A Fake’s Progress
Sarah Taylor
Sat 2nd March – Sat 6th April
Thursdays / Fridays / Saturdays
11.00 – 4.00
and by appointment
Admission is free
The exhibition A Fake’s Progress comprises work selected from two series of paintings, Prior Arrangements and The Backside of Labour. The series Prior Arrangements consists of paintings that are either painted onto, or assembled from various items of domestic material culture, such as tea towels, dish cloths, fabric remnants, or printed headscarves. These material domestic items are stretched over painting stretchers in order to be formally presented and considered as approximations of paintings. Grouped together and arranged in ‘lots’, as in an auction, the works are displayed leaning against the wall and in this form of presentation aspire to count as painting, the most aristocratic of art forms.
In addition to this series of stretched domestic fabric artifacts, are a series of large-scale paintings titled The Backside of Labour. These paintings are based on observations of the underside of machine embroidered clothing labels. The reverse side of these labels, usually hidden from view, reveal the labour of production by way of the matted tangles of loose threads. From a collection of small and relatively ephemeral labels, the appearance of imposing abstract paintings is sought. These labels provide a parody, visually mimicking the ‘great masculine tradition’ of American Abstract Expressionism. Sarah Taylor has produced new work for this exhibition of A Fake’s Progress in the context of Crescent Arts and Scarborough, following a previous configuration of the work for her recent exhibition at Leeds College of Art where she currently teaches.
Sarah Taylor studied painting at Chelsea College of Art (1990) and in 2013 was awarded a PhD (practice led) from the University of Ulster. Exhibitions include Dirty Knicker Girl, The Gallerette, London & Wall of Guilt, Puriuli Agli Scalzi Gallery, Venice, Italy. Past support and funding has been awarded by the British Council, Southern Arts, the Welsh Arts Council and DEL (Belfast). Alison Rowley is Reader in Cultural Theory in the School of Art, Design and Architecture at the University of Huddersfield. Her book Helen Frankenthaler: Painting History, Writing Painting was published by I.B. Tauris in 2007. Her writing on contemporary art includes essays on AES+F, Chantal Akerman, Eva Hesse, Willie Doherty, Sarah Lucas and Jenny Saville. Her new book ‘Common Gestures Class Acts: Young British Art in Retrospect’ will be published by I.B. Tauris in 2013.
Aspirational Beauty, an essay by Alison Rowley
Crescent Artists Open Studios and Exhibition
How many artists does it take to draw a light bulb?
Sat 16th & Sun 17th February 2013
10am – 5pm daily
Admission is free.
Six artists based at Crescent Arts open their studios to the public.
Dawn Brooks, Jade Montserrat, Steven Potter, Susan Slann, Karen Thompson, Susan Timmins
This event is part of the Coastival programme.
Our artists’ work encompasses printmaking, ceramics, book art, painting, paper cuts, drawing, sculptural installation, sound and digital media. Come and meet our artists who will be glad to show you their work in the studio environment. Work will be for sale, so you may be tempted to buy an original work of art or craft directly from the artist.
For further information about Crescent Arts’ artists, please visit the resident artists’
page of our website.
Demonstrations:
Collagraph &
Drypoint Etching
Sat 16th & Sun 17th Feb 11:00 – 11:30am / 3:00 – 3:30pm
Bookmaking
Sat 16th & Sun 17th Feb
Drop in demonstrations 10:00 – 5:00pm
Book-making is a satisfying and straight-forward process allowing the maker to muse in a treasured hand-made compendium.
Artists’ Talks:
Drawing on Identity
Sat 16th & Sun 17th Feb
Jade Montserrat 12:00 – 12:30pm
Refining and locating my practice regarding notions of cultural identity in relation to art historical and contemporary discourse.
Finding a Narrative in
Contemporary Ceramics
Sat 16th & Sun 17th Feb
Karen Thompson 1:00 – 1:30pm
A presentation charting the path Karen’s ceramic work has taken, focusing on her fine art installation based work, she will be discussing her attempts at finding a unique voice and an original narrative context within todays contemporary ceramic world.
No booking required.
