Crescent Artspace
14/15 Queen Street, Scarborough
Monday 2nd – Friday 6th August 2010
11.00 am – 5.00 pm
Admission free
Open Arms Workshop Open Day
Saturday 14th August, 11.00 am – 5.00 pm
Jonathan Green’s An Exhibition of Space has emerged from a broader range of concerns embodied in his work ’20 days, 20 projects’ which he initiated on moving into a studio at Crescent Arts in 2009. Jonathan’s work and ideas move across dimensions (2:3:4) with consummate ease, a dynamic curiosity and creative intensity. Each project or proposition to date of ’20 days, 20 Projects’ is captured in an image created within the space of a day; a collection of prototypes if you like. It is from one such proposition that An Exhibition of Space has evolved through the additional opportunity to work within a specific architectural context at Crescent Artspace in Queen Street.
“I am investigating the relationship between sculpture and architecture specifically through the perception of space”.
Perception, in this case, is not simply visual but incorporates various senses on the part of the visitor experiencing and engaging with the work.
Modular elements, in this instance fabricated to order from aluminum sheets of a standard size, are used to partition and dissect the existing architectural space. The ‘raw material’ already possesses architectural and industrial qualities in its physical and dimensional properties and characteristics, and in its relation to human scale.
The use of such elements and material brings to mind early Bauhaus experiments with processes of mass production, concepts such as ‘The Minimal Dwelling’, and the work of Moholy Nagy exploring light and space. The possibility of sculpture as modular, variable, incorporating space as much as solid, has since evolved through the work of artists such as Donald Judd, Carl Andre and Robert Morris. The focus on the modular to create a fusion between architecture and sculpture is particularly interesting in that these are spaces which carry the potential to inhabit, and bear a relation to work such as Absalon’s ‘Cellules’ and Andrea Zittel’s ‘Compartment Units’. The notion of intervention in a given architectural space, adds yet another dimension to the work and intentions of the artist. The threshold between sculpture and architecture may be a matter of perception – of scale, materials, space, actions, behaviour and intention – through which An Exhibition of Space invites further investigation.
Open Arms Workshop Open Day
Saturday 14th August, 11.00 am – 5.00 pm
The initial exhibition is open for 5 days only from 2nd to 6th August after which Jonathan will lead a week of workshops with young people through Open Arms and 4Youth, North Yorkshire County Council. Jonathan will work with small groups through the week, developing their ideas and using recycled materials and found objects to explore the sculptural and architectural potential of the space. Their work is guaranteed to transform the space yet again and will be on view to the public on the Open Arms Workshop Open Day on Saturday 14th August from 11.00am to 5.00pm. Expect the unexpected!
Helen Donnelly’s Wavelengths is a recently completed commission to create a treatment for the temporary hoarding constructed during renovations to the Spa in Scarborough this summer. It’s a vibrant colour-wave which changes according to viewpoint, ranging from close up to distant vantage points across the South Bay. This is Helen Donnelly’s second large scale public work this year, following her inaugural site-work at Crescent Artspace in Queen Street. Thanks are due to Scarborough Borough Council, especially Doug Kendall, who had the vision and imagination to commission the work.
The transformation of 14/15 Queen Street into an arts project space is the result of a very productive collaboration between Scarborough Borough Council’s Civic Pride initiative, ‘Windows to the Borough’, and Crescent Arts. Thanks are due to the Development Trust Association and the Meanwhile Project for helping to fund temporary projects to support regeneration through arts and cultural activities in Scarborough, and to Teddy Clark Ltd. who have so generously allowed us to use their building creatively.
