Place

When: June 3 — August 28 2021
Where: Unit 12, Brunswick Shopping Centre, Scarborough, YO11 1UE
Opening Times: Thur–Sat, 10am–4pm

What does ‘place’ look like? How do we define it, how do we value the places that we live / visit / dream of?

In the past year the idea of place has changed greatly. With restrictions on travel and greater time being spent indoors, notions of place have been challenged, altered or adapted.

In response to this Crescent Arts, Scarborough commissioned nine artists Georgia High, Ro Hardaker, Rhiannon Kendall, Sarah Mole, Molly Newham, Aphra O’Connor, Kat Spence, Sommer Vass and Meg Wellington-Barratt via an open call to respond to the theme. Their work varies across mediums ranging from film, performance, ceramics, illustration, sculpture, writing and audio. These diverse works highlight the nuances of the term and will get audiences to reflect on what place means to them, whether real, a memory or imagined.

Access: The Brunswick shopping centre is wheelchair accessible for more information head to the venue website by following this link: https://www.brunswickshopping.com

Large print captions are available from the invigilator.

Interview with Meg Wellington-Barratt available here!

Crescent Arts – Covid-19 measures

We take the health and wellbeing of our visitors, staff and collaborators very seriously and when making plans for the re-opening exhibitions to the public, we have worked to ensure that the measures we put in place are rigorous and easy to follow.

The below guidance should be read by anyone planning on visiting the exhibition.

-All visitors are required to use Track and Trace.

-We take data privacy very seriously and we will only keep your details on our system for 30 days.

All visitors are required to wear a mask We ask all visitors to wear a mask whilst in the building to help reduce the risk of spreading the infection. The only exceptions to this are if some visitors have underlying health conditions that may be affected by the use of a mask.

-We have carried out a comprehensive risk assessment for the unit in which the exhibition is presented.

-Our processes are under constant review and we want to hear about your experience
of visiting our gallery and art spaces in general at the moment.

Photography by Matthew Cooper

ARTISTS

Georgia High: Georgia High specialises in illustrations often impacted and inspired by stories, feelings, characters and their development. She is about to start her undergraduate degree in Comic and Concept Art at Leeds Arts University. Artist Website Link: https://www.instagram.com/natilitygin/

Ro Hardaker: (she or they) works at the blur between discursive, visual and embodied practices. Their practice is emergent, necessarily interdisciplinary and undisciplined. By deconstructing and exhausting modes of performance, Hardaker redeploys both competitive and collaborative strategies to negotiate new processual terms, bodies and sites as they are being realised. Artist Website Link: http://www.rohardaker.co.uk

Rhiannon Kendall: Rhiannon Kendall is a northern queer contemporary artist, researcher and writer with a drawing and text-based practice, born on the outskirts of Wakefield, West Yorkshire. Now living in York, Rhiannon went on to secure a First-Class Degree in Fine Art and an MA in Fine Art. Rhiannon produces narratives of the queer, female, and working-class self in relation to memory and desire, secrecy, loss, and confession. Rhiannon’s use of poetry is inspired by notable queer female writers such as Sappho and Anne Lister and how queer relationships historically have claimed rural, woodland, and private spaces as sites of desire. Artist Website Link: https://www.rhiannonkendall.com/

Sarah Mole: Sarah is a multi-disciplinary artist, she predominantly creates work that explores emotional geography and socially engaged practice in an environment where urban nature meets technology. She creates conceptual events, installations and interventions bringing people together and observing how this affects connection to location and well-being. She creates large scale abstract textural paintings exploring emotional geography, the natural worlds and science and installations using sound and location-based technology. She often remains anonymous and uses the name ‘Moie’ or celebrates the possibilities of the collective ‘What Is? Collective’. Artist Website Link: https://whatiscollective.co.uk

Molly Newham: A visual and community artist studying a Fine Art BA at the University of Leeds. Her practice is in a developmental and transitory state and is coming to learn how to build relationships with local communities in socially engaged ways. Through her work she enters places of long familial association and brings acts of performance, and community engagement. A first-generation university student, coming from a family with working-class roots, Molly has many conversations about social mobility and cultural assumptions, and is interested in how this can translate into her work. Artist Website Link: https://bit.ly/3di18LK

Aphra O’Connor: Born in Whitby, North Yorkshire, I retain a strong link to my Northern industrial heritage through my three-dimensional collages. I graduated from the Royal College of Art with a Masters degree in Ceramics and Glass in 2019, and from Wimbledon College of Art in 2014 with a BA in Sculpture. This sculptural background allows me to visualise clay in a manner that is outside of the traditional craft pathway. Artist Website Link: https://www.aphraoconnor.co.uk

Kat Spence: Kat Spence is an artist, writer and curator living in Scunthorpe. They graduated in English and History (BA Hons) where they developed a passion for local history, folk tradition and the history of medicine. Their artistic practice is called ‘bricolage’ which roughly translates as ‘to tinker’ or ‘do-it-yourself’ – this often means a rejection of the purpose bought. Materials used are often found objects which have been collected, processed and preserved. Artist Website Link: https://bit.ly/2TcIuhx 

Sommer Vass: I’m an artist and part-time Masters (Fine Art) student living and studying in York. I’m currently working towards my final masters project. My art practice has thus far used textile methods to appropriate and re-make sculptural objects; objects which relate to everyday observations and through making become vehicles to expose and playfully interrogate ironies that I identify in my own life, with the potential of visually and materially reframing some aspect of this for others. I’m interested in the ways in which might use art practice to interrupt and investigate our perception in familiar places. Artist Website Link: https://www.sommervass.co.uk

Meg Wellington-Barratt: I am an artist, educator and writer now residing in York. I work with photography and print based media alongside teaching art, photography and fashion. I make artist books and zines as well as studying for a doctorate in education at the University of Sheffield. Artist Website Link: https://meganwellington.com

This exhibition is kindly supported by: