Posts in Archive Category

University of Salford Art Collection is delighted to welcome Anna Ridler to talk about using machine learning and artificial intelligence (AI) in her creative practice.  She will use tulipmania, a moment in history when the price of a tulip bulb was equivalent to the price of town house in Amsterdam, as an analogy to illustrate the human desire to monetize the natural world and our tendency towards speculative absurdity. This historic phenomenon is used to examine the future in the creation of her works Myriad (Tulips), Mosaic Virus and Bloemenvieling and to question what can be learnt about value, human control, and the tenuous line between “nature” and “artifice.”
 
Anna Ridler (b. 1985, UK) is an artist and researcher. She has exhibited at institutions such as the V&A Museum, Ars Electronica, HeK Basel, Impakt and the Barbican Centre and has degrees from the Royal College of Art, Oxford University and University of Arts London. She was a 2018 EMAP fellow and was listed by Artnet as one of nine “pioneering artists” exploring AI’s creative potential. She is interested in working with collections of information, particularly self-generated data sets, to create new and unusual narratives in a variety of mediums, and what happens when things cannot fit into discrete categories. She is currently interested in the intersection of machine learning and nature and what we can learn from history.
 
Anna’s work was recently shown in Peer to Peer (Open Eye Gallery, Liverpool and Shanghai Centre of Photography) where she was selected for one of two new commissions for the University of Salford Art Collection.  Her most recent commission, for the Photographers’ Gallery in London, opens on 20 February.

Date: Thursday 5 March 2020, 4 – 5.30pm
Venue: Chapman 1 Lecture Theatre, Chapman Building, University of Salford, Peel Park Campus, Salford, M5 4WT
Admission: Free, but booking required via Eventbrite.

Artists: Michael Beard, Frances Disley,
Harry Meadley and Leslie Thompson

Private view: Thursday 23 January 2020, 6 – 8pm
Exhibition dates: Friday 24 January – Sunday 8 March 2020
Opening hours: Wednesday – Sunday, 12 – 5.30pm
Venue: Castlefield Gallery, Manchester

Thumbs Up marks the latest development in a partnership between Castlefield Gallery and Venture Arts. One strand of the collaboration, alongside The Whitworth, was recognised by the 2019 Manchester Culture Awards winning the award for Inspiring Innovation. Both organisations are deeply invested in offering sustainable residency and professional development opportunities for early-career and learning-disabled artists in the North, and committed to improving inclusion and accessibility in the arts.

Castlefield Gallery is a contemporary art gallery and artist focused organisation established in 1984. The gallery exhibits new and commissioned work at its main venue in Manchester, off-site and in the public realm. Castlefield Gallery works locally, nationally and internationally – often through dynamic partnerships and exchange. 

Venture Arts is a progressive visual arts organisation based in Hulme, Manchester which strives for learning disabled people to engage with and be recognised in art and culture.

Commissioned by

curated and produced by 

with special thanks to Castlefield Gallery Commissioning Patrons

Supported by

Castlefield Gallery Exhibition Supporters

Peer to Peer opened to great acclaim on 17 October 2019 – read a review in the Fourdrinier here.  The exhibition at St George’s Hall and Open Eye Gallery Liverpool showcases work by 14 photographers from the UK and China, nominated by experts in the field. Curated by Lindsay Taylor, with Thomas Dukes and Serein Liu, the exhibition tours to Shanghai Centre of Photography, opening on 8 December 2019.

An integral part of the project is new commissions offered to two of the artists by the University of Salford Art Collection.  The selected artists are Anna Ridler and Wu Yue.

University of Salford Curator Lindsay explains – ‘both artists were selected as their work tackles global issues in subtle and innovative ways. Anna Ridler’s beautiful installation (nominated by John O’Shea, Head of Programming, Science Gallery London) uses historic references to question financial values and systems.  I particularly liked her use of technology including AI.  Wu Yue (nominated by Liu Heung Shing, Founder, Shanghai Center of Photography) looks at the growing ‘problem’ of aging populations.  Her images are full of sensitivity, humour and humanity’.  Both artists receive £5000 to make new work for the University Art Collection.

