First visit to the newly opened Whitworth Art Gallery, Manchester. Stunning new addition to the building and stunning exhibitions. As a group (Foundation Degree in Creatice Art Practice students from Leek School of Art) we walked round with our jaws dropped...the video of Cai Guo-Qiangs firework art, his gunpowder drawings, Cornelia Parkers mesmerising work including the amazing Cold Dark Matter: An Exploded View (1991) and then the building itself. Would have been great to see Qiangs video on a larger screen to gain a sense of scale but still an amazing visual feast to watch. Lots of 'ooos' and 'ahhhs' and 'wow's...lots of wows!! ...will definitely have to visit the exhibitions again...the students were already planning their next visit whilst in the exhibitions. Wonderful opening exhibitions...look forward to the future exhibitions, though how to 'top' these remains to be seen!!
Cai Guo-Qiang
Cai Guo-Qiang
'Unmanned Nature. A spectacular installation in our new landscape gallery
The artist Cai Guo-Qiang was born in China and now lives in New York. He is best known for his remarkable projects using gunpowder, including the firework displays for the opening and closing ceremonies of the 2008 Beijing Olympics. His installation, Unmanned Nature (2008), which includes a 45 metre-long, four metre-high gunpowder drawing, is the first artwork to be shown in the Whitworth’s new landscape gallery. It is also the first time that the installation – first commissioned by the Hiroshima City Museum of Contemporary Art – has been shown outside Japan.
It is also the first showing of the installation anywhere in the world outside the Japanese city of Hiroshima – the work was originally commissioned by the Hiroshima City Museum of Contemporary Art, and was shown in an exhibition that marked Cai Guo-Qiang’s designation as the recipient of the Seventh Hiroshima Art Prize. The prize is awarded every three years to an artist who has made the greatest contribution to peace in the field of art.
The process of making gunpowder drawings is extraordinary. After laying out large sheets of paper on the floor, Cai Guo-Qiang arranges gunpowder, fuses and cardboard stencils to create forms on the paper’s surface. The spontaneity of the resulting explosion, flames and fumes are controlled through the use of wooden boards, rocks and various other materials, which influence the impact of the explosions that create the final work. The landscape forms of Unmanned Nature reference 14th-century Chinese ink and wash paintings, while the scale of the encircling installation parallels Monet’s Water Lilies.
Cai Guo-Qiang’s work, with its readings of gunpowder not only as a weapon but also as a medium of spiritual creativity and transformation, is very timely as we commemorate the centenary of the First World War. HisUnmanned Nature installation will connect to an exhibition at our sister organisation in the city, Manchester Art Gallery. The Sensory War 1914-2014 will explore how artists have interpreted and communicated the impact of war on the human senses, the body, mind and the wider environment over the last century'. http://www.whitworth.manchester.ac.uk/whatson/exhibitions/currentexhibitions/caiguo-qiang/
Cai Guo-Qiang’s installation runs from 14 February to 21 June 2015. Free entry.
http://www.caiguoqiang.com/
“I wanted to investigate both the destructive and the constructive nature of gunpowder, and to look at how destruction can create something as well.”
Cai’s drawings made by igniting gunpowder explosives laid on paper constitute a new medium of contemporary artistic expression. Like his explosion events the gunpowder drawings convey his central idea of using natural energy forces to create works that connect both the artist and the viewer with a primordial state of chaos, contained in the moment of explosion. They also demonstrate his central interest in the relationship of matter and energy. Matter (gunpowder) explodes into energy and reverts to matter in another state (the charred drawing). In this way these works are charts of time, process, and transformation. http://www.guggenheim.org/new-york/education/school-educator-programs/teacher-resources/arts-curriculum-online?view=item&catid=727&id=91
David Batchelor 'Platos disco'
Cornelia Parker
'The Distance'
You tube: Cornelia Parker 'what artists do all day'
'The Whitworth reopens 14 February 2015 with a major solo exhibition from one of Britain’s most acclaimed contemporary artists, Cornelia Parker – and her work invites you to witness the transformation of ordinary objects into something compelling and extraordinary.
It is an extensive exhibition, one that features a wide range of work made during Parker’s career, from her signature piece Cold Dark Matter: An Exploded View (1991) alongside two important new commissions and many other new works.
Ahead of her new Whitworth exhibition, Cornelia Parker has worked closely with scientists at the University of Manchester, most notably Kostya Novoselov, who, with Andre Geim, was awarded the Nobel Prize for the discovery of graphene - the world’s thinnest and strongest material. Working with gallery staff, Novoselov took microscopic samples of graphite from drawings in the Whitworth’s collection by William Blake, Turner, Constable and Picasso, as well as a pencil-written letter by Sir Ernest Rutherford (who split the atom in Manchester). He then made graphene from these samples, one of which Parker is making into a work of art to mark the opening of the gallery and exhibition. A Blake-graphene sensor, activated by breath of a physicist, will set off a firework display which will return iron meteorite into the Manchester sky. This meteor shower will be a spectacular and unmissable opening to the new Whitworth'.
