Due to popular demand, the exhibitions will be open on Bank Holiday Monday, 29th May, 10am – 5pm. Entrance is free.
(Click on the images to enlarge them.)
Degree Show & Postgraduate Exhibition – Some Impressions from the Opening on the 20th May 2023
Exhibitions
‘Crying, Bleeding, Kicking, Screaming: Prints by Marcelle Hanselaar from the School of Art Collection’, School of Art -Tessa Siday Gallery, 22th May – 29th September 2023
‘He had nothing more to say.’ That is the title of one of the close-ups of human suffering on display in this exhibition. Speaking loudly, the prints of the London-based Dutch artist Marcelle Hanselaar address what is often left unsaid. They give utterance to the horrors experienced by the voiceless and draw attention to acts of silencing. They invite a dialogue about the human condition without claiming the last word.
Crying bleeding kicking screaming conflates two of Hanselaar’s print portfolios: We’re all bleeding (2012)and The Crying Game (2015/17). Contrasting selections from both series, the narrative foregrounds recurring themes in Hanselaar’s work:
The secret and the public.
The violence of human nature and the violation of human rights.
The frailty of civilisation and the loss – or myth – of innocence.
The complete series in the School of Art collection are presented in chronological order as a digital slide show.
Hanselaar combines the bitten lines of etching with what she calls the ‘poetry of aquatint’ to imagine lived experiences. In We’re all bleeding, her first hand-coloured prints, a voyeuristic impulse is tempered by a longing for understanding.
Her social commentaries and fantasies alike are rooted in art history. The Crying Game is inspired by Goya’s print cycle Disasters of War (1810-20). In subject matter and execution, it is indebted to The War, a series of etchings the German artist Otto Dix created a century ago in response to the First World War.
Hanselaar was born into the aftermath of the global conflict that followed. Raised in the protestant culture of the Netherlands, she ‘was told to not show any strong feelings.’ In her prints, those emotions come to the fore.
Throughout, the victimisation implied in ‘Crying’ and ‘Bleeding’ is countered by a resilience of the spirit – the ‘Kicking’ and ‘Screaming’ in the face of terror and trauma.
Curatorial team: Zoe Bennett, Charly Brown, Heather Bubb, Kinga Fus, Rhiain Knox, Eva Liss, Morganne Lloyd, Emily Miles, Yara Saleh, Hubert Sikorski, Isobelle Smith, Louise Tilby; Harry Heuser (concept and text), Neil Holland (design and staging)
The prints on display were purchased with support from the Arts Council England/V&A Purchase Grant Fund and the Art Fund
The works in this exhibition emotionally are challenging. They include scenes of sex and violence. Viewer discretion is advised.
24. German Talk: ‘Crying, Bleeding, Kicking, Screaming – Prints by Marcelle Hanselaar’, 21. June 2023, School of Art
Hello, dear German Talkers,
the next ‘German Talk’ will be about the work of contemporary artist Marcelle Hanselaar.
Date: 21st June 2023
Time: 17:30
Place: School of Art, Tessa Sidey Gallery
Please be aware that this exhibition includes sensitive topics such as war, torture and sexual violence.
All the best wishes and bis bald,
Karen
Degree Show & Postgraduate Exhibition, School of Art, 22 May – 01 June 2023
The degree show and postgraduate exhibition include a variety of photography, painting, illustration, printmaking and installation.
Opening times:
Monday – Friday, 10am – 5pm (closed Bank Holidays)
A message from undergraduate student Dee Matthews regarding her project -all are welcome to participate:
“As part of my graduation exhibition, STUFF (2023, film), I’m going to have an art supplies/material exchange table for the art students. If you have any paints, brushes, pencils, paper or anything arty you don’t want anymore, even down to painted supports or canvas that you don’t want to keep, can you please donate it to the table so that students at the School of Art can use them and we can recycle ♻️ and save the Earth from more STUFF!”
TAKEOVER-Exhibition, Arts Centre Aberystwyth, Tuesday 9th May 2023
Hello everyone!
The Creative Arts and Interdisciplinary Practice students are excited to welcome you to the Arts Centre in Aberystwyth on Tuesday May 9th from 11.00 – 14.00 for the 5th student TAKEOVER exhibition. The exhibition will include film, performance, sculpture, drawing, installation, text, participatory projects, workshops and audio work
You will be greeted at the welcome desk (outside the Great Hall) with a publication including maps and introductions to the projects, we will also offer you refreshments
Please arrive at the welcome desk for one of the guided tours:
- Tour 1: 11.00 – 12.20
- Tour 2: 12.30 – 2.00
You can leave the tour at any time if you cannot stay with it for that long
The projects can be seen in your own time and in your own order, students stationed at the welcome desk will help you find the projects
Thank you in advance if you can come and support us, we look forward to seeing you and sharing the students work with you
Very best
Miranda and the students
Follow us on: https://www.instagram.com/thetakeoversoa/
Please visit our Public Exhibitions Page on the Online Studio
23. ‘German Talk’ Follow-up
Hello dear German Talkers,
thank you everyone who made it to the talk yesterday. I hope you enjoyed Ceri Richards’s work and Debussy’s music.
For those who couldn’t make it, please find below the (almost) verbatim text. I’m afraid I can’t include any images due to copyright issues. However, you can find many examples on the Art UK website, which I included at the end of the text. You will also find links to the pieces by Debussy that we listened to last night.
