Gary Hume: Flashback (From the Arts Council Collection)
3rd February to 15th April 2012
‘The best thing that’s happened in 20 years is what I’ve learnt - that I absolutely love moving paint about. That’s all I care about. All I want to do.’ - Gary Hume, Flashback catalogue 2012
Gary Hume is one of Britain’s most important contemporary artists. He first gained international recognition in the early 1990s for his series of bold, abstract ‘door paintings’ which were based on the actual doors of St Bartholomew’s hospital in London. He was a key figure in the new YBA generation of British artists, and was included in the renowned Freeze exhibition in London’s docklands in 1988.
His reputation grew throughout the following decade, as he was selected to represent Britain at the Bienal de São Paulo (1996) and the Venice Biennale (1999), as well as being shortlisted for the Turner Prize (1996). Since then, he has continually reinvented himself, producing new and innovative series of paintings and sculptures. His subjects have included flowers, birds, snowmen and nudes, all painted in household gloss paint.
As Dave Hickey states in the exhibition catalogue, Hume paints ‘the suburban sublime’. However, the paintings’ beautiful surfaces and colours often belie a lingering melancholy, and his recent American Tan series, based on cheerleaders, reveals an acute awareness of the pervasive power of America culture.
Flashback is a major series of monographic touring exhibitions from the Arts Council Collection. Taking as its starting point the Collection’s founding principle of supporting emerging artists through the purchase of their work, the series showcases British artists of world renown whose works were acquired early on by the Collection. The Arts Council Collection was formed in 1946 and is managed by the Hayward Gallery, Southbank Centre in London. It is the largest loan collection of modern and contemporary British art.
For more information about the Arts Council Collection, please visit www.artcouncilcollection.org
NORTHERN ART PRIZE 2011/12 - 25th November 2011 to 19th February 2012
Leo Fitzmaurice is the winner of the fifth annual Northern Art Prize. Judge Simon Wallis presented Fitzmaurice with a cheque for £16,500 at a prize-giving ceremony at Leeds Art Gallery attended by over 500 people from the arts, business, public and voluntary sectors on Thursday 19 January 2012. The remaining three short listed artists; Liadin Cooke, James Hugonin and Richard Rigg each walked away with £1,500.
Initially selecting the short-list and ultimately deciding the winner, this year’s judges are Caroline Douglas, Head of the Arts Council Collection; Tim Marlow, Writer, Broadcaster, Art Historian and Director of Exhibitions at White Cube; Simon Starling, Turner Prize winning Artist; Simon Wallis, Director at The Hepworth Wakefield with Sarah Brown, Curator of Exhibitions at Leeds Art Gallery as Chair.
In choosing Fitzmaurice as the winner, the judges commented: “The strength of this year’s exhibition and the Prize are testament to the generosity and commitment of all the artists. However, Leo’s work for the Northern Art Prize exhibition in particular is ambitious, risky and compelling. Drawing upon historic resources and current mobile phone technology, he provides a fresh perspective on the traditional subject of landscape, whilst at the same time pushing the boundaries of his own practice.”
Fitzmaurice, who lives and works in The Wirral, is known for his witty installations and sculptures. 'The Way Things Appear', a collection of photographs of objects and graphical elements taken in their everyday setting, is presented for the first time as a digital slide show for the Northern Art Prize exhibition. The initial piece of design, for example a sign or iron railing is captured in the photograph and then repeated or mimicked by other objects nearby or, in some other way, made strange by its situation.
Fitzmaurice also presented ‘Horizon, (Leeds)’ as part of his Northern Art Prize selection, originally displayed with pieces chosen from the Grundy Art Gallery collection. For the Northern Art Prize exhibition he selected landscape paintings from the Leeds Art Gallery permanent collection creating a new piece of work by lining up the historic works to create a continuous landscape. This work continues Fitzmaurice’s fascination with relationship between graphic design, landscape and objects and their relation to language.
Each year visitors to the Northern Art Prize exhibition are encouraged to pick their winner through an online poll. Although it has no direct bearing on the judges’ decision, the winner of this year’s public vote is Richard Rigg who collected 44% of the votes. The exhibition of work from all four artists will remain on show at Leeds Art Gallery until 19 February 2012, over 50,000 visitors have already visited the show since doors opened on 25 November 2011.
ARTIST ROOMS: Damien Hirst (15th July to 30th October 2011)
This exhibition came to the art gallery on The Headrow from July to September 2011 as part of the national ARTIST ROOMS programme which saw collections of modern and contemporary art held by Tate and National Galleries of Scotland going on display at venues around the country.