Images: Left, Anna Ridler and Right, Wu Yue, Peer to Peer at Open Eye Gallery, Liverpool.
Installation photographs by Tabitha Jussa.

Liverpool exhibition dates: Thursday 17 October – Sunday 22 December 2019
Opening hours: Open Eye Gallery: Tuesday – Sunday, 10am – 5pm and
St. George’s Hall: Monday – Saturday, 9.30am – 4.45 pm
Venues: Open Eye Gallery, Liverpool and St. George’s Hall (Heritage Centre entrance), Liverpool

Shanghai exhibition dates: Sunday 8 December 2019 – Sunday 9 February 2020
Venue: Shanghai Center of Photography, Shanghai, China

Peer to Peer brings together fourteen of the most influential cultural leaders in China and the UK, with each nominating a photographer who they feel is at a crucial point in their career in terms of international significance.

Co-curated by Lindsay Taylor, Curator of the University of Salford Art Collection, with Thomas Dukes, Curator at Open Eye Gallery and Serein Liu, an independent curator based in Shanghai, Peer to Peer is a core project of LOOK Photo Biennial 2019 and will also be shown at Shanghai Centre of Photography in December 2019. The exhibition platforms artists on the verge of major international recognition.

Two of the artists from the exhibition will each receive a £5,000 commission towards producing new work for the University of Salford Art Collection.

For further details visit the Peer to Peer exhibition page.

Exhibition dates: Friday 18 October – Sunday 22 December
Opening hours: Open Eye Gallery: Tuesday – Sunday, 10am – 5pm and
St. George’s Hall: Monday – Saturday, 9.30am – 4.45 pm
Venues: Open Eye Gallery, Liverpool and St. George’s Hall (Heritage Centre entrance), Liverpool .

Launch: Thursday 17 October 2019
5 – 6pm, St. George’s Hall:
Refreshments and speeches from 5pm.

Speeches from: Nick McDowell, Director of International at Arts Council England, Paul Grover, Liverpool China Partnership, and Jasmine Peng from Branding Shanghai. The two new commissions for University of Salford’s Art Collection, selected from the Peer to Peer exhibition, will also be announced by John McCarthy, Executive Director of Marketing and External Relations, University of Salford.

From 6pm: head to Open Eye Gallery to see the rest of Peer to Peer, and join the launch party for the broader LOOK Photo Biennial.
Free, but please RSVP at Eventbrite.

Afterparty: 8pm doors open for the Redeye, The Photography Network 20th anniversary party & LOOK Photo Biennial afterparty at Constellations, with speeches at 8.30pm. RSVP for the afterparty at Eventbrite.

Cheng Ran is a video artist working and living in Hangzhou, China. His latest work Diary of a Madman – Manchester Plan, New Bees, is a multi-channel installation filmed entirely in Greater Manchester and is the outcome of a short residency with Centre for Chinese Contemporary Art (CFCCA) earlier this year.

Interested in the idea of ‘otherness’, Cheng uses cinematic techniques to look at the ways we experience new cities and their unfamiliar geographies and living spaces. His first solo exhibition in the UK explores the city of Manchester from the perspective of a visitor and a stranger, drawing attention to the myths and fabrications that inform our understanding of place.

“Cheng’s Diary of a Madman series, is an ongoing project that was initially developed during a residency at the New Museum in New York in 2016 followed by two further chapters in Tel Aviv and Hong Kong. We are delighted to have collaborated with Cheng Ran on this exciting new chapter that links with the city and people of Manchester,” said CFCCA’s Senior Curator Marianna Tsionki.

#ChengRan

Exhibition Preview: Thursday 24 October, 6-8pm
Exhibitions dates: Friday 25 October 2019 – Sunday 12 January 2020
Opening hours: Tuesday – Sunday, 10am – 5pm
Venue: Centre for Chinese Contemporary Art, Manchester

Cheng Ran: Diary of a Madman, Manchester Plan is a co-commission between the Centre for Chinese Contemporary Art, videoclub and the University of Salford Art Collection.

