‘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. 

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

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)

‘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.

29 Sept. 2022: E 85th St. between 2nd and 3rd Ave.

9 Oct. 2022: The Bowery between E 2nd and E 3rd St.

26 Oct. 2022: Fifth Ave. between E 87th and E 88th St.

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.)

IN THEIR ELEMENT, Ceramic Gallery, 14th January – 26th March 2023

As a young girl, Beverley Bell Hughes enjoyed making pinch pots, but this was discouraged during her training at Harrow in the 1960s: she was expected to make thrown, functional ware in the tradition of Bernard Leach and his followers. She eventually returned to hand-building pots and developed her own techniques of pinching and coiling clay to make sculptural vessels. These are inspired by the natural forms and tidal markings that she observes during her walks at Deganwy and the Morfa beach, near the Conwy river estuary in North Wales. She is a Fellow of the Crafts Potters Association and won the Gold Medal for Craft and Design at the National Eisteddfod for Wales in 2019.

Carine Van Gestel also favours the pinch pot technique to create semi-spherical bowls which she then wood-fires. Born in Belgium, she now lives and works in Machynlleth, often digging local clay near Borth beach and Clarach Bay for her work. She is interested in the geological markings of time in local rock strata and formations. Recently she has developed slab-built work in response to the marks imprinted on the landscape by our prehistoric ancestors, incorporating cup and ring rock carvings, lines, dots and circles into her work. She studied ceramics at the Royal Forest of Dean College in the late 1990s and was mentored by Jeremy Steward at Wobage Farm, Ross-on-Wye, in glazing and wood firing.

Kim Colebrook left her career in tourism to study ceramics, receiving an MA from Cardiff School of Art and Design in 2018. Her work is based around coal (‘Black Gold’) as a commodity and its significance in the economic and social history of South Wales. She compares this to the value of porcelain (‘White Gold’) in the 1660s when it was exported to Europe from China. She works in porcelain, creating layers of iron oxides in a Japanese method of working called Nerikomi – stacking and cutting coloured pieces of clay to create patterns. This serves as a metaphor for the ways in which history and memories are buried and distorted through time and distance. She won the 2019 Potclays New and Emerging Maker’s Award at the International Ceramics Festival, Aberystwyth.

At Cross Purposes – 14 February-21 April 2023, School of Art, Gallery 1 & 2

 The School of Art Galleries are open Monday – Friday, 10am – 5pm. We are closed 7th April until 17th April 2023.

At Cross Purposes is a creative curatorial project supported by 56 Group Wales that has led to the production of new work and new partnerships, a touring exhibition and accompanying book. The title of the project reflects its mix of conversation, creative practice and curation. The project required that sixteen members of 56 Group Wales each be partnered with an invited artist from elsewhere in the UK and Ireland selected by the project director, Dr Frances Woodley. Each pair of artists were then invited to engage with her in a three-way conversation/correspondence using email. Thirty-two artists and a curator have thus been involved in this project, an ambitious enterprise that has required lively exchanges and considerable commitment during the difficult period that spanned the Covid-19 lockdowns when artists were often confined to their makeshift studios.

The exhibition, At Cross Purposes, accompanies the launch of At Cross Purposes: 3-way conversations between two artists and a curator a book edited by Dr Frances Woodley. The book (£20) is available at the School of Art.

Asphalt Expressionism: Mobile Phone Photography of NYC Pavements 14 Feb – 28 April 2023 Oriel Tessa Sidey Gallery, School of Art

Red, White and Green (Harry Heuser)

In 1958, the US American painter Allan Kaprow abandoned traditional media and 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.’ A few years later, in 1961, sculptor and installation artist Claes Oldenburg declared: ‘I am for the art of scratchings in the asphalt,’ the ‘art of ice cream cones dropped on concrete.’

Asphalt Expressionism showcases large-scale digital prints of New York City’s scratched, streaked and splattered sidewalks – impressions of which were gathered during the curator’s monthlong return visit to the Big Apple in the autumn of 2022 – to consider contemporary mobile phone photography, the most common mode of capturing the mundane and memorable alike, in the contexts of canonical art and its histories. In particular, the exhibition relates the visual culture of those stumbled-upon public spaces to the artworld of the 1950s and 1980s, of which New York City was widely held to be the capital. Autobiographical and interactive, Asphalt Expressionism invites reflections on the relationships between life, art and the museum environment.

Asphalt Expressionism was conceived by Harry Heuser, Senior Lecturer in Art History, Aberystwyth University.

150 years of Ceramics at Aberystwyth: The gift, bequest and funding of the Ceramic Collection at Aberystwyth University 1872-2022, 8 October 2022 – 8 January 2023, Ceramic Gallery, Arts Centre

This exhibition is selection of the gifts, bequests and purchases for the Ceramic Collection to celebrate the 150th anniversary of the foundation of Aberystwyth University.

‘Collaboration in Practice: British Lithography 1800-2022’ – 24th October 2022 to 27th January 2023, School of Art Galleries

This exhibition offers a visual narrative of British lithography from its beginnings at the turn of the 19^th century to the present day. Many of the prints on show are taken from the Aberystwyth University School of Art Collections.

Paul Scott: New American Scenery – Ceramic Gallery, Aberystwyth Arts Centre – 9 July-25 September 2022

Paul Scott is well known for his provocative, politically conscious work. He uses familiar transfer-printed tableware designs like the Willow Pattern to comment on our life and times. This exhibition features ceramics inspired by the so-called ‘American transfer-ware’ that was made in 19^th century Staffordshire and decorated with imagery celebrating the new American republic.