Thurs 2nd – Sat 18th May
Thursdays / Fridays / Saturdays
11.00am – 4.00pm
and by appointment
Admission is free
Crescent Arts looks back affectionately at two years of news posters from Scarborough News. Karen Thompson has collected most of the daily posters which give a vivid snapshot of events and news in Scarborough over this period. The best news posters capture the stories with a striking economy of language, and are meant to be digested in a split second. At their best, they have strong typographic appeal and are highly evocative. A sense of the visual, which parallels the photographic, makes for the most memorable posters. Who could ever forget ‘Elton John to Walk On Water In Scarboro!’?
While some stories may have disappeared from view, others are very much alive and can be instantly revived by the headline. Seagulls, jellyfish and dog-walking on the beach are perennial themes as you might expect in a seaside resort. However, ‘Latest Victim Of Wall of Death’ is more specific and of continuing concern to those who care about the wellbeing of wildlife in an increasingly urban environment. ‘Scarboro Set For Gold Rush’ is perhaps one of the more intriguing news posters of the period, and ‘Sand Cleared From Beach’ seems poetic in its understatement.
“It taps into an unsung area of interest that is paradoxically impact-heavy and disposable as a marketing technique that requires a crossword-mentality ranging from the cryptic to the simple, truncating ideas and concepts and events into a universal distillation.” Ed Asquith, Editor of The Scarborough News
We became interested in the news posters as part of our experiments with writing in our Artist Writes programme and for their potential as remarkably vivid and expressive word pictures. The attempt to condense a story down to four or five words is both challenging and fascinating, and easier said than done.
NEWS POSTER COMPETITION
If you think you can come up with a striking news poster, one that captures the essence of a story and is impossible to ignore, now’s your chance to prove it. We’re inviting you to send in a news poster based on any story or article in Scarborough News published in the editions of 2nd or 9th May 2013. Choose a story and write your news poster. It can be humorous, intriguing, snappy or simple so long as it really captures the story.
There are three simple rules…
News posters must use; Four lines – no more, no less
Maximum seven letters each line (excluding spaces)
Correct punctuation
All news posters must be sent to Crescent Arts by:
email (subject NEWS): info@crescentarts.co.uk
twitter: @crescent_arts or facebook: www.facebook.com/crescent.arts
Before 5pm on Tuesday 14th May.
Judging will take place at Museums at Night on Friday 17th May, 6.00pm – 10.30pm.
Come and find out if your news poster has won! Entries will be judged by Scarborough News and Crescent Arts, and a selection of the best posters will be added to our exhibition. The winner will receive a t-shirt with their poster printed boldly on the front or back. Show off your literary or journalistic talents and be the envy of all your friends.
Friday 17th May 2013
6.00pm – 10.30pm
ART KO! BOUT 8.00PM SCARBOROUGH ART GALLERY
Admission is free except
Future Shorts film screenings £3 non-members (free to members)
Screenings at 6.00pm / 7.30pm / 9.00pm
Crescent Arts and Scarborough Art Gallery join forces, yet again, to participate in Museums At Night 2013. The whole building will be open to the public with a great programme of exhibitions, Future Shorts films, poetry readings, art book exchange and the ART KO! upstairs downstairs boxing bout to decide, once and for all, between the ‘Scarborough Realists’ or the ‘Crescent Conceptualists’. Place your bets!
FUTURE SHORTS FESTIVAL
SPRING SEASON 2013 APRIL to JUNE 2013
1. THE WHISTLE | 17 min / Documentary Dir: Grzegorz Zariczny / Poland – 2012
2. 38 – 39°C | 8 min / Animation Dir: Kangmin Kim / USA, South Korea – 2011
3. THE CHAIR| 12 min / Drama Dir: Grainger David / USA – 2012
4. MICKY BADER | 14 min / Documentary Dir: Frida Kempff / Sweden/Denmark – 2009
5. DOGS ARE SAID TO SEE THINGS | 12 min / Fiction Dir: Guto Parente / Brazil – 2012
6. WHIPLASH |18 min / Fiction Dir: Damien Chazelle / USA – 2012
www.culture24.org.uk/museumsatnight
www.futureshorts.com
www.scarboroughmuseumstrust.org.uk
at sixes & sevens
Sat 8th June – Sat 6th July 2013
Thursday – Saturday 11.00am – 4.00pm
& by appointment
Admission is free.
