artsmill past

2011

Wed, Feb 9th - Sun March 6th

Have you seen my childhood

'Have you seen my childhood' shows four artists whose work uses childhood as a vehicle to explore identity, memory, relationships, and society.

Sue Turner creates ceramics that re-present familiar domestic objects in unfamiliar ways.
Don Myers' intriguing paintings invite the viewer to step beyond the obvious and to speculate their own interpretation of the narrative.
Mary Loney's large, expressive paintings draw upon archetypes and mythic imagery to explore the dark stories of childhood and their implications upon society.
Carole Kirk works mainly from family snapshots, producing ambiguous and often unsettling paintings that ask questions about photography and its role in capturing the 'truth' of our past.

Put together, the works perform synergistically, creating a multi-layered narrative that encourages reflection upon the interdependencies and conflicts between adults and children, and their legacy upon society.

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Love and Music

By Mick Wilson

30th March to 24th April

11am-4pm, Wed-Sun, admission free

An exhibition of colourful, witty and inventive paintings and assemblages by artist and composer, Mick Wilson, exploring the themes of love and music. "I aim to achieve a striking image which will please the eye, provoke contemplation, amuse and entertain, and, on a good day, astonish and delight. Now and again, I fail."

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My Giant Colouring Book

Jake and Dinos Chapman

A Hayward Touring Exhibition from Southbank Centre, London
on behalf of Arts Council England

3rd July to 31st July

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Ruffling Feathers
An Exhibition of Paintings by Cyril Mount
Curated by Alison Darnbrough

28th August to 25th September 2011

This exhibition brings together a body of work produced over a number of years highlighting the cruelty, injustices, horror and futility of war, gifted by the artist to the University of Bradford's Department of Peace Studies in July 2010.

Cyril Mount (b. Liverpool 1920) was in India with the Royal Horse Artillery at 17. At the outbreak of war his Regiment mechanised and left for the Middle East and North Africa in March 1941. He spent the early war years in action as Wireless Operator, as well as drawing panoramas of enemy positions and other things. In North Africa he fought with the 4th Indian Division in all campaigns to Tunis. In July 1943 he was involved in the invasion of Sicily and later wounded and evacuated back to Tunisia. Following convalescence he was recommended for commission. He successfully completed six months officer cadet training in Almaza, Cairo and left for UK in April 1944 as a full Lieutenant. He had made many drawings and gouache paintings in lulls between fighting and thirty nine of these are now in the permanent collection of the Imperial War Museum. Post war he became an art student for four years full time and then went on to teaching, mainly in Higher Education, for the next thirty four years becoming a Principal Lecturer and a FRSA.

As a student in Liverpool, Mount was attracted to painters such as Breugel, Goya, Hogarth, Daumier and Picasso. They still have a place in his oeuvre after much more than half a century, not surprising then that his work had mostly been concerned with people. His painting became gradually more political and even his most innocent pictures of bathers can have as much hidden cynicism as his more overt blasts against the hypocrisy, cruelty and injustice of the 'systems' in the present world.

He was greatly affected by Goya's Horrors of War drawings which have fed into his art of the past decade or so. Mount comments: 'The very act of drawing and painting still carries with it a strange but very real sort of magic. My feeling is that those of us blessed with this ability , should when necessary, use it to draw attention to the cruelty, injustices, horror and futility of war and ruffle the feathers of those responsible for corrupt capitalism and religions. In my case I don't feel I deserve the title of peace activist, just the reformed enemy who saw and experienced far more than he bargained for when he ran away from the 1930s depression and joined the regular Army!'

www.cyrilmount.net/bradford.html

Tom Robinson – New Paintings

October 19th – November 20th, Wed – Sun 11-4pm

Artsmill present the first one man show of Tom Robinson who studied at the Byam
Shaw and the Prince’s Drawing School and is a Gilchrist Fischer Prize 2010 nominee.
Essentially a celebratory artist the main theme of his work is the character of light in
landscape and memory. Deeply sensitive and poetic, Robinson's paintings, whether from
life or memory, seek to pin down the artist's place within the world. Now based in Norfolk,
it was during his time in Jersey that he began to take on significantly wider angles of vision
leading to more abstract and rhythmic solutions. The pure physicality of the coloured paint
mark as a sense loaded hotwire to the viewer’s consciousness has become more and more
important.
"Each painter has to invent their own rules. These rules determine how to bring the subject
into being. As I paint my perception of the painting and its subject builds, leading to
resolution and a sense of newness. This newness extends the range of possibilities open to
me in subsequent work."

www.thomasrobinson.eu and www.flickr.com/photos/thomasrobinsonpaintingsanddrawings

New Paintings

ARTSMILL AWARD EXHIBITION

WINNERS OF THE PUBLIC VOTE
	NUMBER OF VOTES CAST
NOMINATED ARTISTS	1ST PRIZE	2ND PRIZE
ROWENA BEATY	16	14
LOUIS BENIOT	30	14
CHRIS BLAND	2	3
SIMON MANFIELD	26	21
SARAH McDADE	8	22
DOROTHY SIMISTER	16	13
MALCOM TAYLOR	12	11
STEVE WAGER	9	6
HARRY WARD	7	9
RICHARD WINCER	40	43

It follows that Richard Wincer takes the first prize of £500 and Sarah McDade the second of £250.
Artsmill would like to thank everyone who participated.
The exhibition was very well received by the public who thought it represented an exceptionally high standard of work.

Click here to see images of the exhibition