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Exhibitions and Events 2006

July & August


DOODAH

Carl von Weiler


100th exhibition at the Storey Gallery, Lancaster.

15 July - 26 August 2006


Press play on the Quicktime player below to hear an edit of DOODAH



Related events are listed below


Storey Gallery is celebrating its 100th exhibition with a site-specific installation by Dutch born artist Carl von Weiler.


Carl von Weiler studied Fine Art at West Surrey College of Art and Design and has exhibited widely both nationally and internationally. Exhibitions include solo shows at Matts Gallery, The Museum of Installation, London, and Queens Hall in Hexham. Group shows include 'Dark Field' at Whitechapel Art Gallery in 1998, 'Vanishing City' in Mexico in 2001, and 'Shoe Box' at Collective Gallery in Edinburgh, 2006. He was resident artist at Kielder Forest, Northumberland in 2005.


Von Weiler has created an audio sculpture of the Storey Gallery's main exhibition space, using the sounds produced by a variety of objects and actions to map the interior acoustically. The visitor enters an apparently empty gallery, and gradually becomes enveloped by an aural 'roomscape'. Stripped down to its basic fixtures and fittings, and with no visual references, the Gallery and its architecture will be experienced in an entirely new way.


Often exhibited under the genre of experimental music, the use of audio as an independent medium is a rare venture for the visual art world. DOODAH provides the audience with an opportunity to experience a genre of contemporary art that is growing in popularity, an area that is bridging the gap between different art forms.


Weiler is making his regional debut at the Storey Gallery. Gallery Director, John Angus, said "Carl's work is unusual and powerful.......an up and coming talent.....and we are delighted to celebrate our 100th exhibition with work of this calibre"


DOODAH can be seen at the Storey Gallery from 15 July to 26 August 2006. The Gallery is open 11am - 5pm Monday to Friday, 10am - 4pm Saturday. Admission Free.




Family Workshop Day
Saturday 12 August

11am-3pm at the Storey Gallery
This summer Storey Gallery is providing a day of fun exploring sound art. On the 12th of August we are offering two all day practical workshops, 'Drawing to sound' and 'Improvisation and Recording'.

Drawing to Sound Workshop

11am - 3pm. Suitable for 5-8yrs : participants will work with two professional artists and be introduced to the processes Carl von Weiler has used to produce DAH, the drawing part of the exhibition DOODAH. You will learn about performative action and mark making, and will be given the opportunity to produce your own dynamic artwork.

Tickets are �6 per child. All children must be accompanied by an adult. Booking is essential as places are limited.


Improvisation and Recording Workshop

11am - 3pm. Suitable for 9-16yrs : participants will work with two professional musicians and a sound engineer, and be given an insight into the recording techniques used to create DOO, the sound piece currently being exhibited at Storey Gallery. Participants will be introduced to the playing of non-conventional instruments, and improvisation, working collaboratively during the day to create and record a CD that can be taken home.

Tickets are �8 per child. All children must be accompanied by an adult. Booking is essential as places are limited.


For more information and to book a place for either workshop please contact [email protected] or call 01524 844133.


In Coversation with Carl von Weiler
Thursday 17 August

7-8:30pm at the Storey Gallery
The artist Carl von Weiler will talk about the making of DOODAH, Storey Gallery's current exhibition, and other works. This is an ideal event for anyone who would like to gain an insight into the career of a professional artist.

Tickets �2. Booking essential as places are limited.


For more information and to book a place contact [email protected] or call 01524 844133.



May & June

Discuss . . .
an opportunity for you to rant about contemporary art.


About Discuss . . .

How many times have you been reading a book and someone has given you their opinion on Chapter 5? Although we all have a point of view we are not so bold when it comes to contemporary art. But why not? Perhaps because we are never given the opportunity.

Discuss . . . provides an opportunity for artists and other interested parties to get together and talk about issues surrounding contemporary art. We began the programme with a series of three discussions in May and June. Each title related in some way to the position of contemporary art, and artists, in society today.

