page includes news, blogs, petitions and resources, including information on reporting hate crime and where to find help.

Sign the Petition – Say No to Racism targeting British East Asian People

Sign the Petition – Stop depicting East & South East Asians in Coronavirus related media

Join the Crowdfunder – End the Virus of Racism

University of Salford Students can visit the Student Hub AskUs page for information on wellbeing, support, & reporting incidents.

For the final in our series of new commissions this Summer, the University of Salford Art Collection has teamed up with AND Festival and Somerset House Studios to commission a new digital work by Marija Bozinovska Jones. Jones’ ambitious audiovisual work will reflect on the truly global ‘interconnectedness’ of all things: from plants, animals and the earth, to technology, science and the cosmos. 

Read more below

Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/PA

Launch:
Beginningless Mind will launch online on Tuesday 1st September from 6-7pm, streamed from the Somerset House website. 

An element of the work will be acquired into the University of Salford Art Collection, and exhibited on campus in 2021.

“Both Marija and the AND Festival challenge traditional concepts of making and presenting artwork to audiences. This bold and ambitious work will be a valuable addition to our About the Digital strand of collecting” – Lindsay Taylor, Curator, University of Salford Art Collection.

About the artist:
Marija Bozinovska Jones (MBJ) explores links between social, computational and organic architectures. Her work revolves around technocapitalist amplification and unpacks cryptic ways of forging subjectivity. Probing selfhood from subatomic level to networked presence on planetary scale and beyond, MBJ often collaborates with academics, devotional practitioners, computers scientists and other artists. 

Artist: Pat Flynn
Titles: Cheese, Cheese Selection, Cheese Hole
Year: 2015
Medium: C-type prints on di-bond 52.5cm x 70cm Edition of 5 +1AP. Courtesy the artist and The International 3
Brief biography: b.1972, UK. Lives & works in Greater Manchester.
Acquired: 2015, from the International 3 Gallery

Pat Flynn is an artist based in Greater Manchester. 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”. His work draws on ideologies, processes, themes and sentiments found in Hollywood films, computer games, consumer goods and advertising.

patflynn.co.uk

Pat Flynn, Cheese (2015). Digital print. Courtesy the artist and International 3 Gallery.

Pat Flynn, Cheese Selection (2015). Digital print. Courtesy the artist and International 3 Gallery.

Pat Flynn, Cheese Hole (2015). Digital print. Courtesy the artist and International 3 Gallery.