Posts in Art Archive Category

Exhibition dates: Friday 27 January – Sunday 30 April 2017
Venue: Centre for Chinese Contemporary Art (CFCCA), Market Buildings, Thomas Street, Northern Quarter, Manchester, M4 1EU
Gallery opening times: Tuesday – Sunday, 10am – 5pm
Admission: Free

In conversation: Thursday 16 February 2017, 6-8pm at Centre for Chinese Contemporary Art
Artist Suki Chan in conversation with Dr Adam Galpin, Senior Lecturer in Psychology, University of Salford
Admission: Free

‘The more I investigated perception and how the brain processes information, the more miraculous and incredible it became: how impoverished and compressed information received via our senses can yield a coherent, high resolution, detailed and multi-dimensional world.’   Suki Chan

Weaving together extraordinary images, bio-medical research and individual testimonies, Lucida exposes the curious and complex relationship between the human eye, the brain and vision.

Working with a camera obscura, Chan became intrigued by how our eyes receive images upside down and yet the brain interprets them the right way up. The mechanisms of our visual perception mean that at any given moment we actually see much less than we perceive. Our everyday experience of viewing a perfect and stable image of the world with ‘photographic’ detail is, in a certain sense, an illusion.

Viewers will be invited to use eye-tracking technology to reveal their own rapid eye movements – something we are normally unaware of. The multi-screen installation will reveal how visual information is modified and processed by the eye and the brain in real time. Lucida is a visceral, visual journey in which Chan’s camera is constantly on the move, restlessly travelling through spaces that lead us, like a thread through a maze, into the heart of her subject. Partially filmed in the University of London’s Senate House, the fluid tracking shots through library spaces and boiler rooms suggest a visual analogy for the interior structures of our eyes and brains.

Lucida is Chan’s most ambitious and technically challenging work to date, and presents developing scientific theories about perception through a mesmerising cinematic experience. Chan regards her moving-image projects as installations as much as films, transforming the space and atmosphere into which the viewer enters. Her practice combines light, the moving image and sound to explore our physical and psychological experience of time and space, and her moving image works are notable for their dream-like aesthetic. Shifting between the micro and the macro, she draws the viewer into a cinematic ‘elsewhere’.

To create Lucida, Chan was supported by a Wellcome Trust arts award to work with ophthalmologists, neurobiologists, vision scientists and psychologists – and in particular has had the collaboration of vision scientist Colin Blakemore. Alongside the scientific framework, Chan interpolates personal narratives, such as the experiences of someone losing their sight. The work has a haunting soundtrack composed by Dominik Schrerrer, the winner of the 2014 Ivor Novello Award.

Lucida was commissioned by the University of Salford Art Collection and the Centre for Chinese Contemporary Art (CFCCA) in partnership with the Centre for the Study of the Senses, University of London and Tintype.

Lucida is supported by the Wellcome Trust Small Arts Award, University of Salford Art Collection and by Arts Council England.

A version of Lucida will enter the University of Salford Art Collection.

Launch: Thursday 26 January 2017, 6-8pm
Venue: Centre for Chinese Contemporary Art (CFCCA), Market Buildings, Thomas Street, Northern Quarter, Manchester, M4 1EU
Exhibition dates: Friday 27 January – Sunday 30 April 2017
Gallery opening times: Tuesday – Sunday, 10am – 5pm
Admission: Free

In conversation: Thursday 16 February, 6-8pm at Centre for Chinese Contemporary Art
Artist Suki Chan in conversation with Dr Adam Galpin, Senior Lecturer in Psychology, University of Salford
Admission: Free

‘The more I investigated perception and how the brain processes information, the more miraculous and incredible it became: how impoverished and compressed information received via our senses can yield a coherent, high resolution, detailed and multi-dimensional world.’   Suki Chan

Weaving together extraordinary images, bio-medical research and individual testimonies, Lucida exposes the curious and complex relationship between the human eye, the brain and vision.

Working with a camera obscura, Chan became intrigued by how our eyes receive images upside down and yet the brain interprets them the right way up. The mechanisms of our visual perception mean that at any given moment we actually see much less than we perceive. Our everyday experience of viewing a perfect and stable image of the world with ‘photographic’ detail is, in a certain sense, an illusion.

