Autumn 2023 Clifford Whitworth Library University of Salford
We are delighted to share that Cecile Elstein’s The Sisyphus Suite is now on display in the Clifford Whitworth Library.
Elstein’s series of eight screen prints were made between 1979-80 in response to Albert Camus’ 1942 philosophical essay The Myth of Sisyphus. The full series of prints are on display in the Library’s ground floor exhibition space following the recent acquistion of the work.
The Library is open 24/7 to students and staff, and open to the public 8am – 7pm on weekdays and 8am – 5pm on the weekend. For more information on visiting the library, click here.
Cecile Elstein (b. 1938, Cape Town, South Africa) is a printmaker, sculptor, and environmental artist based in Didsbury, South Manchester. In the 1980s, Elstein worked at the Manchester Print Workshop with the Master Printer Kip Gresham. The Workshop was based at the University of Salford until 1985. The Sisyphus Suite joins two works from Elstein already in the Collection made during this time, Small Offering (1980) and A Letter from Mrs Gould (1981).
The Sisyphus Suite was generously gifted to the University of Salford Art Collection from Cecile Elstein Studio Ltd in 2023.
Earlier this month, Mike Pinnington paid us a visit to Visibilities: Shaping a story of now, our current on campus exhibition curated by Collection Team Assistant Rowan Pritchard.
“Visibilities manifests as a focused, thoughtful display that brings works together to address diversity, both in regional communities, and globally.” Says Mike in his article for The Double Negative.
Last chance! It’s the final week to see Visibilities at the New Adelphi Exhibition Gallery. Visibilities closes this Friday the 25th of August. The Gallery is open 10am – 4pm, weekdays, and is free to visit and open to all. For more information on visiting the Gallery, click here.
The Double Negative is an online magazine featuring the latest arts, design, film & music coverage in the UK. Their mission: to hold a mirror up to the national — in particular the North-West — art scene and reflect it, uncovering and analysing the talent based here.
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August’s artwork of the month is Salford Faces by Gwilym Hughes. This artwork is currently on display in our New Adelphi Exhibition Gallery as part of Visibilities: Shaping a story of now. For this artwork of the month, Visibilities Curator Rowan Pritchard explores the work in more detail.
In Salford Faces, four layers of giclee prints in cyan, magenta, yellow and black are superimposed to form a portrait
Gwilym Hughes found this face in a photograph at the Salford Local History Library. With an ongoing interest in anonymous faces, whose names are no longer recorded, or who might never have known they were having their photograph taken, Gwilym’s work brings close attention to these people who are ‘lost’ in the archives.
The image is painstakingly hand-drawn using slow and intensive techniques. Rendered first as an intimate relief etching, the portrait is then enlarged and presented as a lightbox. The face, once forgotten, can no longer be overlooked when displayed at this scale, illuminated as it stares back at us.
Installation View: Visibilities: Shaping a story of now, 2023.
Speaking about Salford Faces, Rowan shares:
“I picked this work because it speaks directly to the ideas of preservation, questioning whose names we write down and record.
In Visibilities, I wanted to dig a little into who is represented in the University’s collecting; whose stories, artworks, and achievements are we preserving as an institution? And this work relates to that directly. In the exhibition, Salford Faces is presented next to Silver Triple Pop by Gavin Turk, an artwork full of reference and reverence for men like Elvis, Andy Warhol, and Sid Vicious, whose names and images are inviolably linked to our understandings of culture – preserved and remembered.
In contrast, Salford Faces not only begins to question why some people are remembered while others are not but creates a space for those forgotten voices to be remembered, re-enshrining them into the archives through their new representation in the University Art Collection.”
Gavin Turk, Silver Triple Pop, 2009, print. Courtesy the artist. Photography by Museums Photography North West.
Gwilym Hughes, Salford Faces, 2018, lightbox. Courtesy the artist.
Visibilities continues at the New Adelphi Exhibition Gallery until the end of the month, closing on the 25th of August. You can read more about the exhibition here.
Every year the Collection runs a number of Live Briefs for our students to work with – and respond to – the Collection in different ways. This month on our blog we feature new work by MA Contemporary Fine Art student Ann Olih, who responded to porcelain sculpture ‘Lost in Biliterate and Trilingual’ (2014) by Annie Lai-Kuen Wan.
This is a response to Annie Lai-Kuen Wan’s ceramic series ‘Lost in Biliterate and Trilingual’ THE POINTLESS GIFT- Ann Olih
On 26 October 2022, the Central Bank of Nigeria announced the introduction of redesigned 200, 500, and 1,000 naira notes into the country’s financial system. However, since the notes were unveiled, Nigerians have been struggling to access them from banks and ATM cash points. Despite the frustration expressed by Nigerians over their inability to access the new notes, the CBN extended the deadline for the phasing out of the old notes from 31 January to 10 February. Yet, many Nigerians have still had a hard time getting the new notes.
The Supreme Court gave an order restraining the CBN from going ahead with the implementation of the 10 February deadline set for the phasing out of the notes, but both the President and the CBN governor refused to adhere to the court order. In the midst of the uncertainties, many Nigerians have taken to the streets in major cities to protest the hardship caused by the policy.
Millions of Nigerians have continued to grapple with hardship amid the cash crunch that has worsened business transactions and stifled trade in the informal economy. In parts of southern Nigeria, many protesters were said to have sustained injuries, and some were arrested for vandalizing bank properties. I decided to represent the current issues faced by Nigerians with the naira note redesign and its inaccessibility, the frustration, disappointment, shattered hopes and the fear of the unknown with this gift box. This gift box has little or no practical value, and will not be relevant or appreciated by the recipient. It is designed to be deliberately difficult or impossible to access.
We are faced with the dilemma of either keeping the gift box at home as an aesthetic piece which has no value to us. Alternatively, we could take the risk and tear the old notes to see the contents of the box, only to realize that there are no new notes inside.
Description: The empty box was covered with layers of 36 (which represent the number of states in Nigeria) pieces of the old 200 naira notes to create a wrapping sheet. The notes were glued in such a way that makes it difficult to reach the box itself except torn out.
The blue ribbon used is from an ASO-OKE, Asooke is a type of traditional Nigerian fabric that is woven from cotton or silk threads into narrow strips and then sewn together to create a larger piece of fabric. It is mainly used in Nigeria for making traditional clothing such as agbada, gele, iro and buba, and other ceremonial attire.
Ultimately, this gift fails to meet the needs or desires of the recipient (Nigerians), and is even seen as a burden rather than a thoughtful gesture.
Reference 1 – Premium Times Ng Reference 2 – Adetayo, O. (2017). Aso-Oke Fabric: Origins, Types and Uses in Nigeria.
Author bio:
Ann Olih is a self-taught Nigerian artist currently living in the UK. she began drawing in 2015 as a hobby and has since then been developing her skills to become a professional artist. She is known for her use of bold, bright colors and patterned GELE(head gear). Her art is inspired by her African heritage, and she often incorporates African themes and motifs in her paintings. She also draws inspiration from her personal experiences and the people she meets, and this is reflected in the emotional depth of her artworks. Despite facing challenges as a self-taught artist in a competitive industry, She has remained dedicated to her craft and has continued to grow and evolve as an artist. Her talent and hard work earned her a spot at the University of Salford’s Master’s degree program on Contemporary fine Art. annieblaq.com
Annie Wan Lai Kuen is a Hong Kong-based ceramic artist. She takes everyday objects as her subject matter and transforms them into beautiful objects injected with meaning.
Lost in Biliterate and Trilingual comprises 18 small porcelain sculptures, each taking the form of a dictionary.
The title of the artwork refers to the language policy adopted by the Hong Kong government after the handover of the territory from the United Kingdom to the Chinese in 1997, which has meant that Cantonese, English and Mandarin all feature in Hong Kong political and daily life. In order to create this work, the artist took moulds from her own dictionary and those belonging to her friends; the resulting casts capture the bent spines, battered corners and creased covers of the books. However, in porcelain form, these sculptural books cannot be opened and remain mute, perhaps suggesting the limitations of translation and communication, or acting as monuments to the analogue world.
The work was acquired following Asia Triennial Manchester 2014.
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The University of Salford Art Collection, in partnership with Castlefield Gallery, is delighted to announce that the second of two artist residencies at Energy House 2.0 has been awarded to Emily Speed.
Cheshire-based Speed joins artist Mishka Henner, who was announced as the first artist-in-residence at the University’s world-leading research facility earlier this year, with the University of Salford Art Collection in partnership with Open Eye Gallery.