Hirst has strong links with Leeds, as he grew up in the city and also attended Leeds College of Art and Design before shooting to national and international prominence in the mid-1990s with his groundbreaking and controversial use of animals preserved in formaldehyde in many of his works.
The Leeds Art Gallery exhibition was first dedicated display of Hirst’s work ever seen in Leeds, and will trace the artist’s career from his student days to his later works after he had established himself as one of the world’s highest profile artists. The key ideas behind his career - birth, illness, death and religion – will all be identifiable in the display, and it will include one of his seminal works ‘Away from the Flock’ which was first exhibited in 1994 at the Serpentine Gallery in London.
Following the successes of 2009 and 2010, 21 museums and galleries across the UK (including 17 venues outside of London and Edinburgh) in 2011 will be showing ARTIST ROOMS exhibitions and displays from the collection assembled by Anthony d’Offay.
ARTIST ROOMS On Tour is an inspired partnership with the Art Fund - the fundraising charity for works of art, making available the ARTIST ROOMS collection of international contemporary art to galleries throughout the UK. ARTIST ROOMS is jointly owned by Tate and National Galleries of Scotland and was established through The d’Offay Donation in 2008, with the assistance of the National Heritage Memorial Fund, the Art Fund and the Scottish and British Governments. The exhibition has kindly been sponsored by Leeds-based solicitors, Walker Morris.
Henry Moore - 4th March to 12th June 2011
Radical, experimental and avant garde, Henry Moore (1898-1986) was one of Britain’s greatest artists. This major exhibition will re-assert his position at the forefront of progressive twentieth-century sculpture, bringing together the most comprehensive selection of his works for a generation. Henry Moore in Leeds will present over 100 significant works including stone sculptures, wood carvings, bronzes and drawings.
Henry Moore will reveal the range and quality of Moore’s art in new ways – sometimes uncovering a dark and erotically charged dimension that challenges the familiar image of the artist and his work. Henry Moore first emerged as an artist in the wake of the First World War, in which he served on the Western Front. This exhibition will emphasise the impact on Moore’s work of its historical and intellectual contexts: the trauma of war, the advent of psychoanalysis and new ideas of sexuality, and the influence of primitive art and surrealism.
The recurring motif of the mother and child will be explored throughout the exhibition. Moore called it his ‘fundamental obsession’, and presented a complex vision of the maternal relationship, ranging from the nurturing bond of Mother and Child 1930-31 (Private Collection), to Suckling Child 1930 (Pallant House).
Henry Moore is a collaboration between Tate Britain and Leeds Art Gallery. Leeds Art Gallery is the final venue of the exhibition which has been curated by Chris Stephens.
This exhibition shows winning artwork entries from young people in Leeds and Dortmund originally brought together as part of the Ruhr Capital of Culture 2010 project and first displayed at the U gallery in Leeds’ German partner city Dortmund.
The U-Gallery is all about image, attractiveness, independence, sub-cultures, fashion trends, computer games, dating, parties, extreme sports, dance, TV, not forgetting the commercial negatives of youth culture, peer pressure, exclusion and a lack of money.
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Sean Scully, Without, 1988, Private Collection. Copyright: the artist.
Sean Scully is one of the leading abstract painters working today. His work is represented in most major international museums and has been the subject of an extraordinary number of retrospectives around the world, in Europe, the Americas and Australia. In 1975 he settled in New York and now divides his time between New York, Barcelona and Munich.
In the early 1980s, Scully re-introduced colour, space and texture through the application of multiple layers of paint and thereby added an expressive element to his work. He introduced relief elements in his paintings, broadening the expressive range of his work with a more emphatic, physical quality: 'I liked the idea of looking at a painting that you could not look at just from the front but had to move around.' At the same time stripes widen and become more pulsating, colour intensifies and black is often used to evoke feelings from solemn to sinister.
By the mid 1980s Scully had gained international recognition and many major museums began to acquire his paintings. This exhibition focuses on Scully's work from the 1980s, together with works on paper from the artist's own collection. This period has not been reflected in recent gallery exhibitions but holds a very special place in the development of his art.
Organised by Leeds Art Gallery, accompanied by a special exhibition publication.
Anoli Perera, Elastic Dress, 2010. Copyright: the artist.
This pioneering exhibition provides a British context for creative engagement with arenas of conflict experienced by South Asian women artists from Bangladesh, India, Pakistan and Sri Lanka. The exhibition explores the notion of conflict in different but interconnecting sites: Home, Bodies, Cities, Borders/ Nation and Artist/ Artisan/ Activist.
Supported by the Arts and Humanities Research Council, Arts Council England, Leeds University and Shisha, the international agency for contemporary South Asian crafts and visual arts.