We plan to run a second series of Discuss . . . events later in 2006.


Discuss . . . In association with





RICHARD WILSON
Queen and Gantry

The Storey Gallery has commissioned Richard Wilson to create a major artwork which celebrates
the planned development of the Gallery and the whole Storey Institute building.


Twice a contender for the Turner Prize, Richard Wilson is acclaimed internationally for his
ambitious installations which often interact with the buildings in which they are sited. Best known
for his remarkable reflective oil installation housed in the Saatchi Collection, 20-50, Wilson has
worked throughout the world on large-scale projects that frequently disrupt our understanding
of everyday reality.


Wilson is a playful artist and his play takes place on a grand scale.
He thinks nothing of rotating the front of a whole building
or cutting up an ocean-going ship. In the past he has dug deep into a gallery
floor to find the water table, inverted a gallery wall complete with windows,
crushed an aeroplane, and moved the steel frame of his house in East London
across the world from England to Japan.


For this new site-specific commission, Queen and Gantry,
Wilson plays with the Victorian architecture of the Storey Gallery,
removing a doorway, complete with pediment, architrave, and entablature,
and moving it through the gallery space.


This project is a collaboration between the Storey Gallery,
artist Richard Wilson, and independent curator David Thorp.
Thorp has been Director of the South London Gallery, Director of the Henry Moore Foundation
Contemporary Projects, and was one of the selectors for the Turner Prize in 2004.
He curated the remarkable Segsbury Project by Simon Callery for the Storey Gallery in 2003.


The Storey Institute was built in the 1890s and is grade II listed.
Plans are underway for its conversion into a Centre for Creative Industries.
This development will involve extensive upgrading of the whole building
to make it suitable for 21st century use,
complete refurbishment of the Storey Gallery,
and provision of facilities for two other arts organisations, folly and Litfest.


Exhibition open:
19 January - 1 April 2006
Monday-Friday 11am-5pm
Saturday 10am-4pm
Admission Free


Exhibition website with pictures and video
Queen and Gantry


Queen and Gantry has been generously supported by
the Arts Council of England, the Henry Moore Foundation, and Angela Nikolakopoulou.

The Storey Gallery receives financial support from
Arts Council England North West, Lancaster City Council and Lancashire County Council





Exhibitions 2005


BUILDING CAPACITY
23 April - 25 June

GORDON CHEUNG
DAVID GLEDHILL
LUCY GUNNING
HIRAKI SAWA
ALISON TURNBULL

Artists' approaches to buildings and architectural spaces

Plans are underway for the transformation of the Storey Institute
into a Centre for Creative Industries.
This development will involve complete refurbishment of the Storey Gallery,
and extensive upgrading of the whole building
to make it suitable for 21st century use.

To reflect this impending transformation of the gallery
and the building, the Storey Gallery exhibition programme for 2005
will engage with ideas about architectural spaces in general,
and about the Storey Gallery space itself.

Many contemporary artists are inspired by buildings and architecture.
The exhibition, Building Capacity, has been specially curated by the Storey Gallery
and presents a selection from the wide range
of this type work which is currently being produced in the UK.
The exhibition includes artworks which are directly representational,
pieces which treat buildings as abstract shapes,
and others in which buildings are sites of the imagination.
Some works reveal domestic interiors and others show public spaces.
The artworks deal with interior and exterior, the real and the imaginary,
the representational and the abstract.

Building Capacity shows the responses of six artists
to the buildings we inhabit, pass through, and imagine.
Gordon Cheung produces paintings which present
alternative realities of buildings and landscapes.
David Gledhill_s paintings represent suburban and public buildings.
Lucy Gunning_s video, Climbing round my room,
explores a domestic space without touching the floor.
Hiraki Sawa_s video, Dwelling, is set in a suburban flat
in which aeroplanes land on the table.
Alison Turnbull_s paintings are based on
architectural plans of hospitals.