Speed was selected from an open call in early 2023 which received over 70 expressions of interest. As artist in residence, Speed will work closely with the Energy House 2.0 team over the next 18 months to develop new work in response to the groundbreaking research being carried out, around topics of energy efficiency, the climate crisis, net zero research, and the future of housing and homes.
Innards, 2018, working fountain at Knole House for ‘A Woman’s Place’ curated by Day & Gluckman, courtesy the artist.
Flatland, 2021, commissioned by Tate Liverpool for the Art North West award, photograph by Lucy Dawkins
Ideas around shelter and habitation lie at the core of much of Speed’s work, which spans disciplines from drawing to installation and performance. With two large environmentally-controllable chambers – able to accommodate two full-sized detached houses each and capable of simulating wind, rain, snow, solar radiation and extreme temperatures – the world-leading Energy House 2.0 facility, part-funded by the European Research Development Fund (ERDF), provides a unique opportunity to explore these themes and the future of housing.
On being selected for the residency, Speed says:
“I feel incredibly fortunate to have time and access to this fantastic facility and to be able to work alongside experts to develop research into the home, and how we might live in the future.”
Professor Richard Fitton, Energy House:
“Our artist in residence programme has grown from strength to strength in the past few years, and we are now on our 3rd residency, this scheme aims to take some of the building science work done at Energy House 2.0 and create ground breaking artworks – we see this as a positive impact to the work we do, engaging the public in ways that we simply could not have done beforehand. The quality of bids that we saw was amazing and Emily has some tough competition. We are now really eager to get Emily involved as part of the teams and see what she will achieve.”
Lindsay Taylor, Curator, University of Salford Art Collection:
“We were delighted to receive so many high quality applications by some fantastic artists. It was very hard to agree a shortlist and a finalist, however the panel all agreed that Emily’s interest in gender, the body and the domestic environment would bring a unique perspective to the work at Energy House 2.0”
Known for her work examining the relationship between the body and architecture, Speed’s practice considers how a person is shaped by the buildings they have occupied and how a person occupies their own psychological space. Working in sculpture, performance, drawing and film, Speed’s work looks at the relationship between people and buildings and in particular the power dynamics at play in built space. Her work plays with scale and creates layers around the body, often hybrid forms of clothing and architecture.
Over the last few years, Speed has had solo presentations at Tate Liverpool, Tate St Ives, TRUCK, Calgary, and Fort Worth Contemporary Arts, Texas. She has been commissioned to make performances for Yorkshire Sculpture Park, Laumeier Sculpture Park (St Louis) and Edinburgh Art Festival among others and recent exhibitions include: A Woman’s Place at Knole House; Body Builders at Exeter Phoenix Gallery; and The Happenstance, Scotland + Venice at the Architecture Biennale in 2018. Emily Speed lives and works in Cheshire, UK.
Launched in February 2022, Energy House 2.0 is a unique research facility, with two environmental chambers each able to accommodate two full sized detached houses. The research team can recreate a variety of environmental conditions – from extreme temperatures (-20˚C to +40˚C) to simulate wind, rain, snow, and solar radiation – in order to test out the latest innovations in the built environment. The £16m facility, part-funded by the European Research Development Fund (ERDF), is the largest facility of its type and plays a key role in accelerating progress towards low carbon and net zero housing design building upon the success of the original Energy House Laboratory which opened in 2012.
Castlefield Gallery is a contemporary art gallery and artist development organisation. Established in 1984, they’ve led the way in artist development for almost 40 years. They provide creative and career development, exhibition opportunities and commissions for artists and independents. Working from galleries in Manchester, off-site, online and in the public realm, they create long-lasting impacts in the Manchester city region, North West of England and beyond. Their national and international activities focus on artist exchange. Castlefield Gallery’s public and participation programmes provoke new ways of thinking, bringing together artists, creatives, communities and audiences to explore the art and issues of the time. They believe when artists and communities come together, they can help shape a better world.
They support more than 250 Castlefield Gallery Associates and a host of creatives through person-centred development programmes. Castlefield Gallery New Art Spaces provide affordable making and project space in the North West, including on the high street. They are a home for artists and creatives. They are advocates for what they believe in: the power of new art. They make new art happen.
Ryan Gander OBE is Castlefield Gallery’s Artist Patron. Castlefield are a registered charity, supported by Arts Council England and Manchester City Council.
