States of the Nation: Art and Politics in Britain in the 1980s
From 16 January On-going ( Gallery 17)
This collections display showcases the political concerns of many artists in Britain during the 1980s – whether reacting to Thatcher’s government, an economy in recession, the Falklands war or growing social dislocation. It brings together major paintings and sculpture from our collection augmented by key loans, including works by Tony Cragg, Bill Woodrow, Stephen Willats, Ken Currie and Steven Campbell.
Special Collections Exhibition - ‘A Fine Line: Drawings from the Collection’
6 March - 25 June 2008 ( Galleries 3 and 4)
The result of a project ‘Hidden Histories of the Collection’ supported by the Designated Challenge Fund, this display explores the processes of drawing, asking questions about what motivates artists to draw through a focus on two areas of inter-connecting interest – ‘exploration’ and ‘preparation’. It looks at drawings, often hidden from view, from the late 19th to the 20th century that form part Leeds Museums & Galleries’ nationally designated Fine Art Collection.
Passing Through
24th April – 13th July ( Gallery 1)
Moving image works by Georgina Starr, Annelies Štrba and Rosalind Nashashibi and an installation by Janis Rafailidou.
An English Artist Abroad - Highlights from Leeds Watercolour collection
From 17 May
The display draws from Leeds permanent collection and include works by Turner, Cozens and Cox. The Classical world of Ancient Rome was a great pull on the imagination of English artist throughout the 18th and 19th centuries. It was through travel to continental Europe that they could experience it directly. The Roman ‘campagna’ (countryside) was considered an essential part of the Grand Tour, which every young English gentleman needed to experience if he wanted to be a ‘bona fide’ artist. As artists went to Italy to study and work, the landscape too, especially if it had classical association, became a subject for artworks produced on tour.
Changing Places
From 21 June ( Hallway, Gallery 5 & 15)
For the Leeds part of their project ‘Changing Places’ the artists Phil Sayers (UK) and Rikke Lundgreen (Norway) have made artworks which reinterpret selected paintings and sculptures in the collection of Leeds Art Gallery.
19th century image which depict women as passive, submissive objects of female desire are of particular interest to them. Other themes, including gender, identity, myth, aging and the architecture and ‘power’ of the galleries are also a focus of their work.
Sayers works primarily with photographic and print-based images, whilst Lundgreen uses video and digital technology. Their artworks are displayed in three different galleries, as ‘interventions’, in amongst the collection display that inspired them.
The exhibition will be accompanied by gallery talks and evening lectures.
Artists Show 2008, An exhibition open to artists resident in Yorkshire
12 July – 10 August ( Gallery 3 and 4)
The Gallery’s ‘Open’ exhibition. Anyone living and working in the region can submit a painting, watercolour, drawing, photograph, sculpture, mixed-media or new media work, for consideration by a panel of three selectors. The resulting exhibition sees up-and-coming as well as established professional artists exhibit alongside amateur talent. ‘Submission days’ are the 28 June, 29 June, 30 June and 1 July 2008 (1.00 to 4.00pm; Monday and Tuesday 1.00 to 7.00pm).
More information about the Artist's Show and the Selectors is available to download on the right hand side of this page.
No Such Thing as Society
19 July – 31 August 2008 ( White Room)
A document of British photography from the late 1960s until the late 1980s ‘No such thing as society’ draws from the collections of the Arts Council and the British Council to give a radically new picture of these two turbulent decades. Serving as witness to the unrest and transition in British society from the late 1960s until the 1980s, this exhibition takes its name from the famous Margaret Thatcher statement: “…society? There is no such thing. There are individual men and women and there are families.” The rise of Thatcherism is firmly associated with the miners’ strikes and conflict in Northern Ireland, as well as radical shifts in the structure of society.
The show is curated by David Alan Mellor, University of Sussex, and includes photographs by Keith Arnatt, Peter Mitchell, Martin Parr, Peter Fraser, Gilbert & George, Paul Graham, Brian Griffin, Bob Long, Tony Ray-Jones, Jurgen Schadeberg, Graham Smith, Chris Steele-Perkins, Homer Sykes, Paul Trevor.
The exhibition is a Hayward Touring Show.