Viewers will be invited to use eye-tracking technology to reveal their own rapid eye movements – something we are normally unaware of. The multi-screen installation will reveal how visual information is modified and processed by the eye and the brain in real time. Lucida is a visceral, visual journey in which Chan’s camera is constantly on the move, restlessly travelling through spaces that lead us, like a thread through a maze, into the heart of her subject. Partially filmed in the University of London’s Senate House, the fluid tracking shots through library spaces and boiler rooms suggest a visual analogy for the interior structures of our eyes and brains.

Lucida is Chan’s most ambitious and technically challenging work to date, and presents developing scientific theories about perception through a mesmerising cinematic experience. Chan regards her moving-image projects as installations as much as films, transforming the space and atmosphere into which the viewer enters. Her practice combines light, the moving image and sound to explore our physical and psychological experience of time and space, and her moving image works are notable for their dream-like aesthetic. Shifting between the micro and the macro, she draws the viewer into a cinematic ‘elsewhere’.

To create Lucida, Chan was supported by a Wellcome Trust arts award to work with ophthalmologists, neurobiologists, vision scientists and psychologists – and in particular has had the collaboration of vision scientist Colin Blakemore. Alongside the scientific framework, Chan interpolates personal narratives, such as the experiences of someone losing their sight. The work has a haunting soundtrack composed by Dominik Schrerrer, the winner of the 2014 Ivor Novello Award.

Lucida was commissioned by the University of Salford Art Collection and the Centre for Chinese Contemporary Art (CFCCA) in partnership with the Centre for the Study of the Senses, University of London and Tintype.

Lucida is supported by the Wellcome Trust Small Arts Award, University of Salford Art Collection and by Arts Council England.

A version of Lucida will enter the University of Salford Art Collection.

Date: Friday 9 – Sunday 18 December 2016
Time: 6 – 8pm
Venue: MediaCityUK, University of Salford, Salford, M50 2HE
Admission: Free

Following on from the success of last year, Lightwaves will be returning to Salford Quays/MediaCityUK from 9^th– 18^th December this year and as always, everything will be free! Featuring a brand new large-scale commission; new work from emerging artists, presentations of work from across the globe, and workshops, Lightwaves 2016 will illuminate the Quays once more and bring light to those dark winter nights.

The programme by Quays Culture will have 9 artworks  spanning across The Quays, from the Plaza between The Lowry and the Lowry Outlet, to MediaCityUK’s Piazza, and even in the River Irwell.

Full programme details: can be found on the Quays Culture website.

Lightwaves will feature short film One Square Mile, which is a co-commission by Quays Culture and the University of Salford Art Collection. The film by Chris Paul Daniels and Sam Meech was submitted to Quays Culture’s Northern Artist Film Competition and won the new commission category. One Square Mile explores environments, architecture and communities within one square mile of Salford Quays and MediaCityUK, celebrating the diversity of people within the area and how they interact. Screened in a shipping container on location, the commission will be accompanied by artist films from Cecilia Stenbom, Antony Barkworth-Knight and Declan Colquitt, all of whom were commended in the Open Call strand of the competition.

#Lightwaves16.

Wot u 🙂 about? presents a major solo exhibition of entirely new work by acclaimed Scottish artist Rachel Maclean, who will represent Scotland at the 2017 Venice Biennale, at HOME in Manchester

The exhibition will showcase new film installation It’s What’s Inside That Counts, which has been commissioned in partnership with HOME, University of Salford Art Collection, Artpace, Zabludowicz Collection, Tate, Frieze Film and Channel 4 Random Acts.

Maclean uses the fairytale genre to examine the murky boundary between childhood and adulthood. She explores ideas of commodified happiness and the politics of fear, rendering dark and unsettling narratives in the supersaturated, candy-coloured aesthetic of children’s television.

Wot u 🙂 about? is at HOME from Saturday 29 October 2016 until Sunday 8 January 2017.

A performance-lecture by speculative architect Liam Young.

Date: Wednesday 23rd November 2016
Time: 11.00am-12 noon
Venue: Robert Powell Theatre, University of Salford, Allerton Building, Frederick Road, M6 6PU
Admission: Free

Where the City Can’t See is the first fiction film shot entirely through laser scanning technology.  Directed by speculative architect Liam Young and written by author Tim Maughan, the film is set in the Chinese owned and controlled Detroit Economic Zone (DEZ). In a not-too-distant future, Google maps, urban management systems and CCTV surveillance are not only mapping our cities, but ruling them.