Open Eye Gallery is a photography organisation based in Liverpool, UK, working worldwide. They produce exhibitions, long-term collaborative projects, publications, festivals, and university courses — locally and worldwide. They welcome over 85,000 visitors to the gallery every year, over 200,000 to projects in other venues, and many more to the online spaces. They proactively take risks to spark crucial conversations and enable creative expression. Open Eye Gallery takes a lead on socially engaged photography nationally. Bringing different voices, photographers and communities together, they establish projects where the collaborative process is just as important as the final product. openeye.org.uk
June 2023 Marta Strzelecka, University Sustainability Engagement Officer
The University of Salford Art Collection Team has been awarded two Green Impact National Awards: Innovation for Engagement and Sustainability Hero, for their continuing commitment to sustainability action and engagement.
Every year, Green Impact Special Awards are given out across institutions to people and teams who go above and beyond for sustainability. These Special Award winners are then put forward for consideration for the Green Impact National Awards. This year, the Art Collection Team received two national awards!
The first one – Innovation for Engagement – recognises ways in which Green Impact teams have engaged more people in sustainability activities, supporting staff and students to learn about and lead on sustainability. This award spotlights creative innovation in the engagement: the more people we can actively engage, the bigger the positive impact we can make.
The Art Collection Team, led by Team Assistant Rowan Pritchard, won thanks to the largest outreach and impact, international engagement and multiple stakeholders in their programmes and projects. At the end of last year, the Team also won a Platinum Green Impact award for their sustainability efforts within their department, including implementing an office switch-off campaign to save energy, ensuring the use of reusable items such as bags and packaging, and introducing plants to green up the office.
Young people from Action for Conservation spending time with older people from Pride in Ageing at the Pocket Park they created working with Gwen Riley Jones & RHS Bridgewater.
A participant exploring sustainable photographic methods as part of Gwen’s workshops during Rediscovering Salford.
Rowan recieving the platinum award on behalf of the team at the University Green Impact awards.
There’s a clear commitment to sustainability in the Team’s programme and way of working. The main sustainability actions taken by the Team to win the awards include:
The Are You Living Comfortably? photography project, showcasing work from artists McCoy Wynne, created through a pilot artists residency the Team hosted with the University’s Energy House facility and in partnership with Open Eye Gallery, Liverpool. The artwork, created in response to themes of climate change, energy efficiency and retrofitting, has been on display in both Liverpool and Salford during 2022, alongside displays of research materials, videos, and a series of online events and more to engage audiences of thousands. The work was also selected to feature online in the COP26 showcase, and has since gone on loan to Bury Art Museum.
The You Belong Here: Rediscovering Salford’s Green Spaces exhibition, displayed at Salford Museum & Art Gallery, was launched as part of the city-wide Rediscovering Salford programme, encouraging audiences of over 16,000 to reconsider and reconnect with the green spaces around them through exciting newly commissioned artworks in response to Salford’s parks and green spaces. Alongside the exhibition, the Team ran a programme of engagement including tours, talks, and workshops to encourage participants to engage with their own local environments and reconnect with the nature around them. The exhibition was led on behalf of the Salford Culture and Place Partnership, and the wider project was generously supported by Arts Council England and Suprema Lex.
The Peer to Peer: UK/HK 2022 project, led by the Team in collaboration with Open Eye Gallery, Liverpool, supported 9 UK visual arts organisations and 9 Hong Kong visual arts organisations, along with more than 43 artists, and over 160 students to connect, create work, and develop enduring partnerships internationally while rethinking the ways of working remotely to mitigate the environmental impacts of long-haul air travel. This resulted in an online festival, promoting these ways of working through talks and the artwork created during the project to encourage others to consider new ways of connecting with others while minimising their carbon footprint.
McCoy Wynne, Are You Living Comfortably? 2021. Image courtesy of the Artist.
In response to winning the award, Rowan said:
Taking part in Green Impact has been a challenging and inspiring process. When we began on our Green Impact journey, I don’t think any of us expected that we would win a national award. It has been a huge honour to be recognised in this way and serves as a reminder of how impactful working sustainably can be.
As a part of our University and local community and as a resource people look to, it is important to us at the Collection that we not only encourage others to work in sustainable ways, but that we lead by example, and show how even the smallest acts contribute to wider change.
We are now more motivated than ever to continue our sustainability journey. Through projects like Hybrid Futures, we’re already thinking about how our sustainability work can be more wide-reaching, working in partnership with other arts organisations and artists, as well as a cohort of community leaders who we hope will be able to spread the learning and tools needed for working more sustainably even further than before.
