Stiched Stories 17th September - 14th December 2007

Stories - remembered, personal, mythical or imaginary - are the underlying inspiration for the textile artists in this exhibition. Their ideas are communicated in the medium of thread and fabric, materials that often have a powerful emotional symbolism in the lives of human beings. The work is about journeys through life – adventures, happenings and moments that can be huge or small, life-changing or life–enriching. This exhibition explores the universal themes of love and loss, life and death, pleasure and sadness. Each artist brings a particular sensitivity to their experience of being alive, communicating personal experiences and personal perceptions of the world.

Aim Higher 2007 Cansfield School

Reliquiae - Stephen Livingstone

Stephen Livingstone creates works that evoke a sense of the distant past, particularly the history associated with his local landscape of Northumberland and County Durham.
Inspired by the the Lindisfarne Gospels and the life of St Cuthbert, he also makes reference to the natural world drawing on the symbolic sense of transcience that moths, moons and migrating birds evoke. He has a profound sensitivity to the connection between nature and human experience deriving layers of meaning from geometric patterning, ancient maps and stories. His creative journey takes him to the heart of the Human Spirit and celebrates human endeavor. It recognises the desire to create objects of beauty, to create symmetries that organise and symbolise knowledge and experience.

Reliquiae - Gillian Robinson - All That Remains

Gillian Robinson’s installation, ‘All That Remains’, is a series of over fifty books, inspired by the texture and surface qualities of ancient icons found in Monasteries in Cyprus. They carry an atmosphere of survival of endurance and hope.

Some of the books have sculptural qualities, some are bound and tied with their contents locked away, whilst others can be handled and explored. They have a beautiful physicality - they smell of ash, wax or resin. Pages ask to be turned, and their surfaces cracked open, revealing juxtapositions, glimpsed fragments. Somehow the form of the books is at one with the content. Books have a powerful symbolism, communicating ideas, knowledge, wisdom, history, experience. ‘All That Remains’ seems to capture that sense of power, combined with great vulnerability.

Reliquiae - Exhibition Preview 27th April 2007

Stephen Livingstone and Gillian Robinson at the preview evening.

Reliquiae

Gillian Robinson and Stephen Livingstone both create beautiful, sculptural artworks inspired by the form of books. Their work feels ancient, treasured, preserved - like relics from another time.

April - July 2007

St Peters

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Matt Davies

Manchester based artist Matt Davies [known for his artistic input on the Nine Black Alps records covers] is exhibiting a painting entitled “Golden Virginia” along side David Hancock’s current exhibition at The Drumcroon Gallery, Wigan. The last time Hancock and Davies collaborated was in “The Beautiful People” exhibition which toured across the UK In 2003. Recently Matt has enjoyed success in John Moores 24 (2006) at The Walker Gallery, Liverpool.

Previous exhibitions include “Why can’t everything be pretty” (March 2006) at Salford University where he was accepted onto The Artist Access to Colleges Scheme. This has enabled the artist to relate to the students. The main objective was to give the students a “taster” of what life is like after University, this was made possible with workshops and seminars.

Matt paints by inter-weaving vast amounts of colour with carefully selected images to form the structure of his large-scale paintings, using everyday resources to influence his work, from newspapers / magazines cuttings to personal photographs.

His earlier work is heavily influenced by children’s drawings; he particularly enjoys the confidence of younger children’s mark making. Matt has had many exhibitions around the North West including The Lowry Hotel 2005 Autumn Exhibition and Warsaw Projects (2003-06) and is looking forward to a solo exhibition at The Lowry Hotel in August 2007.

Beautiful People January-March 2007

David Hancock has a real affinity and empathy with young people, rooted perhaps in his own experience of adolescence. The title of the exhibition, Beautiful People, comes from a body of work that enabled him to consider ideas about portraiture. The work celebrates young people’s desire for individuality and aims to communicate their evolving identity, their growing sense of themselves and how they fit within society. Their experiences often reflect on a society that is hostile to them.

David acts as a collaborator, telling his characters’ stories with the hope of developing greater understanding. His large-scale photo-realist paintings often require his subjects to embark on the creative journey with him. They are drawn into his working processes, sharing their personal spaces and experiences.

His experience as a ‘Goth’ informs his practice as an artist, enabling him to draw on musical and literary references as well as the romantic and dramatic landscapes by the Pre-Raphaelites.