The exhibition also includes Virtual Storey,
a virtual walk-through of plans for development of the Storey Institute,
including specially commissioned artworks.

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Exhibitions 2004

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DOGSPACE
An exhibition of amazing inflatable dogs
specially created for the Storey Gallery
by
Space Cadets
5 April - 29 May 2004

The Storey Gallery has commissioned Space Cadets to create
a crowd of inflatable white dogs to fill the gallery space.
Each dog has its own small fan connected to a timer
and so slowly inflates and deflates.

Spacecadets is a small arts organisation based in Manchester,
run by artists Lisa Gort and Jamima Latimer.
They specialise in creating inflatable sculptures
for art galleries, festivals, carnivals and open-air events.
Spacecadets work with basic inflatable forms and shapes
to create work that is simple, beautiful and fun.
All of their work, from giant 60ft cones to small dogs,
is designed to be animated in some way.
Movement creates the illusion that the shapes are actually alive
and gives each one its own unique personality.
Dogspace was created specifically for the Storey Gallery.

Jamima Latimer and Lisa Gort
are both graduates of Manchester Metropolitan University.
Over the past few years Spacecadets have undertaken
a wide variety of commissions, performances and workshops.
These have included :
Liverpool Biennial - Airbath
Sydney and Melbourne, Australia - installation for Make It exhibition - Manchester Trade Missionary
The Lowry Gallery - interactive installation
Manchester Museum of Science & Industry - interactive sculpture
Harris Museum & Art Gallery - Artist in Residence
Chorley Borough Council - Year of the Artist Residency

The work of Space Cadets can also be seen at www.spacecadets.com

The commission of DOGSPACE has been enabled by financial support from
Arts Council England: North West.

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TWO PAINTINGS
BY STELLA VINE
1 - 29 May 2004

Snow White in the Woods 2003

The work of Stella Vine has received an enormous amount of media coverage
over the past couple of months. Articles appeared in most of the British national papers,
and also in the press worldwide, from Los Angeles to China.
This interest was generated by Charles Saatchi, who had bought
two of her paintings in February and included them in the exhibition,
_New Blood, New Artists, New Acquisitions_,
at his gallery in what used to be London_s County Hall.
As a result, Vine has been catapulted from total obscurity
to being the art world's latest sensation.

The painting which attracted most attention, and has been widely reproduced,
is a crude portrait of Princess Diana,
bearing the graffitied words, _Hi Paul can you come over, I'm really frightened _.
It was inspired by a letter to the former royal butler Paul Burrell,
and is reputed to have been painted in 15 minutes.

Stella Vine is a young painter based in London,
who had sold few paintings before Saatchi_s purchase.
She had attended part-time painting classes at Hampstead School of Art
and is described as having been a stripper.
She was married to Charles Thomson, one of the leaders of the Stuckists,
a group of artists led by Tracey Emin_s ex-partner, Billy Childish.
Her style and technique of painting has apparently
been greatly influenced by Thomson and Childish.
She describes her painting as deliberately bad,
"I can paint in a much more realistic, photographic style,
but I find it more interesting to make it less perfect," she said.
"I like what I call 'bad painting'" (quoted in the Daily Telegraph).

The name of the Stuckists apparently derives from Emin_s comment,
made during a row with Childish, that his painting was _stuck, stuck, stuck._
The Stuckists believe that only strongly emotional paintings can be real art.
They despise what they consider to be both Saatchi's and Tate Gallery director
Nicholas Serota's "stranglehold" on the contemporary art market,
and think that most of the art promoted by these two is
"lost in a cul-de-sac of idiocy._

The Storey Gallery has been loaned two of Stella Vine_s paintings
by a local collector who prefers to remain anonymous.
The paintings are: Snow White in the Forest and The Boys (William and Harry).
The collector bought them at about the same time as Saatchi,
who apparently is also interested in buying the Snow White painting.


The Boys (William and Harry)

This is the third time in the past nine months that
the Storey Gallery has paralleled Saatchi_s interests.
Last summer he was considering buying a piece in the Storey_s exhibition
by Manchester painter David Hancock.
In September the Storey held an exhibition by Simon Callery,
a London-based artist who had the distinction of having
a whole exhibition of his work bought by Saatchi before it opened,
and whose painting was included in the infamous Sensation show.

These two paintings by Stella Vine will be shown alongside
the very successful exhibition by Spacecadets
which continues until May 29.
Dogspace is a crowd of white inflatable dogs suspended in the gallery
which regularly inflate and deflate
_ a cycle of birth, death and rebirth.

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SOPHIE RYDER
19 June to 28 August

Sophie Ryder is an artist of international repute who lives and works in Gloucestershire.
She has exhibited widely in the UK, Canada (Vancouver, Montreal),
the USA (Chicago, New York), Eire, Belgium and the Netherlands.
Ryder makes wire and bronze sculptures, installations,
wire drawings, collages and prints.
From tiny jewel-like creatures to the monumental sculpture
for which she is best known, Sophie Ryder creates a world
in which a minotaur may dance with a flower,
and rabbits inhabit a temple. Typically, Ryder_s sculptures are
of human torsos with animal heads and, sometimes, animal limbs.
The minotaur, half-man, half-bull, and her own creation, the lady-hare,
are favourite subjects.

Ryder describes her work as _mythological, dreamlike_.
_I sculpt characters and beings - the dogs, the hares, the minotaurs -
are all characters beyond animal form._
She has always enjoyed portraying the human body, she says,
but once you give the work a human head, it takes on a specific personality.
_I am not interested in representing animals as such - it is more about using them
to represent human emotions._ Putting an animal head on a human body, she thinks,
allows you to explore emotions without reducing themes to the individual.
_The onlooker sees what the piece is about,
rather than just what the person being portrayed is like._

The exhibition in the Storey Gallery includes two sculptural groups,
Temple to the 200 Rabbits and Lady Hares in a Forest,
plus maquettes, drawings and prints.

This exhibition extends into Lancaster city centre
with a bronze sculpture placed next to the fountain in Market Square.
The piece, entitled Conversation, represents a life-size horse with two animal riders.

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TRICIA GILLMAN : Paintings
and
RUTH MOILLIET : Sculpture

27 September - 20 November 2004


Both these artists have been inspired by growth and botanical forms.


     

Tricia Gillman_s painting is primarily abstract, but it is clear that growth and organic forms are very important sources.
Her paintings create _...an exuberant exoticism, a world ... of extraordinary encounters
between mysterious half disclosed forms and lush vegetative eruptions,
... of allusive imagery in free-fall, a world where vibrant colour
suggested an intensity of light, ... where peripheral flashes
of tiger and zebra-like markings seemed not out of context._
(from catalogue introduction by Keith Patrick - Jill George Gallery 1999)

Tricia Gillman has exhibited both nationally and internationally,
including the Jill George Gallery, London; Arnolfini, Bristol; Gardner Centre, Brighton;
John Moores, Liverpool; and British Council shows in Vienna, South Africa and the Far East.
Her works are in various public and private collections.
She has taught for many years at Central and St Martins Schools
and the Royal College of Art.

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Ruth Moilliet makes both metal sculptures based on botanical forms,
including seed heads eg dandelion and allium,
and sculptural formations of flower parts pressed between multiple sheets of glass.
Her work explores the strength of nature and its sustainability.
She has established a reputation for sculpting in glass and metal,
and using these materials to reflect the delicacy of plants
and their ability to survive.

Ruth Moilliet graduated from Manchester in 2000
and has already had many exhibitions and commissions,
including the Crafts Council, the Botanic Garden of Wales, Westonbirt Festival of Gardens,
and the Foment de les Arts Decoratives in Barcelona.
She received Best Decorative Accessory Award at the Design and Decoration Awards 2004.

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Past Exhibitions

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