The second award – Sustainability Hero – recognises a person with extraordinary commitment to sustainability within a Green Impact team, as nominated by their colleagues.
Gwen Riley Jones, the Socially Engaged Photographer-in-Residence with the Art Collection Team in 2021/22, won for going far beyond the actions outlined in the Green Impact toolkit. Her work in collaboration with youth groups explored non-toxic, plant-based methods of photography and printing. The judges described her process to achieve maximum engagement through their work as “impeccable”. The group’s work has been viewed by over 50,000 people through a display with partner organisation RHS Garden Bridgewater, and it is artistically promoting awareness of plant-based techniques. The judges loved the creative heritage links, too.
Gwen Riley Jones with her Sustainability Hero award.
In the nomination, Gwen’s colleagues wrote:
Gwen Riley Jones is our team’s Sustainability Hero. Over the last 12 months she has worked with over 100 people at different creative workshops, exploring plant-based methods of photography and printing. This has included making her own spinach anthotypes, a plant-based method of printing using no chemicals. Her work with anthotypes and the Action for Conservation youth group led to an exhibition of the plant-based work at the RHS Garden Bridgewater in Salford. Over 50k people visited this exhibition, raising significant awareness of plant-based methods of creating and hopefully inspiring others to explore sustainable ways of working.
At each step of the way she has considered sustainability, ordering reusable film cameras rather than disposable ones, printing all the exhibition materials on compostable boards, and ordering entirely vegan food for her week of activity with Action for Conservation.
Demonstrating incredible commitment to sustainability within her work, Gwen has continued to explore even further how she can reduce the number of unsustainable chemicals she works with, now exploring ways of creating photographic developers using composting vegetables. Gwen’s work over the last 12 months has really inspired us to take initiative as a team and really push the ways we can be more sustainable in our everyday practices.
In response to winning the award, Gwen said:
Issues around climate change and sustainability can feel overwhelming, but I have found that by collaborating with people and working together it feels more achievable. Each action, each thought, helps us to ask more questions and think about how we can change our practices – step by step – to create a bigger impact.
When we started this journey, I had no idea of the places it would go, I certainly didn’t expect to be winning any awards for it. It has been my privilege to collaborate with young people on these projects as, in my experience, they immediately have answers and I have learnt so much from working together.
This work will have no end and will continue to develop alongside the creativity. I have a huge thanks to give to the whole Art Collection Team for their commitment to sustainability and for their encouragement. Also, a huge thank you to the ever-expanding networks of people who are willing to share ideas and try new things to try to live, study and work more sustainably.
Gwen has since gone on to collaborate with MA Fine Art student Lizzie King and the University’s Sustainability Team, to produce a further series of events and displays on campus entitled ‘Sustaining Photography’ taking place in Summer/Autumn 2023, supported by the Advantage Fund.
The Team are grateful to Marta Strzelecka, University Sustainability Engagement Officer, for her support during the Green Impact project – and encourage any other departments thinking of joining to give it a go!
The national judging panel was made up of Vibhati Bhatia (Founder of South Asians for Sustainability), Charlotte Bonner (CEO of EAUC), Grace Corn (Senior Engagement Officer: Climate Emergency for Westminster City Council) and Rebecca Turner (Careers Pathway Manager at IEMA).
About Green Impact
Green Impact is a sustainability engagement programme, run internationally by SOS-UK. It’s a simple, fun and flexible way for departments to improve their environmental performance and champion sustainability at the University, whilst receiving recognition for their efforts and impact.
Colleagues form teams across the University and work through an online toolkit of actions together. A team can be any size and cover an office, building, department, or even a whole School or Division. Each action on the toolkit is allocated either 5, 10 or 15 points, and the team decides which actions to complete; the total number of points a team achieves will determine whether they receive a ‘working towards Bronze’ accreditation or a Bronze, Silver, Gold or Platinum award.
Green Impact programme is open to all University of Salford staff members.
Castlefield Gallery Manchester, Grundy Art Gallery Blackpool, Touchstones Rochdale, University of Salford Art Collection and Shezad Dawood Studio are working in partnership on a pilot project that they believe will make a difference to the way that they operate. Hybrid Futures will explore collective and more sustainable ways of working that will influence how the partnership commissions, exhibits and collects new work by visual artists to benefit and be more relevant to their audiences, now and in the future.