Exploring the subcultures that could emerge from these new technologies, the film follows a collection of young factory workers across a single night, as they drift through the smart city in a driverless taxi, searching for a place they know exists, but that the map doesn’t show. They are part of an underground community that work on the production lines by day, by night adorn themselves in machine vision camouflage and the tribal masks of anti-facial recognition, enacting their escapist fantasies in the hidden spaces of the city. They hack the city and journey through a network of stealth buildings, ruinous landscapes, ghost architectures, anomalies, glitches and sprites, searching for the wilds beyond the machines.

Where the City Can’t See is a cross platform production, which has manifested as live performances, installations and now as a short film. The project launched during AND Festival 2015 at Grizedale Forest (Cumbria, UK), as an open film set, where scenes set in the natural environment were recorded. The remainder of the film – including the industrial, urban sequences – was shot in 2016 in Detroit (US). The film brings together composites of these two locations, merging them to create a new, virtual landscape.  Young opened this year’s Transmediale festival (Berlin, DE) with a performance-lecture version of the work. The complete film will have its world premiere at The Invisible City: the Cinema of Surveillance, in St. Helens (UK) on 12 November 2016.

The artwork will then be acquired into the University of Salford Art Collection.

Artist Bio

Liam Young is an architect who operates in the spaces between design, fiction and futures. He is founder of the urban futures think tank Tomorrow’s Thoughts Today, a group whose work explores the possibilities of fantastic, perverse and imaginary urbanism’s. Liam also runs the Unknown Fields Division, an award winning nomadic workshop that travels on annual expeditions to the ends of the earth to investigate unreal and forgotten landscapes, alien terrains and industrial ecologies. Liam also coordinates events and exhibitions including the multimedia series ‘Thrilling Wonder Stories: Speculative Futures for an Alternate Present’ and was a curator of the 2013 Lisbon Architecture Triennale. Liam’s projects develop fictional speculations as critical instruments to survey the consequences of emerging environmental and technological futures.

Liam’s inherently collaborative design approach means his work is diverse in its scale and nature. He has been acclaimed in both mainstream and architectural media, including the BBC, NBC, Wired, Time, and Dazed and Confused. Liam was named by Blueprint magazine as one of 25 people who will change architecture and design.

View trailer for Where the City Can’t See.

Credits

Where the City Can’t See is commissioned by Abandon Normal Devices, St Helens Heart of Glass and University of Salford Art Collection. Produced by Liam Young and Abandon Normal Devices, with support from Forestry Commission England’s Forest Art Works and supported using public funding by Arts Council England.

The Invisible City is a programme of film screenings and artist tours presented by AND in partnership with the Heart of Glass. Located at the former Pilkington Glass HQ in St.Helens the programme explores themes of transparency, surveillance and cinematic espionage.

The Invisible City is curated and produced by Heart of Glass and Abandon Normal Devices, in partnership with Alexandra Park (St Helens) Management Limited. This project is supported by Arts Council England and Film Hub North West Central, proud to be a member of the BFI Film Audience Network.

Date: Thursday 17 November 2016
Time: 6 – 8pm
Venue: MediaCityUK, University of Salford, Salford, M50 2HE
Admission: Free

Organised with the Centre for Chinese Contemporary Art, this experimental live event by artist Shen Xin explores the inclusiveness and exclusiveness of individual and collective understandings of origin through a collaboration of art, science and performance. A new commission, the performance will present three UK based storytellers morphed into hand-drawn abstract animations to deliver scripted passages about their origins and DNA.

Shen Xin was born in Chengdu, China and currently lives and works in London. Foregrounded by moving image work, Shen’s practice concerns the social position of the artist, and engages recently with re-instrumentalising technique, judgement, power and morality.

Exhibition launch: Thursday 29 September 2016, 16:30 – 18:00
Exhibition runs until Friday 16 December 2016
Venue: Council Chambers, The Old Fire Station
Admission: Free
Exhibition opening times: The exhibition runs until Monday 9 January 2017 and viewing need to be made in advance by contacting the Art Collection team.

The artists in this exhibition were selected by University Art Curator, Lindsay Taylor and Sam Ingleson, Senior Lecturer, Visual Arts.

The students, Claudia Alonso, Melissa Dolan, Elliott Flanagan, Helena Oliveira, Daniel Wiltshire and Helen Woolstencroft, are currently about to enter their third year BA (Hons) Visual Arts and were invited based on the strength of their work to date and their commitment to the course over the previous two years.

