Summer programme: #CovidCommissions
In collaboration with key partners across the North West, we’re delighted to announce six new commissions for the Collection – aiming to capture contemporary experiences during the pandemic, as well as supporting artists who may have otherwise lost work.
Selected artists include: Sarah Eyre (with Open Eye Gallery), Kiara Mohamed (with Open Eye Gallery), Parham Ghalamdar (with Castlefield Gallery) Mandy Cleveland (with Hot Bed Press), Marija Bozinovska Jones (with AND Festival in partnership with Somerset House), and artist Jack Tan.
The selected artists will make work that responds to the wider and deeper impacts of the current situation on our sense of community, connection, wellbeing and belonging; ranging from our relationship to each other and ourselves, to our changing experience of digital and natural environments.
An element of each project will be launched online here during Summer 2020, and the final works shared at our New Adelphi Exhibition Gallery in 2021.
Kiara Mohamed The Lives We Lead (2020) Photograph
Kiara Mohamed
Co-commission with Open Eye Gallery
New series The Lives We Lead spans from the first lockdown and throughout the summer. It captures video calls between Kiara as he catches up with Black and brown people with what was happening in their lives, but also globally. It captured moments of our shared humanity, specifically in the way COVID has impacted on our lives and the global uprising of Black Lives Matter.
See the first images here,
and read more about the project here.
Still from untitled GIF, (2020), Sarah Eyre. Digital GIF
Sarah Eyre
Co-commission with Open Eye Gallery
Eyre’s series of GIF collages will explore our new senses of fragmented space (physical, virtual, public and private), with a focus on the impact of Covid on women, who have been disproportionately affected by lockdown.
– View the first GIF here with a blog post from Sarah
– Read more about the project here
Parham Ghalamdar, Birds or Borders, still from digital animation (2020)
Parham Ghalamdar
Birds or Borders
Co-commission with Castlefield Gallery
‘Birds or Borders’ considers the politics of movement, borders & freedom, through an ‘absurdist’ approach to narrative.
– Now online: watch the full video artwork here.
– Read more about the project here.
Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/PA
Marija Bozinovska Jones
Beginningless Mind
Co-commission with AND Festival and Somerset House Studios
A three-fold audio-visual narrative which examines the ‘flowing process of interconnectedness’.
– Watch the online premiere with Somerset House Studios 1st – 30th September
– Read more about the project here
Detail: Jack Tan. Covid bruise marks – Tale As Old As Time (ceramic decal), 2020. Digital image. Courtesy of the Artist
Jack Tan
Tale As Old As Time
Tan’s work addresses the rise in anti-Chinese racism during Covid, situated within a history of Chinese civil rights narratives that are often overlooked in the UK.
– Read more about the project here
– Aug 2020: Read our Q&A with the artist
Mandy Cleveland Chairs 2020
Mandy Cleveland
Back of the Envelope
Co-commission with Hot Bed Press
Mandy’s series of drawings consider the simultaneous sense of ‘personal and global uncertainty’ during the covid-19 pandemic.
– Read our Q&A with Mandy here
– Find out more about the project here