Whistlejacket & Scrub: Large as Life - The great horse paintings of Stubbs
12th September – 9th November ( White Gallery)
This exhibition will reunite two great Yorkshire pictures – Whistlejacket and Scrub for the first time in 250 years. Both are remarkable works of 18th century painting. Stripped back to minimal background they both focus on the central figure of the horse.
Additionally, the show will include a number of significant loans from Trusts and Private Collections to create a background to this significant period in Stubbs career and show him to be a pioneering painter who brought together scientific endeavour with consummate artistry.
Ways of looking
23 August – 2 November ( Lyons Gallery)
The exhibition will show arrange of photographs from Leeds permanent Collection. It will be part of the Photography Festival in Yorkshire ‘Ways of Looking’.
Northern Art Prize
21 November 2008-1 February 2009
After introducing the Northern Art Prize, a prize for contemporary visual artists in the North of England, last year, Leeds Art Gallery will host the prize in its second year running. With its home in Leeds the prize celebrates and rewards professional artists of any age, working in any medium, living in the North East, North West and Yorkshire regions.
Rank: Picturing Society 1600-2009
11 February – 5 April 2009
The working principle is that, ideally, the works are single images which create a legible picture of the components of society (either the UK or the globe) or map it for us to understand how people and groups differ.
Mark Wallinger curates the Russian Linesman
9 May-28 June 2009
‘The Russian Linesman’, Tofik Bakhramov, is famous (or infamous) for a controversial ruling in the 1966 World Cup Final between the home team
England and West Germany, which had just eliminated the Soviet Unionteam in the semi-finals. Mark Wallinger’s exhibition for Hayward Touringwill be concerned with the liminal, a concept with physical, political,metaphysical meanings. It signifies the dissolution of boundaries andfixed identities, and is associated with rituals and rites of passage, transitional states characterized by ambiguity, openness andindeterminacy
Sculpture Displays:
The Wonder and the Horror of the Human Head
May 2007 – Dec 2008
This display focuses on a compelling group of sculptures and prints from the 1950s and early 1960s which use the form of the human head as a mirror for contemporary concerns.. During this period, Britain was haunted by the memory of World War II. At the same time, she was threatened by the spectre of the Cold War and an escalating nuclear arms race. The powerful imagery of these conflicts permeates this display which includes works by William Turnbull, Eduardo Paolozzi, Henry Moore, Elizabeth Frink, Anthony Caro, Bernard Meadows, F.E. McWilliam, Geoffrey Clarke and Hubert Dalwood.
Ordinary People
May 2007- Dec 2008
This display shows sculptures of familiar everyday figures – parents, children, lovers, friends and crowds – none of them famous but celebrated here in a reflection of the increased social inclusivity of the 1950s. The pieces in Ordinary People embody the desire for social harmony and cohesion prevalent in post-World War II Britain. The display focuses on recent acquisitions of pink plaster sculptures by Kenneth Armitage, shown together here for the first time, as well as the concrete sculptures of Peter Peri, with the addition of selected works by other artists.
From the Studio to the Study: Sculpture and its Writers, c.1910 - 1950
May 2007 – Dec 2008
This display explores the symbiotic relationship between artists and writers in the early modern period, a theme which is particularly resonant in the year that the City Art Gallery and Library are joined. It introduces key art critics - Ezra Pound, H.S. Ede, T.E. Hulme, Adrian Stokes, Herbert Read and R.H. Wilenski - who were able to interpret through their own creative writing, ‘difficult’ or innovative sculpture to a wider audience and suggests the way in which beautiful description and insightful interpretation can enhance and shape our view of art.
Indoors and Out: The Sculpture and Design of Bernard Schottlander
23 September 2007 to 6 January 2008 (The Mezzanine)
Bernard Schottlander (1924-1999) started his career attending evening classes in sculpture at Leeds School of Art. He became known as a designer before he was known as a sculptor and showcased by the Council of Industrial Design in the post-war years with his elegantly profiled furniture and fittings. He went on to transpose his designs for the interior space onto the plazas created by the high-rise office blocks of the time. This exhibition looks at the overlaps between his sculpture and his design (drawn respectively from the Institute’s Archive and the University of Brighton Design Archives) and at their common sources.