A series of exhibitions across the North West of England will feature new work and commissions by artists Shezad Dawood, Jessica El Mal, Parham Ghalamdar and RA Walden that address the urgent thematic focus of climate change.
The partnership will also be working with a group of people from their local communities with a shared concern about the climate crisis. This group called Collective Futures will investigate how creative production can help to shine a light on these issues and create solutions to the problems caused by the changing global environment.
To find out more about Hybrid Futures, and explore the artists, partners, and venues involved, visit the Hybrid Futures website: hybrid-futures.salford.ac.uk
Coming Soon: Hybrid Futures at Touchstones, Rochdale
The first public instalment of Hybrid Futures, Shezad Dawood: Leviathan: From the Forst to the Sea, launches this week from Saturday 3rd June at Touchstones, Rochdale.
Shezad Dawood’s exhibition premieres the latest episode of his epic film series Leviathan Cycle, titled Episode 8: Cris, Sandra, Papa & Yasmine, alongside related textiles, paintings and research material. Set in the Brazilian Atlantic Forest – one of the most ecologically diverse and threatened biomes on earth, Episode 8 charts an embodied, spiritual and ecological journey along the age-old Guarani path that links the forest to the sea.
Read more about Hybrid Futures at Touchstones, here.
You’re invited to join Touchstones on Friday 2nd June from 6pm to celebrate the exhibition opening. To RSVP, email culture@yourtrustrochdale.co.uk Please note, RSVP is ESSENTIAL in order to manage capacity. Without RSVP, you may not be guaranteed entry to the exhibition.
Hybrid Futures, a multi-part collaboration focusing on climate, sustainability, collaborative learning and co-production between Castlefield Gallery, Manchester, Grundy Art Gallery, Blackpool, Touchstones Rochdale, University of Salford Art Collection and Shezad Dawood Studio, and generously supported by Arts Council England and Art Fund.
Albert Adams, Ruth Barker, Maurice Carlin, Craig Easton, Gwilym Hughes, Katie McGuire, Hetain Patel, Mandy Payne, Jai Redman, Gavin Turk, Wu Yue
Save the date!
Exhibition launch: Thursday, 25th May 2023
New Adelphi Exhibition Gallery, Salford
What does it mean to be visible? Visibilities brings together works from the Collection to explore and examine who and what is represented in our contemporary collecting, and how these visibilities shape what we think of as our ‘stories of now’.
After almost two years working closely with the University of Salford Art Collection, Team Assistant Rowan Pritchard curates Visibilities, unpicking what shapes the Collection today, who is visible within it, and what stories the Collection tells.
Wu Yue, Reconnected, 2020. Courtesy the Artist.
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The University of Salford is deeply saddened to hear of the passing of Salford artist, Harold Riley, on 18th April 2023 at the age of 88.
Harold was born in Salford in 1934. In 1951 he went to London to study at the Slade School of Art, and completed scholarships in Spain and Italy, before returning to Salford where he lived and worked until his passing in 2023. He dedicated the majority of his practice to documenting life in Salford and Greater Manchester – from both everyday urban streetscapes to portraits of local sporting stars – in particular at Manchester United FC. His works capture the rapidly changing landscapes across Greater Manchester over 60 years.
The University of Salford Art Collection holds more than 100 paintings, drawings and mixed media artworks by Harold, both gifted and commissioned/purchased – including a number of Chancellor portraits. These include Chancellors HRH Prince Philip (1967-90), Sarah Ferguson (1991-95) Martin Harris (2005-09) and Vice Chancellors John Horlock, (1974-81), John Michael Ashworth (1981-90), Michael Harloe (1997 – 2009).
Further afield, Harold also achieved success with portraits of Nelson Mandela, President John F Kennedy, Pope John Paul II, and other important public figures.
Early in his career Harold struck up a friendship with perhaps the region’s most well known painter, L.S. Lowry – from whom he drew much inspiration throughout the following decades. Lowry is said to have helped broker Harold’s first artwork sale to Salford Museum & Art Gallery, who hold a number of his works in their permanent collection.
Harold was also instrumental in another significant acquisition for the University – a large collection of paintings, printmaking and studio ephemera by South African artist Albert Adams (1929 – 2006). After forming a friendship at the Slade the two artists remained in touch, with Adams spending his first Christmas in the UK in Salford. The connection ultimately led to the Albert Adams archive being offered to the University Art Collection through the Art Fund and Adams’ surviving partner, Edward Glennon.
Harold’s lifelong dedication to the city was recognised with an Honorary Degree (Doctor of Letters) from the University in 1977, and by receiving the Freedom of the City in 2017. He is survived by his wife, children and three grandchildren.
The University is digitising the entire artwork collection on a rolling basis, and a selection of Harold’s images can be viewed here on the online catalogue. Works can also be viewed by appointment. Photographs of Harold can also be viewed in the University’s digital Archives.
April 2023
Harold Riley, View of Manchester from Salford, 1975.Image Courtesy the Artist’s Estate. Photography by Museums Photography North West.
Harold Riley, Street by the Docks, 1977.Image Courtesy the Artist’s Estate. Photography by Museums Photography North West.
Harold Riley, HRH Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, 1st Chancellor 1967-90. Image Courtesy the Artist’s Estate. Photography by Museums Photography North West.
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Are you a final year BA student or current MA student with an interest in socially engaged and documentary photography? Do you want to gain valuable experience of being commissioned to make new work? – ideal for your CV!
We are inviting applications from students in response to the exhibition Is Anybody Listening: Our Time, Our Place. The exhibition includes 2 series of photographs by alumnus Craig Easton, Sony World Photographer of the Year 2021: Bank Top and Thatcher’s Children.
It is a significant occasion for a Northwest artist – Craig Easton – to win Sony World Photographer of the Year (2021) with his series Bank Top, created in Blackburn, as well as second place in the documentary category for Thatcher’s Children, made in Blackpool. Due to Covid-19, we were unable to celebrate this achievement within his home region.
Easton tackles stereotypes and responds to the negative way in which the main-stream media often portrays Northern communities. The relevance of Easton’s work has resurfaced in a new light as communities endure the cost-of-living crisis and face new challenges and segregation. Our Time Our Place is a touring exhibition, engagement programme and symposium delivered in partnership with University of Salford, LeftCoast, Open Eye, Blackburn Museum and Art Gallery and the Williamson Art Gallery and Museum. The exhibition is displayed at Blackpool School of Art from 11th April – 31 May.
Purpose
We are offering four graduating artists an opportunity to make new work, along with a platform to showcase it, and mentoring to support the process.
The commissions aim to bridge the gaps between graduation and career launch – as well as developing connections between the University Art Collection, audiences and heritage. The four selected artists will take the exhibition Is Anybody Listening? Our Time, Our Place as a starting point – assessing how it engages people – and then take steps to involve themselves more deeply in the issues and communities of their own lived experience.
We are offering four awards of £1500 each for commissions in response to the themes in the exhibition. As well as the cash award you will also receive mentoring by Gwen Riley Jones. The selected photographers will be expected to produce new work between June – September 2023, which will be displayed in New Adelphi atrium from Nov – Dec 2023 (coinciding with the Craig Easton exhibition in New Adelphi Exhibition Gallery which launches in September and also runs to December).
How to apply and the selection process
Micro residency (University of Salford, School of Arts, Media and Creative Technology) Please send a CV, images of past work and a covering letter no larger than 10 MB to:
Explain why you are interested in this opportunity (300 words) and how you would respond to this brief (300-500 words). Please keep your CV no longer than 2 pages of A4 and include two references from recent or current employers/ clients/ lecturers. All applications will be acknowledged with an email receipt. Should you be shortlisted, we will invite you to interview.
Interviews expected to take place Wednesday 24th May.
For more information please contact: Rowan Pritchard: r.t.pritchard@salford.ac.uk
Fee
A total of £1500 is available per micro-commission. This includes your fee and all expenses such as materials, public liability insurance, expenses, site visit, meetings, user events, administration, meetings, VAT.
Is Anybody Listening? Our Time, Our Place – Timeline
Open Eye, Liverpool – Exhibition and engagement programme January 2023 – April 2023
LeftCoast and Blackpool School of Art – Exhibition and engagement programme April 2023- June 2023
Blackburn Museum and Arts Gallery – Engagement programme June 2023- July 2023
University of Salford -Exhibition and engagement programme including micro-commissions September 2023- December 2023
Williamson Art Gallery and Museum – Exhibition, engagement programme and symposium January 2024 – March 2024