Diann Atkin, Carrie Jackson, Holly Major, Carmen Mills
Saturday 3rd July and Sunday 4th July
11.00 am – 5.00 pm
Crescent Artspace
14/15 Queen Street, Scarborough
Admission free
Clockwise from top left | Carrie Jackson | Carmen Mills | Holly Major | Diann Atkin
4X4 is the work of four third-year Fine Art students from Yorkshire Coast College in Scarborough. Crescent Arts offered these four artists the opportunity to develop their work as part of our continuing programme at Crescent Artspace in Queen Street. Artists are invited to work directly in the space itself, and each of these artists has brought elements of their studio practice to bear, whilst responding to the particular characteristics of the space. Materials of agricultural origin, abstract wall painting, and iconography of contemporary culture mesh with the fabric of the building, its scale and traces of previous activities. The work is of a temporary nature and open for public viewing for one weekend only on Saturday 3rd and Sunday 4th July.
Clockwise from top left | Carmen Mills | Carrie Jackson | Holly Major | Diann Atkin
Crescent Artspace & Crescent Arts Studios
Saturday 8th May – Satuday 12th June 2010
Thursday to Saturday 1.00pm – 6.00pm
Wednesdays by appointment
Admission is free
Crescent Arts is pleased to announce a dual-site presentation of new work by the painter Helen Donnelly. The exhibition marks the first large scale site-specific work to be produced at the former auction room at 14/15 Queen Street in Scarborough, now Crescent Artspace. Helen is a resident artist at Crescent Arts who has, for some time, expressed strong interest in working directly within a site, engaging with its architectural topography and scale, and extending her work beyond the confines of the studio. Her painting is firmly rooted in the traditions and history of Western European art, whilst at the same time she explores a singular vision linked to her individual experience of the landscape and built environment. A selection of her paintings and drawings, produced over the past year, can also be seen at Crescent Arts Studios exhibition space below Scarborough Art Gallery in The Crescent.
Crescent Artspace at 14/15 Queen Street, Scarborough, YO11 1HA
Crescent Artstudios, The Crescent, Scarborough, YO11 2PW
What am I looking at?
An interrogation of Helen Donnelly’s New Work
By Simon Farid
What am I looking at? Is it about space? About eyes, about seeing. Looking. Essentially, I’m looking at a flat plane. On the canvas, definitely yes. In the room in Queen St, maybe less so. But is it flat? My eyes say no. It moves; shapes fall in. I duck out of the way as a cube falls onto my foot. Would I call this illusion? The paintings are still. It’s my eyes that move them. In fact, it’s my eyes that are moving. Darting around the plane, different shapes emerge and recede. I’m engaged in the painting process itself, that of adding and subtracting, moving shapes and colours around the canvas, finding my own conclusion.
To read more about Helen Donnelly by Simon Farid, view What am I looking at?
Crescent Artspace at Queen
Simon Farid
‘A search for Liz’s agency within the different spatial planes of a re-constructed ancient Alexandria (attempt 1)’
Saturday 6th – Saturday 20th March 2010
Daily between 11.30 am – 5.30 pm (except Sundays)
Wednesday 10th March at 1.00pm.
Simon will lead an informal discussion about the work at Queen Street. Admission is free.
Why look for someone’s agency? I mean, is it of a cultural significance? You know, when, like, the council could be paying for a better army or more jails for paedophiles instead. And is Liz’s particular agency of relevance to your life? Is anyone’s? Is yours?
Agency is artspeak. Well, actually it isn’t, its just intelligent. And important. Like the velocity-addition formula - something that effects ones life everyday, but which doesn’t matter in a type of concrete practical way. Its still there.
For me, when we watch ‘Cleopatra (1963)’, what happens on (or in) the screen offers itself well to this sort of inquiry. You find yourself not sure what you are watching. When Liz kisses Rich, which Liz can we see? Are we seeing a woman in love? Or an actor kissing another actor in a Hollywood scripted film? Are we watching a representation of Ancient Egypt and Rome, or a post-modern construction of phantasy and fashion, read through a western colonialist frame?
If we are just watching actors (fraud), can Liz ever truly kiss Rich? The paparazzi render most of her other kisses fraudulent too, and our own minds produce a narrative to cover the ones unseen, those behind closed doors, in luxury hotels. (Further for us, our own CCTV kisses, ever captured, represented and re-produced, offer our own personal paparazzos, added to by facebook and an ever-expanding mesh of null representation, for which we must perform.)