At sixes and sevens is a fitting title for this exhibition of work by current Crescent Arts studio holders.
As an idiom ‘at sixes and sevens’ has figurative meaning, much like the work on display, which flows away from literal interpretations of the materials used. It reflects the fact that the artists work in differing mediums, styles and approaches, and are brought together by their shared location within studios at Crescent Arts. The exhibition mirrors aspects of the dialogue which occurs on a daily basis between artists working together under the same roof.
Showing works by Dawn Brooks (print), Jade Montserrat (installation), Steven Potter (installation), Susan Slann (painting), Karen Thompson (ceramics) & Susan Timmins (installation).
For further information about each resident artists work please visit their page on the website.
MARKET PRICES
Jade Montserrat
20th September – 26th October 2013
“…so the objects that are collected and archived stand on their own but there are links that can be made through everything all the time…art history, libraries, books its exhaustive, we kind of look for compendiums to describe all manner of things that relate to our lives…”
Market Prices is an exploration of objects littered with links to value in relation to the artist’s personal narrative and practice. Each object is neatly housed within its own bespoke box. These codified repositories, akin to drawers, are stacked, creating a monument to her narrative within an art-historical, cultural and socio-political context. Each item is being prepared for a photographic record, which will be published in a small edition, acting as a catalogue. The function of the catalogue will reveal the objects that viewers will not be able to see once the sculpture is assembled.
Although the arrangement of the boxes (based on when they arrived within the artist’s temporary custody) and the corresponding publication are located within a classification system driven by personal trajectory: the objects themselves demand a narrative excavation.
How might Market Prices merge the artist’s narrative within larger concerns regarding value, worth, labour and education? And, using Baudrillard’s question in his System of Objects as a prompt “Can man ever use objects to set up a language that is more than a discourse addressed to himself?”
THE ART PARTY CONFERENCE 2013
Presented by Bob & Roberta Smith with Crescent Arts, in association with the Spa (SIV Ltd)
Saturday 23rd November
The Spa, Scarborough
2.00pm – 2.00am
£5 (plus 50p booking fee for online and telephone bookings)
£6 on the day
Box Office: 01723 821888
www.scarboroughspa.co.uk
ART DEBATE PERFORMANCE FILMS POETRY
MUSIC DJS STALLS FOOD DRINK
DOWNLOAD THE PROGRAMME HERE:
Art Party Conference Programme Nov13
JOIN US AT THE ART PARTY CONFERENCE
BOB AND ROBERTA SMITH HOWARD BEAUMONT IAN BOURN DAWN BROOKS PAVEL BÜCHLER LESLEY BUTTERWORTH PATRICK COYLE JEREMY DELLER STEPHEN DEUCHAR ALEXANDER DODGSON MAUREEN DUFFY JULIA FARRINGTON LEO FITZMAURICE FLAME PROOF MOTH ORIANA FOX THE FUCKS MICHAEL GROVE GRUBBY MITTS MARK HUDSON THE KEN ARDLEY PLAYBOYS JEFF MCMILLAN HAROON MIRZA JADE MONTSERRAT LYNDA MORRIS TIM NEWTON CORNELIA PARKER JANETTE PARRIS STEVEN POTTER JOHN ROGERS SUSAN SLANN JOHN SMITH STONE PENGUIN KAREN THOMPSON SUSAN TIMMINS JESSICA VOORSANGER RICHARD WENTWORTH SILVIA ZIRANEK
CRESCENT ARTS THE ART FUND DACS THE CASS NSEAD INDEX ON CENSORSHIP UNIVERSITY OF HULL SCHOOL OF ARTS AND NEW MEDIA YORKSHIRE COAST COLLEGE AIR A-N ARTQUEST ARTSADMIN AXISWEB CAPE UK CONTEMPORARY VISUAL ARTS NETWORK CONTEMPORARY ART SOCIETY CREATE CULTURAL LEARNING ALLIANCE SCARBOROUGH MUSEUMS TRUST STEPHEN JOSEPH THEATRE UNIVERSITY OF THE ARTS LONDON YORKSHIRE VISUAL ARTS NETWORK YORKSHIRE SCULPTURE PARK
& MOST IMPORTANTLY…YOU
For further information, please visit