Further resources for: Everything I Have Is Yours by Eileen Simpson and Ben White (Open Music Archive).

FVU Frames: Making of Everything I Have Is Yours

Video excerpts

Publication

The texts in this collection each respond to Everything I Have Is Yours (2019) by Eileen Simpson and Ben White (Open Music Archive), an artists’ film that takes as a starting point records produced during the first decade of the UK pop charts – 1952 to 1962 – and experimentally re-purposes them in an on-going, exploration of the limits of sampling and the possibilities of live collaboration.

Thanks to the generous support of the Haworth Charitable Trust we were able to reintroduce life drawing classes into the School of Arts and Media in 2015. For the fourth year we are displaying work by some of the student made during these classes.

The Haworth Life Drawing Prize, a travel bursary of £750.00, was awarded to Aleksandra Rak at the exhibition preview alongside the second place price of £150 to Lewis Pathak and a third prize of £100 to Jade Williams. The travel bursary gives the winner the opportunity to travel to a European country to study artworks in major galleries/museums. Each of the awards are judged upon the quality of the drawings/paintings in the students’ wider portfolios, their development of skills and their active participation to the life drawing classes.

Preview: Tuesday 7 May 2019, 4 – 6pm. All welcome. Viewings outside of the preview event are by appointment only, please contact the Art Collection team.
Exhibition dates: Wednesday 8 May 2019 – Monday 20 January 2020
Venue: Council Chamber, Old Fire Station, University of Salford

We are delighted to announce that University of Salford Art Collection and Centre for Chinese Contemporary Art Research Curator Marianna Tsionki exhibition proposal Meteorological Mobilities has been selected by apexart through its 2019-2020 NYC Open Call.

Marianna’s idea-based proposal was one of only three selected from 463 submissions and rated by 400 jurors who cast nearly 13,000 votes. Submissions and jurors came from more than 71 countries. Her proposal will be presented at apexart – nyc as part of their upcoming exhibition season.

Meteorological Mobilities urges a radical re-thinking on the way we act collectively upon climate change as planetary citizens. Far from promoting planetary catastrophism, exotic miseries, and passive resistance, the works on view aim to raise awareness of climate injustice and challenge the dominant political power of the countries and corporations which are primary contributors to climate change.

The University of Salford Art Collection Art Collection is a cultural partner for this year’s PHOTOFAIRS | Shanghai and Art Curator Lindsay Taylor has been invite to speak at the fair. Lindsay will be a panel member for a discussion on Developing a Collection.

Participation in this year’s PHOTOFAIRS | Shanghai is with a view to exhibiting the University of Salford’s Art Collection at the fair next year. Watch this space for updates.

PHOTOFAIRS | Shanghai is the leading destination in Asia Pacific for discovering and collecting photography. The fair features more than 50 of the world’s leading galleries from over 16 countries.

Dates: Friday 21 – Sunday 23 September 2018
Venue: Shanghai Exhibition Centre
For further details visit the PHOTOFAIRS | Shanghai webpage.

We are pleased to announce that we have recently acquired Yang Yongliang, Mountains of Crowds, 2016, through support from Art Fund.

Mountains of Crowds is a video piece generally presented on a HD monitor to give the appearance of a moving framed photograph.  The work criticises urbanism against a backdrop that, at a glance, poses serene natural waterfalls and mountaintops which, on closer inspection, transform into towered housing blocks and over-crowded streets.

Mountains of Crowds was formed after the Youngliang took digital photographs of his visits to different fast-developing cities. Then he sketched out his environment and added animations to the photographs, using digital manipulation to construct a conceptual landscape that mimics the collage and painting style of traditional Shan shui paintings (Chinese landscape paintings using brush and ink). Unique to this piece is its focus on people. He reveals complex winding streets with milling crowds to emphasise the social impact of urbanisation and overpopulation. The result is an intricate dystopian city that leaves viewers with a nostalgia for an older, slower paced world, and a foreboding sense of inevitability to these consumerist, urban advancements.

Watch Mountains of Crowds here.

Purchased with Art Fund support.