So where is Liz? Not Liz the image- the hot, beautiful, soft, flawed idea of a woman we see and know. I mean Elizabeth, the person, making decisions and using her own body. Can she make decisions? Where? Not when she is acting, her words are pre-written, her body becomes a vessel, merely enacting what is asked of it. But once outside the studio, she still does not control her image, others control it. Not only how it looks, but worse, what it means.
This is not only happening to Liz. Alexandria suffers the same violence, and soon we emerge with a history that can substitute, and indeed is, the present. Liz’s body becomes occupied in the same way Egypt was and is, both made real by the authority of it projected image in the cinema. This is what the world looks like; there is no other way.
So I look for Liz. She is obscured by the painted backgrounds that Cleopatra was filmed through. We lose part of her when she rehearses her scenes, learning other peoples’ words and ideas. She finds herself in a new constructed space, not real, not especially fake – as constructed as everything else, so why not? Can she really be there? And then we have a kiss. With her boyfriend. Does it feel like a real kiss? Maybe more so to us, though we know it is scripted. A kiss that will repeat and repeat, becoming a new history. Is she in there, or are we watching something else?
Simon Farid 2010
About Crescent Artspace at Queen Street
Crescent Artspace at 14/15 Queen Street in Scarborough is part of the ‘Shop Lift’ initiative in partnership with Scarborough Borough Council’s Civic Pride and Scarborough Urban Renaissance. This programme is supported by funding from the Development Trust Association and the Meanwhile Project, to revitalise and improve vacant shop premises in the town centre through arts, cultural and community use.
Exhibition:
Celebrating 30 years of Crescent Arts
Archive: 1000 images of Crescent Arts 1979 – 2009
Saturday 5th December – Saturday 12th December
Daily between 10.30am and 4.30pm
Open studios: Saturday 5th December
Archive: an installation which shows over 1000 images tracing the fascinating history of Crescent Arts, the brainchild of a group of Scarborough artists in 1979, led initially by Mel Noble. Crescent Arts has spanned community arts to high art over its 30 year history with a healthy dose of controversy thrown in. With hindsight, some things appear quaint, but other work stands up well and seems relevant to current challenges and vision. From art on the beach, ambitious international sculpture exhibitions, cutting edge performance art to festivals, art trails and biennales – Crescent Arts has tried it all at one time or another over the past 30 years.
Art Day 1979: original video footage which is a piece of history which will be recognizable to anybody who was working in the visual arts in the late 1970s. It’s of interest to today’s audiences as a mini time-capsule which shows the approach of artists then to developing creative activity within a community.
Exhibition
The Wild: Emma Rushton and Derek Tyman
Saturday 11 July – Saturday 15 August 2009
The Wild, by Emma Rushton and Derek Tyman was commissioned by Crescent Arts, and shown for the first time at Crescent Artspace in the summer of 2009. The artists have since been long-listed for the Northern Art Prize in Leeds for this and other recent work.
The Wild combined several elements which, at first sight, may have seemed rather unlikely. Cacophonous sounds of rock bands filmed and recorded in rehearsal; a reconstruction of the cabin built by the American writer Henri David Thoreau (originally on the banks of Walden Pond in Massachusetts in 1845); a tree-like hoarding construction; leather motorbike jackets painted with animal motifs.
The Wild centred on the work and ideas of the American writer Henri David Thoreau, and his resistance to the increasingly materialistic society of mid-nineteenth century America by constructing and living in a small cabin near Walden Pond – supposedly back to the wilderness, but in fact quite close to home.
Rushton and Tyman reconstructed Thoreau’s cabin in Scarborough earlier in 2009, in the grounds of Wood End, and upcoming rock bands from the area were invited to rehearse inside the cabin. This was filmed and recorded to form part of their installation at Crescent Artspace at Wood End.
Thoreau’s texts, ‘Walden’ and ‘Civil Disobedience’ have been influential on the study of natural history and philosophy and on environmentalists, thus linking to the history of Wood End and its former life as a Natural History Museum. The Wild was installed in what was the conservatory of the Museum, dating back to the original occupancy by the Sitwell family. As a conservatory it brought ‘nature’ of a kind indoors (in this case ‘one of the most flourishing palms in England’), and acted as a habitat for exotic animals and birds. This was mirrored by the tree-like construction which the artists installed in the space and festooned with leather jackets collected from all corners of the globe. Leather jackets with painted animal motifs – bringing to mind and association with their history as iconic symbol and expression of rebellious anti-social behaviour, linked inextricably to popular culture (cinema and music in particular) and agitation for social and political change.
Dawn Brooks: Recent Works
Saturday 18 July – Sunday 4 October 2009
Dawn Brooks, who is based at Crescent Arts, exhibited recent prints which were developed using automatic drawing as a means of expressing ideas from the subconscious. The resulting drawings were a starting point for the printing plate, created as a painter might use a canvas. The construction of the image was process-led, with the artist reacting spontaneously to marks as they were made.
John Creighton: New Paintings
Saturday 16th May – Sunday 28th June 2009
John Creighton is an accomplished abstract painter based in Ryedale whose work may be familiar to some of you. This exhibition focuses on recent paintings and drawings, retaining landscape references and incorporating figuration of a more ambiguous nature.
Film screening of ‘Into Abstraction’ with John Creighton – see Open Studios
Crescent Arts and Yorkshire Coast College
‘The {Apothecary’s Unbelievable} Menagerie’
Friday 19th June – Sun 12th July
costume display and live performance
in Salisbury Arcade/Bar Street, Scarborough – all day every day
Crescent Arts and Yorkshire Coast College present an intriguing display of costume design by BA (Hons) Costume students modelled by Performing Arts students, showcasing their creative and dramatic talents. Live mannequins in exquisite hand-crafted costumes perform in Salisbury Arcade in Scarborough, turning window-dressing into a revelatory artform.
Working in partnership with Scarborough Borough Council’s Civic Pride ‘Windows to the Borough’, Crescent Arts promotes a new initiative aimed at improving the town centre by using empty shop premises for community based projects. Thanks go to Scarborough’s Urban Renaissance, Town Centre Management, and the owners of these premises who facilitated…
Anne Thalheim
Saturday 17th January – Saturday 21st February 2009
Anne Thalheim’s work has a powerful presence but resists easy interpretation. Nothing is quite what it seems. Objects which from afar resemble plants or creatures, turn out to be something quite different. The organic or natural is revealed as artifice, its beauty is disturbing and its attraction can repel.
“I make three dimensional objects that are often ambiguous, humorous, disturbing or repulsive. A restricted palette and selection of materials from the building trade give unity to this series of works.
Ready-made or found objects are used with a nod to Duchamp and the Surrealists. Figuration in the work emerges from the latent characteristics of these materials, which the artist instinctively draws out. A sensuality, eroticism even, is consciously and wittily contradicted by the choice of materials.
“Rubber from tractor inner tubes brings a further contradiction. A derivative of oil, the black gold, made into an object now made redundant, stubbornly polluting, rubber replaces expensive metal, whilst assemblages take precedent over the laborious and costly process of moulding and casting bronze.”
Language also plays a part in the work; allusive titles such as ‘Reticule’ or ‘Portable Billabong’ seem to mirror (rather than describe) the object. The poetic interplay between language and object compounds ambiguity and removes the possibility of literal interpretation of either.
Biographical note: Anne Thalheim was born in Quebec and studied at University Laval in Quebec. She currently lives and works in North Yorkshire. She has exhibited in solo and group exhibitions at Hatton Gallery in Newcastle upon Tyne and Ryedale Folk Museum in Hutton-le-Hole.