They were each commissioned to make new work for the exhibition over the summer. The students collectively agreed a theme, Matters of Order and Chaos, and have each responded to this theme in a very personal way. The students were also asked to provide a short text about their work, and to write this considering a general audience rather than as an academic text. The Art Collection team have worked with the students to frame their work
professionally, and to refine their writing.

Matters of Order and Chaos has been organised by the School of Arts and Media and the Art Collection Team.

Join us on Thursday 22 September 2016 at 2.00pm 2016 for the launch of our major new public realm commission Engels’ Beard produced by Engine with Jai Redman as lead artist.

At almost five metres in height Engels’ Beard is a colossal sculpture  and also a unique bouldering wall at the heart the University of Salford’s Peel Park campus. The artwork was commissioned by the University through the art policy relating to the New Adelphi building, the new home for the School of Arts and Media.

Artist Jai Redman said the work used Friedrich Engels’ “signature magnificent beard as a symbol of wisdom and learning, while the climbing aspect came from a desire to make it an interactive artwork”.

University of Salford Chancellor, poet, writer and Scottish Makar, Jackie Kay MBE, has produced a poem in response to Engels’ Beard entitled Thinker. The last couplet of the poem will feature in the landscaping beside Engels’ Beard, with the rest of the poem found in the university’s Clifford Whitworth Library

Refreshments will be served in the New Adelphi building; where there will also be the opportunity to view The Making of Engels’ Beard exhibition, in the New Adelphi Gallery, featuring initial concepts, drawings and models of the artwork.

Image: Bust of Fredrich Engels, photograph courtesy of Arthur Siuksta (2015), www.artography.co

The International 3, Salford
Saturday 25 June – 30 September 2016
Wednesday – Friday, 12 – 5pm (other times by appointment)

Prima Donna, from the Italian ‘first lady’, means ‘solo female voice’ in musical and operatic terms, and is the starting point for Louise Giovanelli’s exhibition.

Developed out of an interest in classical musical terminology and how appreciation and interpretation is shaped through suggestions of how a piece of music should be played, e.g. ‘adagio’ meaning ‘slow movement, restful at ease’ – this exhibition, by way of calculated lighting and hanging decisions, concerns modes of looking so as to suggest how a painting might be looked at and subsequently experienced.

Co-commissioned by The International 3 and the University of Salford; work from the exhibition will be acquired by the university’s Art Collection.
Exhibition details

Life drawing by students from the School of Arts & Media
Funded by the Haworth Charitable Trust

Thanks to support from the Haworth Charitable Trust, the School of Arts & Media re-introduced life drawing to the curriculum last year.  The classes, conducted by Dr David Hancock continued this year and also included a ‘masterclass’ by Manchester-based artist Christopher Clements who practices and teaches traditional techniques.

The Series has ensured that students from a range of programmes including Visual Arts, Fashion Design, Animation, Graphic Design and Computer Games Design can develop this key artistic skill at their own pace and reflect this new knowledge and understanding in their work. The sessions used different models, a variety of poses and encouraged students to use pencil, charcoal, pastel and paint to represent the human form. This small selection showcases work from some of the participants.

The Haworth Life Drawing Prize was presented student Steph Grundy at the preview of the exhibition. The prize is the opportunity to travel to a European country to study artworks in major galleries/museums; last year’s winner Hazel Clegg travelled to Paris where she studied works at the Louvre, Centre Pompidou, Musée d’Orsay, Musée d’Art Moderne and Palais De Tokyo.

‘The life drawing classes have had a really strong and amazing impact on my skills and the way I think about and study the human figure. I would recommend the class to anyone, it’s fun, it impacts significantly on your drawing skills (not just for the figure but for anything – you begin to see things in a new way when drawing) and you will end up with a body of work to be proud of.’   Hazel Clegg, 2015 Haworth Life Drawing Prize winner.

The award is judged upon the quality of the drawings/paintings in the student’s wider portfolio, their development of skills and also their active participation to the life drawing classes.

The Haworth Charitable Trust

“The Haworth Trust, a registered charity, was established 26 years ago. Its primary aim is to give financial assistance to deserving young people with exceptional talent who are determined to make a career in the arts, particularly in painting or music. It has a particular interest in assisting people located in the northern counties of England.”

 Exhibition runs from 14 April until September 2016

Haworth Life Drawing Series has been organised by the School of Arts & Media with support from the Office of University Advancement.