I’m not quite sure yet when the next talk will be, but I’m aiming for sometime in June, probably towards the end of the month. I’ll let you know as soon as possible, of course.
All the best wishes and frohe Ostern,
Karen
Creative Arts Winter Show January 2023 – Some Impressions
In January 2023, our Creative Arts students organised their very own pop-up show and took over the School of Art building for an evening. The following images give a great impression of all the hard work they put into it and the great time everybody had on the night.
(Click on the images to enlarge them. All images ©Michael Varney)
23. ‘German Talk’: Ceri Richards and the music in his works – School of Art, 29th March 2023
Hello, dear German Talkers,
I have just started putting the next German Talk together:
Date: Wednesday, 29th March 2023
Time: 17:30
Where: School of Art, room 206 (next to the Tessa Sidey Gallery)
Topic: Ceri Richards und die Musik in seinen Werken
I will give a brief PowerPoint presentation, and some of Richards’s prints from our collection will be on display in room 206 as well. You will also have the opportunity to see our current exhibitions ‘Asphalt Expressionism’ and ‘At Cross Purposes’.
I’m looking forward to seeing you!
All the best wishes und bis bald,
Karen
‘Asphalt Expressionism: Mobile Phone Photography of NYC Pavements’, School of Art Galleries, 14 February – 28 April 2023
The School of Art Galleries are open Monday – Friday, 10am – 5pm. We are closed 7th April until 17th April 2023.
In 1958, the US American painter Allan Kaprow abandoned traditional media. Instead, he called for a ‘new concrete art.’ Jackson Pollock, he argued, ‘left us at the point where we must become preoccupied with and even dazzled by the space and objects of our everyday life.’ Three years later, sculptor and installation artist Claes Oldenburg declared: ‘I am for the art of scratchings in the asphalt,’ of ‘ice cream cones dropped on concrete.’
Where is that ‘art,’ if not on the pavements on which we tread?
The photographs in this exhibition were snapped in New York City between 21 September and 26 October 2022. No specialist equipment was used to produce them. A smartphone camera enabled me readily to capture what caught my attention.
The large prints are arranged diaristically, in the order in which I encountered what they show. They chart my walks and whereabouts in a city I once called home, with gaps denoting a bout of COVID.
I re-encountered the city after a three-year pandemic-imposed absence. My recognition was tempered with estrangement.
Approaching the project from an art historical and curatorial perspective, I became intrigued by the idea of seeing something – anything – as art. I am less concerned with the imperative of making art. I am not declaring those snapshots of stumbled-upon sites art by virtue of their display here.
As conceptualist rebels like Kaprow insisted, art is not matter for appreciation in museums; nor, for that matter, is our experience of it restricted to institutions set aside for its showcasing. That experience may not even happen there. What can happen in our galleries – what I have felt happening there, and what I would like to make happen here as well – is the opening of conversations about the intersections, interrelation and ultimate integration of life and art.
I first set foot on the sidewalks of New York City in April 1985. I was nineteen, a tourist from West Germany. What struck me were the signs and tokens of everyday life on the streets, the close-ups not seen on picture postcards.
Since then, I have been returning to New York City for decades. There is no other place I have spent more time negotiating on foot, going places and wandering aimlessly.
Asphalt Expressionism looks back at that experience. It also looks forward to continued conversations about – and a syncretisation of – forms of creativity as expressed in the arts, articulated in our histories of them, and performed in curatorial practice. It considers alternative ways of looking at visual culture and of looking into our definitions, classifications, and our appreciation of it as art.
When I was a teenager, everyone who knew me assumed I would become an artist. I was always creating something, from pencil drawings to sound collages, from costume jewellery to comic strips.
By the time I graduated from high school, the job market was crowded. There had been a surplus of babies when I was born. The work I found made me miserable. I left.
Moving to New York, I decided to study English. Fine art materials were not in my budget. Figures of speech became my medium. I learned about Romanticism and the Gothic without ever being shown a painting. I explored translation theories to imagine ways of bridging.
Being somebody in the eyes of others often involves specialisation. We set ourselves apart, fragmenting our lives in the process. Asphalt Expressionism is motivated by a desire to decompartmentalise, to erase distinctions I saw fading on the pavements: the abstract and the concrete, the extraordinary and the supposedly commonplace, the personal mark and the public trace.
Harry Heuser, Senior Lecturer in Art History, School of Art, Aberystwyth University
This exhibition is accompanied by a fully illustrated catalogue with text by Harry Heuser. To purchase a catalogue (£10), please visit or contact the School of Art.
Take part!
To become part of the below slide show and the interactive gallery display within the School of Art, share your snapshots of pavements anywhere and email your pictures (jpeg files) to
AsphaltExpressionism@gmail.com
Please state the date and identify the location. Add your name (optional).
(Click on images to enlarge them.)
22. ‘German Talk’: Follow-up
Hello, dear German Talkers,
I hope those of you who could make it yesterday enjoyed Paul Croft’s demonstration in the printmaking area and the exhibition.
Below, you find the verbatim version of the talk for you to download free of charge.
Please be aware, as usual, that all images might be under copyright and cannot be used for any other purpose without the copyright holders permission.
I am planning another ‘German Talk’ before Easter and will let you know the new date and topic as soon as possible, so watch this space.
All the best wishes, und vielleicht bis bald,
Karen
Curatorial & Technical Assistant
Aberystwyth University School of Art Museum & Galleries 