Ahead of her new Whitworth exhibition, Cornelia Parker has worked closely with scientists at the University of Manchester, most notably Kostya Novoselov, who, with Andre Geim, was awarded the Nobel Prize for the discovery of graphene - the world’s thinnest and strongest material. Working with gallery staff, Novoselov took microscopic samples of graphite from drawings in the Whitworth’s collection by William Blake, Turner, Constable and Picasso, as well as a pencil-written letter by Sir Ernest Rutherford (who split the atom in Manchester). He then made graphene from these samples, one of which Parker is making into a work of art to mark the opening of the gallery and exhibition. A Blake-graphene sensor, activated by breath of a physicist, will set off a firework display which will return iron meteorite into the Manchester sky. This meteor shower will be a spectacular and unmissable opening to the new Whitworth'.
Composition with Horns (Double Flat)
'Selfie 1'!!
'War, Peace' - Cornelia Parker
'The War Room'
'This now-iconic piece is owned by Tate and features in Parker’s Whitworth show where it is accompanied by War Room, a major new commission which lines an entire gallery using the red material used to make commemorative poppies.
“I decided to use the rolls of poppy paper with the poppies cut out because I wanted to show absence,” says Parker. “There’s all this jingo-ism and the poppies around the Tower [of London], but this is about absence: where have all the flowers gone? All the poppies have been picked, but it’s been done by a machine. In one room there’s the exploded shed and on the opposite side you have War Room which is almost like the consequence of that. You’ve got this explosion and then you’ve got these thousands of holes'.” http://www.telegraph.co.uk/luxury/art/61944/cornelia-parker%E2%80%99s-big-bang-theory.html
'Black Path'
'Over the course of a three-decade career Parker has worked with astronomy, chemistry, geology, forensics, homeopathy, psychoanalysis, archeology and literary history – to name but a few – to transform the most familiar objects into unfamiliar forms and often by the most forceful of means. She has stretched bullets into lengths of wire, made drawings using explosives, flattened brass instruments with a steam roller and – most famously – in 1991 enlisted the British Army’s School of Ammunition to blow up a garden shed, after which she suspended the fragments in a constellation-cum-swarm around a single light bulb under the title Cold Dark Matter'.
Cold Dark Matter: An exploded view 1991
http://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/parker-cold-dark-matter-an-exploded-view-t06949
Laura & Leslie!!
'Selfie 2'!
Exhibition: Mary Kelly: Projects, 1973-2010, Whitworth Art Gallery, Manchester, until June 12 2011
Glowing in the midst of the first space is a greenhouse-like structure. Fluorescent tubes light the house from within to create a sense of warm welcome. Quoted observations are etched inside and outside, representing perspectives from two generations of the women's movement, and this is clearly an open dialogue
Multi-Story House illuminates, and allows visitors to step inside, the intergenerational dialogue about the historic ‘moment’ of activism.
Mary Kelly is known for her project-based work, addressing questions of sexuality, identity and historical memory in the form of large-scale narrative installations.
....addressing the relationship of women today with their feminist ‘mothers’ of the 70s. The illuminated Multi-story House (2007) invites us in to read extracts from conversations with women of different generations about feminism, cut into its panels. Such works are at once optimistic and nostalgic for a missed moment of clarity, collective action and shared goals http://www.artvehicle.com/events/304
Sarah Lucas
Thomas Schutte
'A remarkable print installation by a leading German artist
The Whitworth boasts an outstanding print collection that ranges from Italian and Northern Renaissance prints through to contemporary works by leading British and international artists. Low Tide Wandering, a series of etchings by the leading German artist Thomas Schütte, promises to be one of the most remarkable print installations of recent years. After drawing in sketchbooks as a form of visual diary for several years, in 2001 Schütte changed his practice and began to use etching. For Low Tide Wandering, Schütte produced 139 images that range from views of the sea, through quirky portraits of friends and acquaintances, to flower studies – all everyday subjects. World events of 2001, including the dramatic attack on the Twin Towers in New York, also intrude into these personal preoccupations.
The installation of Low Tide Wandering – with the separate etchings suspended just above head height from taut wires encompassing the whole gallery, asks the viewer to move around the space in an unfamiliar way – as they follow the meandering route of Schütte's state of mind over the course of a year'.
http://www.whitworth.manchester.ac.uk/whatson/exhibitions/upcomingexhibitions/thomasschutte/
Foundation Degree in Creative Art & Design Practice students - (Leek School of Art) Buxton & Leek College
The latest remodelling and extension, by Glasgow-trained London-based architects MUMA, makes its £15m budget go a long way, finally opening the building up to its parkland setting. At the front, they have softened the forbidding entrance with a sculpture forecourt and an inviting sequence of steps, ramps and benches; but the real meat of the project is saved for the back, where MUMA have extended the symmetrical composition with a pair of wings that project out into Whitworth Park, framing a new sculpture garden. “It’s about having open arms and saying: ‘This place belongs to you.’” says Balshaw. “Before, we turned our back with a blank brick wall – now you can see what’s going on inside.”
Thrusting out into the trees as a hovering glass bar, one of the new wings contains a cafe where you can eat Manchester’s finest brownies while suspended among the leaves. A children’s learning studio lies beneath, where activity can spill out into a courtyard garden, to be landscaped by Olympic Park flower expert Sarah Price, in the style of “Zen garden meets English meadow”. http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/feb/11/whitworth-art-gallery-refurbishment
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