Many of the pieces on display have resulted from periods of travel and research in the USA, when he studied examples of American transfer-ware and visited the locations depicted. Paul’s up-dated views reflect current events as well as historical, social and environmental change. Back-stamps are printed on the reverse of each piece. Part signature, part narrative, they often provide substantial information about the subjects depicted.

These ceramics have involved technical wizardry. The original visual motifs of central image and border pattern are manipulated and seamlessly altered. Undecorated antique pieces are over-printed with contemporary views. Sometimes the Japanese method of Kintsugi has been employed, applying a mixture of resin and gold leaf to joins and cracks, thus honouring the marks of time and use.

Paul Scott is based in Cumbria, North West England. This exhibition marks 20 years since his work was first shown in the Ceramics Gallery at Aberystwyth Arts Centre. His ceramics are now held in many important collections world-wide, including the V&A Museum London, The National Decorative Arts Museum Norway, The Museum of Art and Design New York, The Smithsonian Institute Washington and Los Angeles County Museum of Art. He was awarded a PhD in 2010 by Manchester Metropolitan University, where he was Research Fellow from 2012-2014. From 2011-2017 he was Professor of Ceramics at Oslo National Academy of Art. His book on the creative application of print techniques to clay is considered a definitive text. Ceramics and Print London: Bloomsbury; Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania 2013 [1994]

Jo Dahn June 2022.

Jo Dahn is an independent writer, curator and researcher. She is the author of new directions in ceramics; from spectacle to trace (Bloomsbury 2015)

Research in the USA supported by the Alturas Foundation

Research at Wedgwood, Spode and the Victoria and Albert Museum, London was supported by Arts Council England.

Mae Paul Scott yn adnabyddus am ei waith heriol a gwleidyddol. Mae’n defnyddio llestri bwrdd wedi’u hargraffu â troslun, gyda dyluniadau cyfarwydd fel y patrwm helyg glas, i wneud sylwadau ar ein bywyd a’n hamseroedd ni. Mae’r arddangosfa hon yn cynnwys crochenwaith a ysbrydolwyd gan y ‘llestri troslun Americanaidd’ fel y’u gelwir, a wnaed yn y 19eg ganrif yn Swydd Stafford a’u haddurno â delweddau sy’n dathlu’r weriniaeth Americanaidd newydd.

Mae llawer o’r darnau sy’n cael eu harddangos wedi deillio o gyfnodau o deithio ac ymchwil yn UDA, pan oedd yn astudio enghreifftiau o lestri troslun Americanaidd ac ymweld â’r lleoliadau a ddangoswyd yn y dyluniadau. Mae’r golygfeydd cyfredol a ddarlunnir gan Paul yn adlewyrchu digwyddiadau heiddiw yn ogystal â newidiadau hanesyddol, cymdeithasol ac amgylcheddol. Mae stampiau cefn wedi’u hargraffu ar gefn pob darn. Llofnod yw’r rhain yn rhannol, ond maent heyfd yn naratif, ac yn aml yn darparu gwybodaeth sylweddol am y pynciau a ddarlunnir.

Mae’r darnau hyn wedi’u creu drwy ddewiniaeth dechnegol. Mae’r motiffau gweledol gwreiddiol, sef y ddelwedd ganolog a phatrwm yr ymyl, yn cael eu trin a’u newid yn ddi-dor. Mae darnau hynafol diarddurn wedi cael eu gorargraffu â golygfeydd cyfoes. Weithiau defnyddiwyd y dull Siapaneaidd o’r enw Kintsugi, gan roi cymysgedd o resin a dalen aur ar linellau asio a holltiau, gan ymfalchïo yn yr olion amser ac ôl defnydd sydd ar llestri.

Mae Paul Scott yn byw yn Cumbria, yng ngogledd-orllewin Lloegr. Mae’r arddangosfa hon yn nodi 20 mlynedd ers i’w waith gael ei ddangos yn yr Oriel Gerameg yng Nghanolfan Gelfyddydau Aberystwyth am y tro cyntaf. Mae enghreifftiau o’i grochenwaithbellach ar gadw mewn llawer o gasgliadau pwysig ledled y byd, gan gynnwys Amgueddfa V&A Llundain, Amgueddfa Celfyddydau Addurnol Genedlaethol Norwy, Amgueddfa Gelf a Dylunio Efrog Newydd, Sefydliad Smithsonian Washington, ac Amgueddfa Gelf Sirol Los Angeles. Dyfarnwyd PhD iddo yn 2010 gan Brifysgol Fetropolitan Manceinion, lle bu’n Gymrawd Ymchwil o 2012-2014. Rhwng 2011 a 2017 bu’n Athro Cerameg yn Academi Gelf Genedlaethol Oslo. Mae ei lyfr ar gymhwyso technegau argraffu yn greadigol ar glai yn cael ei ystyried yn destun awdurdodol. Ceramics and Print Llundain: Bloomsbury; Philadelphia: Prifysgol Pennsylvania 2013 [1994]

Jo Dahn Mehefin 2022.

Mae Jo Dahn yn awdur, curadur ac ymchwilydd annibynnol. Hi yw awdur new directions in ceramics; from spectacle to trace  (Bloomsbury 2015)

Noddwyd yr ymchwil yn UDA gan Sefydliad Alturas

Noddwyd yr ymchwil yn Wedgwood, Spode ac Amgueddfa Victoria ac Albert, Llundain gan Gyngor Celfyddydau Lloegr.