Saturday 8th November – Saturday 13th December 2008
Keith Farquhar
‘In Domestos Chaos’
Edinburgh based artist Keith Farquhar has built a significant reputation over the past 10 years with works such as V- Necks versus Roundnecks (2003), Atomised (2005) (ill) and Drunken Maria (2006) (ill). He has exhibited frequently in the UK and abroad including the 1st Athens Biennial (2007), at Anthony Reynolds Gallery in London and Galerie Neu in Berlin. We are pleased to host the first showing of his new work, ‘In Domestos Chaos’ at Crescent Artspace.
‘In Domestos Chaos’ brings together two bodies of current work. These comprise a number of specially designed cardboard cut-outs like the kind seen in cineplex foyers, except that here the artist isn't advertising a film or product and the cut-outs are free to remain as props who's only function is as artworks. These are set against a series of paintings on denim which are produced by applying bleach (domestos) to unstretched denim, thus allowing chance to determine the constellation of drips, stains, sprays and spills to form a backdrop of the heavens.
Keith’s work frequently takes the form of sculptural installation, employing a strict economy of means, whereby the individual physical elements act as visual props, retaining a sense of the temporary and portable. Keith has compared his practice to that of window dressing, in that he explores the means to create effective (yet momentary) illusion through methods more usually associated with commercial product display.
Crescent Artspace Launch at Woodend 04/10/2008
New Façades
04/10 – 14/10/2008
Crescent Arts with Yorkshire Coast College BA students in costume design working with Cath Whippey; Hull University Scarborough Campus, School of Arts and New Media; photography by Graham Mack.
Crescent Artspace opened with an intriguing installation of sound and vision, offering a contemporary insight into the artistic legacy of Edith, Osbert and Sacheverell Sitwell. Woodend, the former home of the Sitwells, provided an impressive backdrop to this collaboration between Crescent Artspace, students and tutors from Yorkshire Coast College costume design department, and the sound department of Hull University Scarborough Campus. Through the combined talents of visual artists, designers, makers, performers, and audio artists, a fascinating and inspiring series of audio-visual works emerged, referencing the photography of Cecil Beaton, the poetry of Edith Sitwell, and the architecture of Woodend. Visitors could experience the poetry of Façade as never before, navigate our virtual artspace (now on our website) and encounter a reincarnation of Edith Sitwell.
Façade 04/10/2008
Façade! The Orchestra of St. Paul’s and Crescent Arts presented this seminal collaborative work combining the poetry of Edith Sitwell and music of William Walton. It was performed originally in 1922 at Carlyle Square in London, home of Osbert and Sacheverell Sitwell. William Walton conducted whilst Edith Sitwell recited the texts from behind a curtain using the famous Sengerphone (a megaphone-like instrument) to amplify her voice. By all accounts, it was a powerful performance. Façade evolved over several performances before reaching the version that we know today. The event in Scarborough was a rare opportunity to experience a live performance of Façade. We were privileged to host William Sitwell as reciter along with Pippa Longworth, and the highly accomplished Orchestra of St. Paul’s conducted by Ben Palmer.
Sat 4th October 2pm – 5pm
Catherine Graham
Installation ‘Out of Place, Out of Time’
Crescent Artstudios Catherine Graham, an ex-studio holder at Crescent Arts, recently completed an MFA at Leeds University. This installation was timed to coincide with the opening of Crescent Artspace and our re-launch, allowing Catherine to revisit her former studio environment, bringing to bear experiences since leaving Scarborough and Crescent Arts. Catherine’s ability to confound expectations by the lateral juxtaposition of unlikely materials and objects demonstrates both humour and pathos ranging from the scatological to the biodegradable. Her work, which might at first sight appear to be subliminal and undemonstrative, has a tendency to creep up on you from behind a radiator or from where it lurks in some hidden corner. It’s never quite where it ought to belong, and thus performs its primary role as ‘intervention’.
Previous exhibitions
For information about previous exhibitions at Crescent Arts please see the archive pages.